Always in Search of Wonderland

Life isn't magic—or that's what they want you to believe. Every single moment you take for work or obligation or the daily grind is just another precious second you're giving in exchange for a life that may not mean much at all by its end.

Work, work, work and make that money, money, money. Gotta pay that rent and mortgage, gotta chip away at that student loan debt, gotta feed the kids and the dog and save up the leftover pennies for retirement (since you keep hearing social security is on its way out when the next generation needs it).

I hear that call too. I have cats to feed and debt to pay off and medication to buy. Every single knock on the door of opportunity falls unanswered. I'm standing at a precipice of my own making and wondering why I didn't try harder. Maybe I wouldn't be facing down a monster in the mirror then.

All this lack of success—surely it's my fault for not working 80 or 120 hours a week. Why do you need a life when you can make the money that makes the world go 'round? You may not be able to take it with you on the way out, but at least you can show it off and flaunt it with the best of them. Right?

At night, I tick my worries off one by one. I worry about health insurance, about a pension I'll probably never receive, about job security in a world that is anything but secure. They try to box me in as another whiny millennial expecting the world to be presented to her on a platter. I close my eyes and think about the stain of capitalism—since that word seems to hurt more than it helps.

You need so many things in this world to be a "person": a driver's license, a diploma from an overpriced institution, the trademark of utility bills coming in your name. Oh, wonderful, we all now need to have our smartphones up to date for all the apps and targeted products you want to sell us. The social media influencers may be the only ones reaping any benefit from the whole sad system.

I count my dollars and wonder if I'd be happy if they quadrupled overnight. Would I know peace then? Would I be able to lay my head down at night and not hear the rants of all the boomers-that-be how it was so much harder back in their day?

The only relief is this: I try to dream away reality even while I'm awake. I try not to be led along by the lure of the dollar sign. I try to find the hidden magic between the moments, the Cheshire cat smile blinking in and out of being in the darkness, the knowledge that I can create even if that means nothing to anyone else.

But some days the words are so hard to find, as if I'm just trying to pluck them from the muddy pond of my brain. The koi fish there are languishing, gulping for air in a world that values them for their beauty but would fillet them if there was no other choice for sustenance.

I think often how we storytellers would probably be the most useless in an apocalypse. The tech people would try to restore the power grids, the teachers and professors would be there to lead the next generation, the tradesmen would take each emergency and turn it into something salvageable.

What would a writer do? We would come up with ideas, maybe, but ideas aren't currency in a dying world. Maybe we would calm people as we sat around a fire with tales long thought lost. But the stories wouldn't save anyone. They would just be one candle in the dark, and it's so easy to blow out such a small flame.

Entertainment as it's known now would be a thing of the past. Fandoms, conventions, book signings, movie premieres, plays and musicals, the scripts and the screenplays, the award nights for the stories of a year gone past—all of those things could die out with little more than a pinprick to a floating balloon.

Even so, knowing these things comes with it a sense of acceptance. The platform that is today hosting my writing may not exist a year from now. There's no one clamoring for any "from the mind of Jillian Spiridon" work. I'll probably make a few cents on this piece I'm writing right now, and then it too will disappear in a stream of other writers crying out for attention and meaning.

Yet...still I'm here, typing and trying to find my meaning somewhere. I keep hoping I'll open a door in my mind and realize with astonishment that my answer has been buried deep inside. But maybe there are no revelations. Maybe it really is just me, a computer, a notebook, and these dreams that are trying to outgrow me.

Wonderland is out there—but perhaps it's not so spectacular and kooky and utterly devoid of logic. I keep walking, keep my hands moving, keep my mind locked in its perpetual dance with all the ideas that may just end up dying with me.

But the dance is mesmerizing, the orchestra building in sound and fury, and I don't want to step away.

Being a writer may be futile in the scheme of a world that wants only returns of currency, but for now I just close my eyes and try to enjoy what little I can while the words still come.