The Never Ending Escape of the Hardware Enthusiast
I am on a road, a road on which there is no fork, on which there is no
alternative. This road leads to a place I want to go, and comes from a place I detest. I have been journeying this road for over five years now, constantly on the run from the thing which gives never-ending chase, the thing that, as long as time still ticks and human hearts still beat, can not and will not ever be stopped, blocked or eliminated. That which I am running from is a hell, a man-made wasteland where mediocrity reigns supreme, a hell called
Mid-range.
Escaping
Mid-range is like running from your shadow. It is always there, one step behind you and you can never quite outrun it, never quite evade it. It is just
there, matching your every movement with a harmonious synchrony ever so frustrating. Occasionally you get lucky, you pull away only to find that a short moment later it’s hot on your heels again, racing at you faster than ever before, faster than you ever dared imagine.
Some fall into denial and are soon clutched in the claws of mediocrity, falling through an eternal abyss of
never-quite-there. Those who remain strong and steadfast in their goal to outrun their shadow succumb eventually to the restrictions of wealth and wives, priorities and
stuff. Nobody runs the race until their day of death. Nobody gets to become a
hero.
I am struggling to be the hero right now, standing on this road staring straight at this seemingly impregnable barrier. My restrictions have caught up with me, an ominous warning of what might be to come.
This barrier is like a bulldozer, one I am charged to operate. The irony is unbelievable;
a bulldozer a barrier? Bulldozers knock down barriers! Well this bulldozer will only be knocking down one thing: my bank account.
At first, I thought it was my account that was my barrier, my great wall of reserve, but I have come to realize that this is not the case. The case is not whether or not I
have the money, no; the case is whether or not I am prepared to
spend my own money. That is my barrier, my reserve. My reservations stem from fundamentally humanistic instincts, to protect and to hoard what is mine while fighting the urge to make somebody else provide for me. A caveman complex of sorts, I never once thought I’d be facing this kind of primitive apprehension, this kind of response embedded on a purely genetic level, a need to save and store, to stockpile for the winter.
On this road, I realize that I am no closer to a decision than I was last week, or last month, and so it seems that those restrictions, those instinctual behavioral patterns that govern my life have finally drawn the line, finally given me a choice between not getting what I want, or getting what I want and having to live with an unsatisfied guilt plaguing my conscience until that time I gratify it, by getting rid of what I want. It’s a catch-22 of awful implications and dire consequences in a lose-lose situation.
A dilemma of purely human proportions, it wreaks havoc in my mind, steals my sleep and distracts my work. However, I have not given up, no. The war is still being waged, and though it seems like the dark side is winning, we all know the good guys always prevail, and that sooner rather than later I will be back on track, demolishing my barrier of reserve into fragments and shattered shards which my
new reserve will then crush on its way to its own barrier, another time for another trial.
And hopefully, another triumph.
Original (my writing forum, my article):
http://www.fictionpost.com/forums/sh...d.php?p=200257
I hope you guys enjoyed the read. I am sure many of you will be able to relate to this on some level
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