matty {conman@gladstone.uoregon.edu}

I've escaped from shitty relationships. I've escaped from my father's thumb. I've sometimes escaped from the shadow of doubt. I've escaped from certain demons.

I've let too many people escape from me. Blindly.

Sometimes I wonder how comfortable it would be to stop trying to escape. But then, wouldn't that be trying to escape something else?

Remi {erd3515@umoncton.ca}

Dear Lord. Anything but that.

Alexis Massie {alex@afterdinner.com}

Where I am, there is no vision. No one wants to take risks. No one wants to be bold and daring and try something new. "We're too busy trying to do what we have right," my supreme boss told me. I wanted to tell him, "Did it ever occur to you that the reason we're not getting new business is becuase we've been doing things the same way?"

I shouldn't feel trapped. I'm too damn young to get caught in some idiot's corporate machine that'll grind me into spit and bonemeal and spew me out into the next world. I should be getting the hell out of here. I should take advantage of my mobility while I still can.

Goddammit, I can see the lock to the cage, and I have the key in my hand, but I just can't do it.

Oh, someone help me blow out of this cube while I still can dream...

Adam Rakunas {rakunas@geocities.com}

So I escaped. Told myself, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." I knew it was a risk.

And you know what?

I was right.

You can't always make a safe escape.

Owen Thomas {owen@cyborganic.net}

C.L. Shay {clshay@hotmail.com}

tomas

At 19 I was pregnant and fancied myself in love with a boy with little more ambition than a slug.

Three days after my 21st birthday, as I walked down the aisle in white silk, the strain that played in my head sounded something like, "I can always get a divorce if this doesn't work out."

The Ides of March, 1 1/2 years later, I escaped with my son - and landed back in the home of my parents.

Freedom came later in the form of Pell Grants and Student Loans and a small apartment not far from the all-girls catholic school I had once attended. And then, the ultimate freedom, I thought: Graduation. After which I spiraled downward into the remorseful debts of my frivolous college loans.

Most recently I dug myself out of increasingly demeaning employment with a pitchfork and my pride.

In two years I'll most likely be rattling the bars once more, and tieing shoelaces to my belt to reach for the jail keys. If I weren't, then where would the fun be?

Susan Paulsen {susan@ricommunity.com}

so you live a life alone and the system fails you. when your university busily grooms you for a life in marketing when you want to design computer games (heh, the course is a multimedia course) you are just so out of place. they don't know how to deal with the fact that you don't want or intend to work as yet another cog in a great bit pointless company. they talk about 'the real world' as if they know what it is.

so by all means leave the comfort zone... we need more of us out here, bolster the ranks a bit.

c

allen murray {allen@casur.org}

I escaped from caring about people who treat me badly.

Thanks to Snake Plissken, I escaped from New York and L.A. in one evening (I should have let it end with New York).

I escaped from worrying that I'll never find someone to love. I'm only 26 for God's sake! Never is a very long way off.

I escaped from a me that I really liked to turn into a me that is happy. Which is better? For the life of me, I don't know.

Jenna {jennifer.petroskey@sdrc.com}

fix the brake lights fix the front brakes tune up the truck pay the parking ticket write to DMV write to court settle old fine register the car charge the battery get the phone turned back on pay the electric pay the IRS pay child support pay childcare pay the water have ticket signed off write to the student loan people pay past due student loans finish old work start new work register kids for summer camp face the music

Is it any wonder I am happiest when I am vagabonding? Is it any wonder I frequently entertain thoughts of never coming home? Sometimes I wonder if the cost of being a cog in the machine isn't too great.

I tried to explain to someone the other day about train-hopping. Most of the time is spent waiting for trains. There are no phones, no bills, no email, no visitors, no dishes, no laundry, no work, no nothing. You quickly realize there is no point in worrying about anything beyond your most immediate needs. You have you, you have your pack, and you have all the time in the world. You drop your pack in the dirt, and you lie down beside it. You stare up at the sky and watch a cloud or two drift over. You listen for a rumble, perk your ears up, then drop yourself back into the dirt. Nothing you do or feel or think will make your train appear any sooner. All you have to do is just BE.

