Tyler Fugazzie

The morning is a rough affair when you need to commute by train, for over an hour, to spend time doing something you may like enough to not complain about 100% of the time, but not enough to be considered the thing that gets you up in the morning. What gets you up is the money. The money that keeps you fed, clothed, sheltered, and meeting the bare minimum of social acceptability. Things that feel worse to lose than the job and the tiresome commute.

Cheer up morning soldier, random ponytailed man plucked from a 90s grunge band, vacantly glaring at a point in the train carriage, an entrancing voidled entrance, or an escape from the disappointing ‘art’ of emergency instructions and criminal penalty posters. You may not have a beautiful sunrise waiting for you over the horizon, you may be stuck in the umpteenth iteration of the same non-eventful, indistinguishable day. But you are seen. You are honored for your efforts, however far from glamour they may be.

Most of us don’t know what we want. We’re supposed to. We’re supposed to have a crystal clear idea of what we want and who we want and when we want it and where we want to do it and why.

Cheer up morning soldier, for your day goes downhill from here. You will return home much later than expected and you will be swept up in the encouraged-but-not-required post-work shenanigans that you usually regret attending the moment they begin. For some reason they’re supposed to be fun but they’re also always forced. You’re in need of energy and you will get it with a coffee and a jolt when you’re reminded of how much work there is to do since you last looked and as soon as you add another to-do item to the endless garbage pile of tasks, you get a landslide more.

You will invariably get involved with projects that go nowhere, tasks you always repeat, and conversations that do both. You will laugh for some reason, not at any genuine comedy or tickling of the funny bone, but at the hapless realization that you are fated to relive this absurd, elaborate charade every single morning you step foot on this train.

I mentioned you looked like a misplaced Eddie Vedder and you might be, I hope you share some of the man’s talent but not too much, because that would be a tragic waste, to trade musical prowess for a plain white long sleeve button down and bags under your eyes and no workbag because, honestly, why the fuck would you bring a workbag when every file, every text-based manifestation of your living limbo, is located on the same device you use to keep in touch with people you love, even as that number dwindles as your task landslide overruns your schedule and for some reason people around you convince you that this is the way things are supposed to be.

Morning soldier, I don’t know what you want but I hope you get it. Or I hope you are comfortable enough in not wanting anything that you own that disposition and don’t allow the steadiness to spoil you.