Nine-to-Fives Are Necrosis to The Soul

We live in a world where nobody works. The digital workforce has become its own art form, where millions of people spend their days typing away on laptops, generating nothing but noise. An economy filled with words like "synergy," "optimization," "engagement", all of it boiling down to nothing. A meaningless string of buzzwords swirling through email inboxes and project updates. This is the work of today: an entire economy built on charades. A facade of productivity that barely masks the collective apathy toward whatever people are pretending to care about.

Society used to believe that the future held something dazzling such as landscapes filled with gleaming cities, robots taking over menial tasks, flying cars zipping through the sky. Instead, the height of modern technological achievement has become an app on a phone to summon a third world immigrant who will risk city traffic to deliver a burrito. Is this what the future holds? An endless churn of empty apps designed to make convenience out of every whim? Instead of innovation, a marketplace of indulgence and triviality has been created.

Look at the jobs people claim to be passionate about: marketing, sales, finance. Imagine saying that you're passionate about "marketing strategy" or "sales funnels." What does that even mean? Passion, once the domain of artists and inventors, is now appropriated by people drafting PowerPoints and “making content”. I’m supposed to believe that you have a genuine love for tweaking ROI figures or analyzing social media metrics? It's a lie everyone has to play along with, grinning as they pretend to type away, nodding through Zoom meetings, pretending they’re on some grand collective mission when, deep down, each one feels the emptiness.

It's comical how desperately people cling to this charade. But they have to play along, don’t they? The dirty little secret is that most are just riding this wave of decline, watching as the gears rust and the machine begins to fall apart. It’s an open secret, but they suppress it because admitting it would mean forfeiting that steady salary, the one that lets them take a European vacation every summer to remind themselves that they’re “cultured,” that they’re “living.” It’s a hollow consolation prize for trading in time, creativity, and any true sense of meaning.

What’s more, the constant need to perform, to keep this game going, grates on everyone. Pretending that nine-to-fives are anything more than glorified adult daycare is exhausting. There’s a mental tax to be paid for the forced optimism, the endless nodding, the earnest emails that are both sent and deleted. Everyone feels the creeping awareness that all of this is just busywork meant to distract you from a more troubling realization: that without the structure of work, they might be forced to confront themselves, to live a life with real meaning. And maybe that’s the terrifying truth.

Because what happens if the noise stops? What happens if you take away the emails and the Zoom calls and the KPIs and leave people to fill the void with something real? The honest answer, the one nobody wants to say out loud, is that most of them wouldn’t know how. They’ve spent so long strapped to this fakery of busyness that they can’t imagine life without it. The hollowness isn’t just in the work; it’s in them, and they know it, and they’re terrified of what they’d find if they ever had to confront it.

In big cities, you see it everywhere: people moving through their days like ghosts, single and childless and vaguely dissatisfied, holding out hope that all the effort, all the typing and nodding and pretending, will eventually lead to something meaningful. But if you’ve got nothing to lose, what’s stopping you from walking away? Quit the stupid job. Take a shot. What’s the worst that happens? You fail? So what? I’m convinced that the only way a person ever finds their true calling is by losing everything that keeps them safe and comfortable. Real ideas, real vision, don’t come from staring at a screen all day. They come from standing on the edge and looking into the abyss.

Other people may want to play this game, bending to the endless emails, trudging through fake tasks, putting on their polite smiles for jobs that eat away at them bit by bit.

But not me.

I’ll swing whatever deal is needed, live like a cowboy if that’s what it takes to stay free. I’d rather embrace risk, do whatever it is I want, and take the hits than pretend I care about another set of lifeless tasks just to pocket a paycheck. While others trade their hours for hollow titles, I’ll take my chances.

I’d rather wrestle the unknown than drown in the slow, numbing surrender of the soul that passes for work in most people’s lives.

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