Sky King

  Recently a man my age stole an airliner from Sea-Tac airport, performing a loop-de-loop and other stunts before crashing on an island and killing himself. In his conversations with air traffic controllers he remained calm and seemed he was just tired of life.

  It's a feeling I've become familiar with since gaining full-time employment. People say you have more freedom as an adult but I've found I have less freedom as I became an adult in both the physical sense and the emotional sense. Prior to December 2014 I had a rather active life: I'd run and lift weights on the regular, I'd frequently go hiking at a nearby state park, I'd go to movies sporadically. Then I got a part-time job and the hikes went away. A couple years elapsed until December 2016 when I got a full-time job in addition to the part-time job. It was Hell. In 2017 there was never a week without mandatory overtime. I quit seeing movies because I never had the time and I quit working out because my body couldn't hold up. It got so bad there were a few weekends where I didn't sleep for over 36 hours. Eventually, the same month I started this blog, I quit my part-time job. The overtime only got worse. It peaked a 66 hours one week, but it regularly fluctuated between 50 and 60 hours for the rest of the year.

  A curious thing happened in 2018; I didn't work any overtime from January 1st to July 1st. I was able to start exercising semi-regularly again. I was (somewhat) happy again. But then the 50-hour week hit on the 4th of July with a vengeance. Now 50 hours look to be the norm for the foreseeable future. The only real joy I've had recently is adding piecemeal to a fictional story I've been working on for years. But on Friday I found something I've been missing for two decades: a kindred spirit.