Why am I miserable?

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"Man, you go through life, you try to be nice to people, you struggle to resist the urge to punch 'em in the face, and for what?"

I work for on behalf of Google. I work for an agency. Along with my colleagues, I am paid a meager salary to perform a monotonous task, eight hours a day, five days a week. We are fed, at Google's expense pacified with free food. We perform detailed data entry run in a hamster wheel for twenty three months before we are given a reference letter used napkin with, "Waz emploid for a while, cant tel u wot he did here tho, iz a sekret, shh" scrawled upon it. Google employs thousands of people in this manner all over the world. Well educated bodies, disposed of once they have completed their contract served their sentence, left with no record of their performance or their standards as an employee. Our latest instruction has been that we are not allowed to put on our coats before clock out time.

I've been working passing forty hours a week in this fashion, for over three years. In each job pointless project, my employers masters (and some colleagues) are always careful to remind me how lucky I am to have a job at all. I can't seem to find much difference between luck and misery.

I believe that the world we live in strives to control the individual and remove independent thought entirely. In history, "slavery" is a term usually reserved for those who are forced to work under poor conditions, without pay, but definitions change and evolve over time, to suit the context that they discuss. I, among many, am subordinate to the influence of the system. The system keeps coming up with new methods to remove me of my time and money. Keeping me tired. Keeping me unhappy. Keeping me pacified. Keeping me afraid.

The media spends its time reminding me of how bad everything is, how afraid I should be of terrorism and how I should continue to relinquish control of my life to the state. The words "Muslim" and "terror" have rarely been seen apart since 2001. Adolf Hitler was parry to a similar campaign in his indoctrination of the Jews a few years ago.

While I believe that the recent events in Paris were a tragedy and deserve attention, I always like to keep an eye on the announcements following events like this. It wasn't long before headlines began to report a "great fear" spreading through nations, heralding cries of, "Something must be done about the terrorists!", creating a platform for your life to be further scrutinised and infringed upon by the state.

I recently made a public announcement about my depression and a near miss with suicide. I was inundated with phone calls, texts and emails from friends and family worldwide, men and women, young and old. What I learned from the experience is that everyone is miserable. Everyone. Whether it's a nagging annoyance or attempted suicide, we are all unhappy to some degree. My depression is rooted in a complicated childhood, it is not caused by my outlined beliefs realisations. I have had a hard life. I enjoy my personal pursuits and I have little patience for the meager tasks I must perform on a daily basis.

My life, like yours, will be short. It's fair to say that many of us spend a third of our lives working. Many of those working jobs they don't like, which may or may not be important (probably not), just to pay bills. I know what you're thinking, and you're right! Sure, I could put all my time and effort into finding a job that suits me and makes me happy, but I have already found that in playing music. Unfortunately, this doesn't pay all the bills just yet and of course, it may never.

Call me a radical, a communist, a utopianist, whatever suits you.  I don't believe the sole purpose of my life is to earn enough money to pay bills, but it doesn't look like I have a choice.

"There is a war going on for your mind"

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