I'm gone, man. I'm calling in sick to work. I'm gonna hop a train and get the fuck out of dodge.

Wes Modes {modes@thespoon.com}

It's not so scary actually...it's like swimming with dolphins...so free...so magical!

Liora {elio@iafrica.com}

i have escaped from a few of my own demons. like assuming that i have a shitty job because i belong there. like assuming that i will never earn a decent salary or get out of debt. like tripping myself up because of some silly beliefs i have held.

lulu {lulu@mindspring.com}

m i c h a e l {michael@otherside.org}

There is a maniacal list of things I want to grow out of, leave, release myself from the shackles of modern society.

Bottom line is that I was forced to take a hard look in the mirror four years ago, and I despised what I saw. Crawling for acceptance, knees bleeding from all the begging. Then it began. The escape.

For me, escaping doesn't come over a short period of time. I've had to learn from the wisest people how to live again, as if I were a newborn. I've had to swallow my mammoth pride in order to move forward. These bumps in the road have only made me appreciate the fresh air even more.

I'm escaping an old way of life, stale and tarnished, sterilized. I'm trading it in for one where I can take some of that mammoth pride and use it to be happy about where I am. So what if some think I'm a loser or lazy...let me be free and I'll be too damn happy to care what they think.

Angela {earthsis@spindle.net}

But when I've escaped and settled down in whatever new place I am, I find myself yearning for escape once again. Sometimes I escape without really meaning to, like escaping from my friends. Right now I am contemplating escape once again, this time from a new country, new friends, new job. I'm older now and therefore I am hesitant about this escape, I wonder whether it will be any better there where I escape to.

Durrin {dxh@gv.dk}

Side-stepping the question of what, I ask Why?. Why does escape always mean to abandon everything? Why is it necessary to jump up and down like a crazy sinus wave, from one extreme to the other?

In short -- it isn't, but to recognize that, you have to recognize that each escape lays the foundation for the next, because it is too radical, too destructive.

A much simpler, much more boring, but ultimately much more successful alternative to escapes is iterative development, building upon the past to enhance the present and make possible the future

As a software developer, I know iterative processes by heart and the most surprising fact when learning programming was to recognize that iterative processes are in fact modelled after the real life -- which all too often doesn't employ them. Isn't that ironic?

Ingo {ingo@blank.pages.de}

i do not respect the views of anyone apart from people that i respect and trust. what people think is up to them but of no concern to me.

Gary Hunt (zill) {zill@monu.net}

bainst {bainst@etheria.com}

and it wasn't easy, there were 3 of them and only one of me...with a twisted ankle and all...no thanks to the girl's team, but I think they went to Jane's house for icecream...so how can you really blame them.

Battle Wild Thing or a double-scoop on a hot afternoon?

Hardly a contest,now, is it?

jen

In small companies I found waste, exploitation of employees who lacked any recourse, egomaniacal "entreprenuers" who complain when they hand you your check and like it when you quit (payroll decreases), self employed maverics who can't "afford" to recycle, or provide proper ventilation where it is dearly needed, it goes on. These were places that couldn't afford to give you a raise because money was too tight, but couldn't let you take a vacation because you were too valuable. Businesses that had to kiss every corporate ass they could find just to keep cash flowing. I couldn't take it any longer, so I split.

Now I find myself in a challenging, rewarding job at super-giant corporation. Now I have a 401k, a good salary, and fairly rewarding and interesting work. But as my first year as a corporate drone comes to a close, I am starting to see the tarnish on the brass. My music is suffering because I have to work late so often. I sit in front of a monitor 10 hours a day and the sun hurts my eyes when I go outside. I'm surrounded by predatory, toxic people - or people who have signed their own pacts with the corporate devil and are suffering their own turmoil. I guess I'm in the Comfort Zone. I don't know if I can stand to stay here.

b

maybe one day, i'll grow balls and become a leader. and i'll escape this dry rut that i'm wallowing in now.

gerard {mummers@phish.nether.net}

I just got fired from my job last Thursday because I made a sticker (for my sticker company) that says "MY BOSS IS A JERK".

