(Untitled) Part 1 of a short story I began writing

It’s amazing ones level of persistence when it comes to particular circumstances. Maybe if I had tried a lot harder back in school, I wouldn’t be the struggling non achiever I turned out to be, bouncing from job to job in pursuit of something that can quench my insatiable desire for consistency in my life. If only someone had enlightened me back in the days, when I used to recite the numerous accomplishments I expected for myself by the age of 25, only to be 26 and nowhere close to those dreams and pursuits. Instead I jump from opportunity to opportunity hoping that one day I will stumble upon something that resembles the faintest idea of what I had hoped my life would ultimately become.

My latest pursuit, though the most suitable at the time, was a hotel job I landed earlier in the year. It was a far cry from the earlier turmoil of working back to back 18 hour days under the slave whip. You see in the beginning, I had become a dummy to the golden rule of business agreements… “read the fine print”… and was made to suffer as all the other imbeciles before me did, having failed to follow that rule. The sad thing about learned helplessness is that, it sometimes takes a wild jolt for you to realize the hole you have dug yourself in. Soon days turn to years and before you know it, you’re in the same position you swore you would overcome at your last New Years resolution. Well eventually you wake up to your senses and step out of the tunnel, and I felt my latest endeavor was the closest sign of a struggling rodent burrowing further out of the rabbit hole he’d grown to be so comfortable in.

The hours were different and the commitments were not as demanding. I found I created my own time table, and could even dictate the pace at which I had to move. I had come a long way from feeling like a puppet, but still some way off from living like a member of the Royal family.

Even though most of my domestic requirements were met: room, food, clothes and transportation, I couldn’t help feel that, as an individual approaching the twilight of his youthfulness, I may have been the victim of a non-existent personal life. You know the people we ridicule who spend their nights nestled in the latest self help manuscript, or hero impaled cover novel. Who could recite all the seasons of Law and Order or CSI (a magnificent feat I might add considering the mere number of episodes that now exist). The Soap Opera and Grey’s Anatomy era we call them. Well I found that an almost extinct love life and an exhausted imagination coupled with a location that wouldn’t fall on your ‘top ten places to visit’ list, could force you into that very same existence.

Let me tell you a bit about the town that I was now living in. 45 minutes in either direction from the closest cities in what could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere laid this lifeless rock that I now called home. Though the coast was an insightful addition to this already barren wasteland, it still couldn’t make up for the meager display of nomadic settlement and storybook country folk. Where there wasn’t another tree or shack there was a half eaten structure that I would later discover was a mini-mart, barber shop and (what I’m yet to verify) a police station. The people of this ‘boxed in’ culture may have recognized too earlier what I was just now discovering, and for the last too many years, only saw it fit to add a number of pubs and titty bars in the most random of locations. No wonder when the deep pocket suits of the new world saw it fit to build a hotel here, the town folk cringed at the idea. And now sat this ‘diamond in the rough’, the crown jewel of the West; a structure with it’s gargantuan walls and blinding lights. The town folk would say that at night it lit up the surrounding area for miles and miles.

What was first a quiet existence turned into a highway for overseas visitors. Foreigners were trafficked into the town like a swarm of bees returning to their hive before sun down. Even in what hotel management described as ‘low season’, the reservations department still experienced a barrage of bookings. Requests would come in by the thousands; bookings were made by the second and guests were channeled in and out of the hotel so regularly it was impossible to tell where one newcomer started and where the returnees ended.

The over-activity called for ‘more hands on deck’, and soon the hotel was sending to the closest cities for new employees. I still remember the day I got the job. I walked into the office, resume in hand, and within the next 15 minutes I was signing away at documents that were welcoming me to where I would be devoting my time for the next couple of months. It wasn’t a problem that I would be so far away from home as I had no outstanding commitments where I was coming from. I had just gotten out of a two year relationship, and was looking to revamp and piece my life back together.