Running up that hill (with a boulder)

Short Story Sunday #6: A Sisyphean effort

Welcome to Short Story Sunday! This is an extension of The Ryry Rundown and you can expect one thing: a short story and an explainer as to what inspired it. I write on a variety of themes and ideas, so I don’t think you’ll ever get bored. I always love getting your thoughts and feedback on my work, so please do comment; I read everything people send me.

A side note: if you just want The Ryry Rundown on Tuesdays, you can unsubscribe from each individual section (like Short Story Sundays) and still get my week in review; you won’t hurt my feelings, so go ahead, customize your heart away! :)

It’s great to have you here and I hope your upcoming week is a great one!

PS: I’ve decided to reduce this segment to every other week instead of every week. It’s been fun writing so much fiction, but I’m coming to realize that’s a great way to burn out quickly on something I love doing and that I was a little overzealous for trying in the first place. I hope you enjoy this week’s post and we’ll see you again in two weeks!
PPS: I’ll still be writing my rundown and Rhythm & Reads every week, so check those out in the meantime!

Now let’s get into it…

Today’s Story: Sisyphus

(Credit: Schäferle on Pixabay)

I sit staring at this screen
light bouncing off my
glazed donut eyes topped
with bloodshot sprinkles
for extra texture

I’m thinking I’m
the modern-day Sisyphus
waking from my cave
to click click click away
on a beat-up computer mouse

only to go home and repeat
yesterday tomorrow

I’m stuck on this cliff
of these false freewill blues;
same clicking, different office
same typing, different letters

I stand from my cubicle chair
a useless meerkat overlooking
this ledge

looking for dreams shown 
missing on the backs of
milk cartons

going only off fingerprints
left by a world’s 
disfigured fingertips

making a guesstimated answer
in this life-or-death version of
The Price Is Right

but five arrives to announce 
quitting time
so, I sigh, packing my things

only to go home and repeat
yesterday tomorrow

Today’s Inspiration: Office Jobs

You may be noticing that today’s “story” is actually a poem, and that’s because I think poems are still a story of sorts, just told in a slightly different way.

I haven’t been in a big creative writing mood the past week, so I decided to pick something old. Written back in 2019, this poem came about from working a very dull office job. I worked on cleaning up call lists and then calling people as a recruitment coordinator. The big problem is that my heart was to be found nowhere in this position, resulting in every day feeling the same.

I tried to keep things fresh outside of work by doing things like photography and getting to know Waukesha, the city I was living in at the time, but once the novelty of those things wore off I felt gray. bleh. stagnant. fed up.

But there was nowhere else for me to go and instead I festered for a while before the job ultimately laid me off – a blessing in disguise.

I read the other day that Dan Erickson, creator of the show Severance, once worked an office job so monotonous that he constantly asked himself: “What if I could skip the eight hours of the workday, to disassociate and just get it over with?”
It was a major influence on the plot of the show – one I won’t spoil but will recommend you watch if you’re into thrillers/sci-fi.

I can relate hard with Erickson, and found each day to be the same as the last.

It was kind of a depressing time of my life and it didn’t help that the job didn’t pay that great either, but hey, at least I got a poem out of it!

Worked a job that had you feeling like this? Let me know in the comments!

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• Tara Y