Now I'm going to have a go at running a political sticker and t-shirt company on the web. Unamerican Activities - "Quality Rebellion at Affordable Prices" - has been my dream job for two years now. I'll be damned if it doesn't work out.

It occurs to me that beyond a certain age, we find our individual burdens to be so complicated that we simply cease to give a fuck about others. This is a nifty forum, but escaping is only half of the issue. CONNECTING is far more important side of life. It was figuring out how to connect with people in a new way that made my liberation possible.

Survive somehow.

srini {unamerican@earthlink.net}

Niel {nbornstein@plr.com}

Joel {jjjss@idt.net}

I think this is one case where confrontation is the solution. You can never really escape, for you will always be there to catch yourself in the act.

Michael Ong {mikey@tridel.net}

I often get the burning urge to just check out. Hit "The Road", and ride off into the great unknown. I'd write The Great American Novel. I'd meet people who didn't bore me. I'd stop making motions long enough to understand what was going on in the world around me.

It would all make sense.

But then, I think it through and realize that, fear aside, it's all a fantasy. I am not an island: people and pets depend on me. Life isn't an Ian Fleming novel, but it has it's perks. I remember my wilder and free-er days. They were filled with a lack of direction and a numbing lonliness.

Is the grass ever really greener on the other side? I submit it just looks like it because you haven't had to mow it, yet

Rakkasan {dziemecki@ilinks.net}

for me, the humility of learning just how fast and far I can move has brought peace and more real and heartfelt (though less dizzyingly dramatic and heightened) plans. and also, less rigid expectations of others, and less of that vague and powerful yearning to be somewhere more perfect (I now think that place is medialand, and unreachable by any sane path).

I've also found that reading what people who've made 'great' art or done other 'huge' things have to say about their own lives confirms this importance of accepting one's own scale and building with the tools at hand. then, you can enjoy the straining and the petty confusions and tiny triumphs for yourself and for those who care about your life, and let the camera roll on, as it will.

--katherine (who watches far less tv now, and draws more)

kath {kath@cyborganic.net}

I like MY comfort zone. It has taken me 25 years to get here and I am now going to enjoy the rest of my life.

The whole definition of 'comfort zone' is pleasurable to me.

I realize life will never be perfect, but the least you can do for yourself is BE comfortable while you're here.

Come visit us here in the "Comfort Zone" when you get a chance.

Nicholas {nicholas@kurzweil.com}

Cate {cate.nunez@saipan.com}

My escape is imminent - two and a half days away. I am leaving a place where rules Rule, where bean counters happily count pigeon peas, separating the green from the yellow, where Commerce is venered, Individuality sneered and Communication snubbed. It's a kingdom where I don't belong.

I would belong if The Comfort Zone was comfortable to me. Business is Booming! And if I could just fit in, the bountiful just might overflow in my direction. But I just don't like money enough to snuggle into The Comfort Zone.

I've always preferred to do things The Hard Way. I don't fall into jobs; I target a market and weasel my way in. I happen upon something I haven't learned yet and decide it would be a nice tool for my belt. So far my belt's got Spanish, Urban Planning, Newspaper Reporting and Web Design on it.

Let's just take Spanish as an example. I wanted to learn it, so I spent a few summers in a village in the Third World. Hey, the hard way is also the FUN way!

I wholeheartedly agree with Susan - I'll leap toward my next opportunity, which is shiny and glittery now and by the time it's tarnished and spotty, I'll be just about ready to leap again.

Amy {bailiwick@fuse.net}

i wish i had the courage to leave anyway.

in all these escape stories, there's one thing at the heart of them, and it's something none of us can ever escape: money.

mike {misuba@iberia.vassar.edu}

Chris Duguid {duguid@senet.com.au}

I now have been working for this new company for close to four years. I write software and support their website. I love it.

I however still have not escaped from my previous employer. The man, I'm convinced, is at least 65% leech. He saps the will from my being and leaves me with nothing from which to create a meaningful existence.

