That grey cubicle.

A youngish man sits in a grey office cubicle. His bosses say he has potential. His bonus is enough to make the year seem worthwhile. But a year is composed of months, and months are composed of days, and days are composed of minutes, and minutes composed of seconds, and he’s been wasting every second, sitting in that grey cubicle.

He doesn’t think:

This is a slow death,

And he doesn’t think:

The slowest suicide.

Every morning he opens his email and the urgency begins, his screaming subconscious only manages a deep, depressed sigh, and the ritual commences. His sapped creativity yields in silence, a numbing schedule of meetings surrounds his corporate altar and again today, he offers his own creativity, his own volition, and bows before a corporate God.

He doesn’t think:

This is creative immolation.

A corporate God he can’t quite identify. It lives somewhere near the stock price, it takes possession of the CEO from time to time and “where two or more [board] members are gathered” there God is. It’s a hungry, jealous God, but subtle. It steals all his time, but encourages a “healthy work-life balance.” It whispers “you’re doing this for the family” in his ear, and when his best friend asks why he’s wasting his life in that grey office cubicle he hears himself say, “It’s a good job, it’s a good company, I don’t hate it, it’s for the family,” and he tries to remember when he started justifying his job to himself, and why?