The Music Store Of Life

On my way home from the gym today a song came on my iPod. The song is called “Five O’ Clock World” by a group called The Vogues. I’m not sure of the exact release date of the song, but I’m guessing it comes from somewhere early in the 1960’s. I’m going to say 1962 just because it sounds like the music did before the Beatles came along. I could go look it up but I absolutely don’t feel like doing that so deal with it.

Anyway, the lyrics of the part of the song I want to talk about go like this:

“Up every morning just to keep a job
Got to fight my way through the hustling mob
Sounds of the city pounding in my brain
While another day goes down the drain

But it’s a 5’O Clock World when the whistle blows
No one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a 5’O clock me inside my clothes
Thinking that the world looks fine”

The point I am trying to make is that people have been feeling this way for at least 40-some years. Most likely a lot longer than that, but this song is the first I’ve heard about a guy hating his job and knowing his life doesn’t begin until his work is over.

How many of us feel that way? Is everyone really only working for the weekend? It makes me wonder what people would do if they could just do it. If money was no object, what would you do with yourself?

By the way, I hate that question. “If money was no object . . .” blah blah blah. Guess what? It is an object. It has always been an object. It isn’t the only object, but damn it, it’s a pretty big object. If money really weren’t an object, I can honestly say I would be writing this in a completely different time zone (at the very least) on a completely different computer while wearing completely different clothes.

Money is the object that keeps my life the way it is now. They say when you get rich your personality doesn’t change, you just become more of whatever it was you were in the first place. If you were an asshole before you got rich, you’ll just be a bigger one. If you were a really great person before, you’d just be a bigger really great person.

I can honestly say that the only thing that would change about me would be the fact that you wouldn’t be able to find me. That’s why the internet could be such a brilliant tool for me to use if I ever actually did something with myself and got rich. All I’d have to do is put up my daily bullshit blog and the bored few who actually read them could follow me along my completely uninteresting adventures to nowhere.

Let’s face it, I’ve never actually been headed anywhere in my life. People who have known me for a long time can attest to this. I always worry about the fact that I am not moving forward in my life, but the fact is, even if I am moving forward I am heading nowhere. So I’m just moving further along a tangent line into the ether.

Like the line from The Streets: “If you don’t know where you’re going then any road will take you there.” That pretty much sums up my life to this point. I’ve been blessed with gifts I don’t use, I have no “calling” in life that I know of and I end up wasting hours and hours searching for something that I have never found and probably never will.

Have you ever gone into a music store to browse while you are waiting for something else to happen (your car to get repaired, an appointment somewhere, etc.)? Then when an employee comes up to ask if you need any help you realize that you have just walked around a store for 20 minutes and not known what you were in there for? The standard response (from me at least) is, “Oh, I’m just looking. I’ll know it when I find it.”

That’s pretty much how I live my life. I’ll know it when I find it.

I just hope time doesn’t run out before I figure out which purchase to make.

On a related note, if anyone has found an extra Calling In Life somewhere, can you pass it along to me? I think I need one of those. Wow, you’d never guess my 37th birthday is in two days, would you? Holy shit I’m getting old.

B!