The most pathetic thing about all of this is I can't tell this jerk to f*ck off. I just can't bring myself to do it. He depends on me to keep his faltering excuse for a business alive and still refuses to accept that I am a human being. I am just a possession to him, to be controlled.

Maybe one day I will take the proverbial bull by the horns and with the support of friends and family leave him in the dust. More likely I will move to another state to escape... but forfeit friends and family to do it. Damn this sucks.

DinoNeil

DinoNeil {nheidorn@alpha.comsource.net}

When I grew up and decided that it was time to be like everyone else, I submitted to the system; having a regular job, discussing time off and 401K plans, knowing when and how to be politically correct, and keeping up with the latest sitcoms.

A couple of years later I suddenly realized what I had done; there I was, looking and sounding like everyone else, going to and coming home from work like an automaton, and declining dinner invitations on Seinfeld night!!

The other side of the fence was easy for me to navigate; I had been there before, and liked it better! I am a deeper and more creative person than anyone called "Boss" will ever understand. I can control my own destiny, and can be a more loving and giving person when I am not in the machine.

Escape! Do it for yourself and everyone around you!

Jenn {ledwick@vr-net.com}

as long as we know that we are only renting out our bodies and not selling our hearts and minds, we still have the ability to escape...

we just learn to live with our own divisions...

christopher-ian {zero1@disposable.com}

I've quit my job and am about to embark on a long and lonely drive down the Alaskan Highway towards my Seattle goal.

The open road is nice... maybe I'll stay there.

Anybody want to come along?

allen murray {workshed@alaska.net}

found some form of escape in my realization and acceptance that the world is truely increadable.

Aspen {aspen@deimos.frii.com}

Sam

I went to California at the invitation of Glenn Davis and met him and several others, including the inimitable and wholly too-darn-nice-for-words-alone Derek - all of which was duly noted at my own site so I won't re-re-rehash it here and now.

I returned home determined that I would toss all my belongings to the wind and move back West, a not-quite-so Young Man. But I had one more job interview arranged by Alexis in the Boston area. Frankly, that job was too good to pass up, so on March 1^st I started at a new job working as a Web site designer and HTML jockey making about the same money that I was - In other words, I had worked nearly ten years in a career that bored me and ended up with the same monetary rewards I received at entrance in my new chosen career.

It's been weird to be happy in my job and to actually like just about everything about it. No job is perfect, but this one comes damn close.

Without these friends who more or less took the rope of my boat and tugged me around for a while I might be still stuck where I was. Once I decided, it was amazingly easy to bid farewell to expectations and fears and fall headlong into... whatever. I am writing this from the new Dell Pentium MMX 200 and 17" monitor they bought for me to use while I listen to Ben Folds Five on my headphones. The pressure is off. The drudge has been swept clean. With the money from my profit-sharing plan of my old job, I'm thinking of buying a new car.

Whuddaya know, it worked!

Real and heartfelt thanks to everyone who cared.

And sorry about the pee pic.

Lance "The Author" Arthur {escaped@glassdog.com}

*laugh*

But seriously, it comes down to expectations. You have to know what you need to be happy. Some people need stable income, reasonable benefits, and tasks they enjoy. Others need to be the Next Bill Gates.

Both are achievable.

Alexis Massie {alex@afterdinner.com}

I jump right in, head-strong at full steam, knowing for sure that this is what I want, this is who I want. That this will fulfil my dreams.

A stable relationship, my dream job, fast cars, fast women?, ludicrous amounts of cash - I've wanted them all at some time or other, I forget when.

Then I fuck it up. I see something new, someone new on the horizon - I want that, I want them now...

Maybe I just haven't quite mastered the art of escapism... yet.

Aaron {aaron@cutey.com}

Anyway, that's what most people see

The way I see it, I escaped from Adult Day Care, where I spent my time desperatly trying to get a piece of an interesting project... to a cesspool where timeframes (and margins) are short, temper(ature)s are quick, and innovation breeds...

Am I happy? no. Was I happy? no. Will I ever be happy? i'd like to be, but not if it means turning off my brain. For who is happiest among us but the idiot or fool?

One thing that is for sure - the gods are not through with me yet.

