The Rut is when you find yourself doing the same work grind day after day, year after year, when your thoughts and aspirations are elsewhere. Being Stuck in The Rut comes about when you are saddled with responsibilities - mortgage, children, etc. - that necessitate you staying in The Rut to maintain at the very least a status quo. And the motivator to keep you in The Rut is not necessarily a sense of duty as it is a sense of Fear. Fear to change jobs, fear to try something new, fear to take chances. Because you know that if you try something new and it doesn't work out, you're screwed. You may not be able to go back to the old job or to the old status quo.

To make things worse is that if you've invested enough time in The Rut - in a job for example - you hate to lose all that you've accrued: vacation, sick leave, seniority. And so you keep at it, all the while looking over you shoulder, fearing that you'll lose your job to someone younger or just from being unable to keep up with changes (which is part of being Someone Who Does Things as opposed to being a manager).

I hate it - the commute, the expectations that I'll give more than my 40 hours per week to my job to show that I'm a team player, the way managers get raises far in excess of their actual worth and participation because they mutually support each other to get the raises.

I hate it. I see 25 more years of drudgery before retirement when I can do what I want, but by then I'll be too damn old to really enjoy my free time. Assuming I live that long and have the finances to enjoy a relative amount fo freedom. And this because I didn't inherit a small fortune or have family connections to get into the right schools. It's a terrible feeling when you see that most of your life belongs to someone else. Slavery in America - modern style.

It's very tempting to buy a chunk of land, decent acreage, somewhere away and live apart from Society. I've given up on TV except for a few sports. The constant barrage of how we could live like celebrities if we just buy like celebrities makes me sick. Trends, trends, trends simply means a quicker path to poverty. Who needs it? I make sure to tell my kids that if they want trendy clothes then they can help pay for it. And for them it quickly becomes a matter of priorities: trendy clothes or a videogame.

But how to break out fo the rut... Start my own business? I've tried it but not many companies want to outsource their data analysis and computer techies are a dime-a-dozen. Two main skills down. I tried screenwriting but in LA everyone has a screenplay. Pimp my kids into showbiz? As cute as they are, it's not worth the effort if they're not truly interested and committed (and they aren't).

So I blog, I bitch, I complain, and play the stupid Lottery. Maybe someday...