Pulmonary Misanthropy

With every breath, the worker feels more and more pressed.

The most difficult thing about being a full time ditch digger is that the worker doesn't get much time to himself. Whilst he is digging the hole, he is constantly surrounded...both by those who labour with him and by those he is training to take up the spade after he is no longer able. Once he hangs up his spade, he must then go home to his family where the worker becomes the father. He spends his life either giving or being taken from in all of his various professions and, at times, in his darkest heart, the worker resents this.

The worker knows that the man has asked him to dig this hole and be this father. The worker also knows that the man has given him all the time he needs...most of it is squandered or taken up showing others how to dig, brace walls, move dirt, wet earth, or one of the many other things that go into digging a hole of the nature the man wants.

The worker can not help but be hit with a certain level of self-loathing when faced with his self-indulgent narcissism. He realizes that to want time to himself is selfish, but he also feels that he is owed it. Then again, the worker also realizes that writing in his journal is probably also idle time...but he is alone, and that is peaceful.

The worker seems to have drifted further from the man in the past few months. The grime and dirt have obfuscated his view. And in all truth, the worker hasn't really felt the need to fix that, and it worries him. He hasn't been in the man's office for their weekly meeting in what seems like months. There are reasons, most of them legitimate, but the worker still misses those meetings....and not being in those meetings seems to have somehow left the worker with a slightly less than focused sense of direction.

So the worker plods on....each day, suiting up, grabbing his spade, and moving earth...more so these days with a heavy heart. But there are days when the worker runs across a fellow laborer or one of his past proteges with their new, shiny spade; eager to plow into the task at hand....and they turn to the worker for advice or to thank him....and the worker, uncomfortable with the praise as he knows it is due to the man, looks up in the man's office and sees him smiling down.

The worker still wants others to want less of him, but he knows that the man doesn't. Perhaps the man and the worker need to discuss this at their next meeting....