Jim Phillips {phillips@means.net}

PS Neville {patrick_neville@yr.com}

I don't understand. When I run from things, they follow me. So why should I escape?

When I first came to college, I hell bent on being a physics major. I thought it was the way to go. Around my junior year, I started to feel trapped. Nothing like sitting down to do your work, setting out to do it, and discovering you just can't. So I switched to computer science. Yeah, I'll have to stay in school another semester, but now I have a better chance of getting where I want to go.

I didn't escape from physics. I listened to those who cared about me, faced myself, and let go of the things that didn't really matter.

After all. Why try to escape when you can just let go?

Dennis {sdc8700@siena.edu}

I have lingered in the unsure debtors circle with a job I enjoyed only to become a corporate president, kissing peoples' ass and stressing out bad!

My life has changed only in the state of confinement I find myself in. I have kicked alcoholism and drug addiction, but this thing is hard to shake. I know that hapiness is only found in one place (inside myself), yet it seems another form of demon attacks as I overcome each of my former situations.

Each time I have prevailed, I had the answer inside me all the time. Intelligence seems to be a detriment ...

yet reasoning is our natural defense.

I refuse to escape, I will not give up. I hope to find the peace in my life I have searched for my entire life.

Thank you for the space

Rob {rob@wf.net}

kevin zozula {zozula@mail.champion.org}

Today I wrote poems for those near and dear, crunched abs to John Coltraneís A Love Supreme, danced to Schubertís 5th Symphony (which he never had time to finish), right leg turning andante con moto, arms sweeping the ceiling as leaves fell, green and golden, autumn in Paris. I sat in a bistro and sipped absinthe while CÈsar Vallejo strolled past, his dignity betrayed by the hole in his pants, and I waved, and the computer remained turned off, its spreadsheet cells sad and lonely, while the ghosts of my ancestors occupied my chair and threatened all who disturbed their slumber.

Today I sat in bed plopping grapes into my mouth and read the "New Yorker" in Montgomery, and I did not pay the phone bill, I did not empty the garbage on my way out the door to buckle myself into a steel box which carried me to the office to ride the elevator to sit at my desk on time because today I took the day off.

And I ran through the dew-glazed streets at 10 in the morning, praised the sun, which blessed my face with its holiness, led a revolution, let my hair await the invention of the comb, painted to Ravelís "Valse nobels et sentimentales," picked flowers from my landlordís garden and gave them to the neighborhood bag lady, called my friends at work, today, on this day, when I took, with pay, the day off.

Darren Schulz {darrens@mindspring.com}

Darren Schulz {darrens@mindspring.com}

Insulated computer World

I escaped for seven weeks into the wonderful wide world into places I could not even speak the language--places where I stood out and was helpless--yet survived. With friends.

Now I am back, as if on a bungee tether, returning to the machine as slowly as I can because I don't want to make a decision on where I want to go yet.

I'm having a hard time making a choice on where to go.

Why doesn't this feel like freefall?

Jed {hed@cats.ucsc.eud}

Lemme explain: every single individual person I have had andy sort of nonsuperficial relationship (and by relationship I don't just mean someone I dated, like duh) with has been NUTS. Like crazy. Most of my exes have been in mental hospitals. My mom is on some sort of psychopharmocology, not just Porzac, but the freaky shit you can't pronounce. My brother has also been in the monkey house. My daddy's an alcoholic pathological liar obsessive compulsive fuckstick. And don't get me started on my pals here.

So what can I conclude from this? Either a) I am sane, they are nuts or b) they are sane, I am nuts. And both you and I, my random webpage reader, know which one is the most plausible here.

So I am nuts. Crazy. Out to fucking lunch. Forever captive in my own cute little microcosm of fruitcakiness. God save me. AH well...

Fish {abohn@lynx.dac.neu.edu}

Will it catch me, I think not. I am too quick and wiley. I zig and I zag, careful not to stumble or fall over any of the many obstacles strewn intentionally into my path to prevent such an escape.

Suddenly, I see it. The bottomless gully over which I must traverse if I am to escape the creature. I run faster, hearing the thing closing in fast.

