This morning's story, read on my futon couch while gloomy rain fell outside, was "My Summer Vacation."
After the first few pages, I thought I knew how it would end.
I was wrong.
And writing that, just now, makes me realize I've effectively stifled this whole blog. If I tell you what I thought would happen but didn't, you'll know what did. And that ruins much of the story.
Let me see if I can avoid a spoiler and still discuss what I like about "My Summer Vacation"...
Paul has a pointless job. Every task he's assigned is identical to the task he's just completed - only the tasks' names change. He wonders about his purpose and, I think, laments his inability to fully identify with the main character in the movie Falling Down, who goes on a psychotic rampage after he's let go from his job when his skill isn't needed, anymore.
Paul will always be needed, and that might be what has him feeling so conflicted: he's necessary, but to what end? He's an unnecessary necessity. He, unlike the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down, will likely never get that forceful shove to change his life. (Granted, the Douglas character's position isn't very enviable, but he at least is kicked into some kind of forward motion.)
Lucrative stock options afford Paul the opportunity to take a vacation from his 16 hour/day job, and when he leaves, he's undecided about whether he'll return.
It's disturbingly easy to sympathize with Paul. How many of us are trapped in our lives by little more than inertia and a sense of duty and/or responsibility? How many of us look at the paper's want ads and think, "I could do that. Oh, and that! Hey, that looks like fun!" before throwing the paper away and going back to what we did yesterday and the day before and the month before that? Even if we don't enjoy it.
"I've been on those death marches before," Paul thinks in reference to a work project. A computer programmer, Paul is responsible for helping his company exceed the capabilities of other computer companies' programs.
The real death march, however, is the one Paul finds himself stepping to every time he enters his office building. We're born, we get old, and then we die.
"My Summer Vacation" has us wondering if maybe there isn't more to it than that and reminds us that we should, at the very least, consider it.
Winter of Different Directions by Steven J. McDermott
$15.95
Click cover to purchase from Amazon.com.
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