How do you know where you began your life? Not where your heart started beating, not where you began breathing, but when your mind began to absorb the experiences around it. When you really began to interact with the world around you. Simply breathing or having a pulse is not life. People stuck in a routine don't feel alive, there is no exhilaration there. There's no enjoyment.

I can't tell you when I started living, I don't think I ever have. I am that person stuck in the same routine, doing the same things every day, barely getting by.

Working my ass off but not doing enough, not getting the right amount of sleep but not having enough time in the day, always having just the right dollar for the bills, but not much beyond that.

I live my life the way most people do. Wishing for the next day, and I hate it. I despise it, always have, and dare I say, always will. I need change, I need to be able to breath within my environment, need to be able to experience the world around me, instead of being mind numbingly bored all the time.

But that's what consumerism is here to fill, isn't it? Our media, our entertainment, our shows and music and movies and adrenaline chasing activities.

It's either lose your fucking mind doing nothing, or do what you can to keep yourself going, keep your mind active, don't get lost in that dark place, keep going keep going keep going one more day it'll get better tomorrow, but it never does, it never will, but you keep lying to yourself maybe one day it will get better please God make it get better-

And so I keep wishing. Just like everyone else in my place, in your place, in their place.

So, like I said, I consume media. I'm a consumer. Within that consuming attitude lies my favorite TV shows, between Doctor Who (ever since I was a small child), Merlin, Supernatural, and so on, so many more, but the running theme is the same. It's all magic, adventure, change. It's how we stay complacent. We watch others have the adventures for us, for forty-five minutes a day, and then go back to the same old routines. The same old job and same old people and same old schedule.

I pop in my earbuds, hoping this time the music will take me away from the boringness. I imagine a world not filled with hate and war but filled with new people and experiences. The same playlist as always begins to play, upbeat emo songs that either haven't aged well or are still classics- it's up for debate.

My room is disgusting, clothes litter the floor. Books are piled high to the edge of my desk. Clutter fills my tabletops. So I clean, hoping a clean room will help me focus on my school assignments due tomorrow before I have to go to work later tonight.

I stop short when my earbuds crackle.

"Are you fucking kidding me, I didn't pay a whole goddamn paycheck for you to shit out on me like that", I say under my breath as I fiddle with the case. "Fucking seamless Bluetooth connection my ass."

I take a step back without meaning to, and trip over a shirt. I fling my hand out to catch myself on the bed, and could have sworn I touched it, but my hand went right through. I landed on the floor with a hard thump.

How the hell did my hand go through my bed? Am I going crazy?

I hurry to get up and check my mattress; I hesitantly press the edge. It's solid. Solid as foam will ever be.

"I'm hallucinating, that's it, I finally went insane. Nice one, Sage. Fuck me, man." I shake my head. I might finally be losing it.

Instead of letting it get to my head, I figure, hey, maybe it's just that I'm tired. I keep cleaning, do a load of laundry, finish up the rest of my tasks, and work on my homework. Four hours later, I see it's time to go to work, so I do.

On go my uniform, shoes, hat. I grab my keys and phone and I'm out the door. Ready for another shift at a dead end minimum wage job, making just enough to pay for my shit studio apartment in the shit part of town. Lots of things are shitty now.

Finally over (my shift never lets off soon enough), I go home, rushing to get to bed. I'm exhausted. I just want to sleep away some of this stress. I shower, change, put away some more things, and finally settle in for bed. I put an episode of The Office to play me to sleep, and finally close my eyes, hoping sleep will overtake me soon.

Within minutes, I'm out and snoring loud enough to warrant a noise complaint from my neighbors.