"Sitting at the bakery so early in the morning, the savoury smells of the pies and quiches seemed rude, almost obscene somehow. I never could eat in the morning; I was strictly a orange juice and coffee sort of person.
Something about being up and out so early both pleased and frightened me. There was pleasure in knowing I was fulfilling some sort of unspoken societal expectation; getting up, purchasing a breakfast-like food item, going to work. The ability to get the most out of one's day is, after all, most commonly associated with being conscious for the largest possible portion of it.
And yet there was also something distinctly disquieting about knowing that this was the expected routine of life. The short-term satisfaction I felt at being able to say I'd gotten up early, eaten a Danish and bounced off to work was acutely marred by the knowledge that I was, even now in my apparently reckless youth, feeling the pressure of some cosmic push towards chronic, methodical sameness.
I am approaching a time of life where my friends are starting to talk about security, investment, insurance, ownership. Please don't let me have any of these things. I don't want them. In fact, I'm disgusted by the thought of them. Life is not supposed to be safe, and a prison of possessions, while probably keeping you safe, will also slowly eat away at your lust for life until your only purpose is to maintain. Maintain your ownership of useless stuff, maintain your security, maintain whatever it is you've always had and always known.
No. No thanks. I'm not doing that. Good stories do not have their characters sitting on piles of electronics and expensive clothes and getting up to go to work at 6am every morning. So no. I'm going to to do something else."
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