As I approach the gully, I realize that it is wider than I first judged. In fact, it is much wider. I am unsure if I will be make the jump. But the blob is directly behind me now, I can smell it, and there is no time for second guesssing or alternate planning.

I MUST make the jump.

I run with all my might, feet slamming into the ground with a greater force than i thought humanly possible. Do or die. The creature shrieks. I close my eyes and jump...

Damon

zippi

Roy

badtz-maru {royo@ubet.com}

I also escaped a horrible relationship and regained a old one that brings me love, happiness, support, and the greatest guy ever. Thank you, Courtney for being that guy and helping me escape lonely days.

I escaped a crappy ass job at Subway. My manager was a bitch and I only got 9.5 hours of work every 2 weeks. I had big $45.00 checks coming my way.

But when I did escape, they more than doubled my check on accident. I didn't say a thing except at the bank when I said, "Cash this".

Jennifer

Mormegil {mormegil@quux.net.au}

i escaped a "promising" position as a Lead Interface Designer at an up-and-coming web design shop in order to get my brain together and spend more time painting. i supported myself as a consultant and web monkey while saving to for supplies and painting classes. i just finished a summer at Parsons in new york and i've never been happier.

i still have friends at that up-and-coming web shop. they're still killing themselves for ungrateful clients, mediocre pay, and no recognition. they just sustained a second round of layoffs. i absolutely have no idea why any of them are still there. the same excuses, i suppose: student loans, credit card debt, etc. trapped, every last one.

take that leap! come on in, the water's fine!

sharilyn {redfish@bastard.com}

Today is the first day I have never had to be anywhere at a certain time, in as long as I can remember.

I am taking a week off to walk, sleep, eat and think, before diving back in to find another job. I deserve the break, damnit.

weevil {dizzy@delirious.com}

PETER {pmatt@melbpc.org.au}

No, really. I did it. I just told my boss: "I'm quitting to go back to school." I'm leaving. I'm out of here.

I'm out of here.

Breathe.

Adam {rak@openwindow.org}

A year ago at this time, I thought I'd be head-to-head with a zillion other newly-minted Ph.Ds, battling it out for a decreasing number of prestigious academic jobs. Then I decided that I didn't want to go that way. I'm still doing what I was doing before, but quietly. I don't need to be at the top of the heap.

I feel much more free.

Cindy {dragon_fly@geocities.com}

I quit university about a year ago and started on a traineeship, which it looks as if I'm going to get to call "career". I feel that I do have the ambition of a slug.

I'm waiting for those old neon-green letters in the sky which will tell me wherefore I should extract digit from rectum.

Other than that, I earn enough to get by, have just descovered cartoon channel, and take great pleasure in occasional fits of self-pity.

This is a message from the other side. Hope springs eternal. I'll get back to you in my next life.

Cross {bluebrain@mailcity.com}

Today, I am not delivering cheese. I am going into the studio to work on my CD. Be brave.....

Words of encouragement are welcomed.

Sue {mvchix@slip.net}

I escaped from needing the approval of my parents when I left the small college town atmosphere in the South for a big city on the East Coast to sing. I left... taking the path of most resistance... The resistance? Well it was professors I respected like parents who told me to stop taking the path of l e a s t resistance... that were judging my motives and my determination... saying the big city isn't a place for a girl like me... It was most resistant because loving a married man was never ever on my life agenda and I know they'll never let me live it down that I did. But I didn't only leave for the man I loved at the time... I left because I needed to be out and to be me and for my life to be about what I wanted to do and not about what others wanted for me.

It was a mistake (loving the man that I did) but leaving? --it was the best decision I had ever made because it was all mine and I owned the consequences of both decisions, I was ready to own the success or failure of whatever happened. So I failed at remaining innocent, naive and young... but I have had so many more successes since then... I have grown... thankfully, I have grown.

Louise {tamra.spencer@mail.tju.edu}

Gabriel {arcangel@zoz.org}

Sounds like fun.

Let me know if I can sleep in your garage.

Dave {me@halfwaytonowhere.com}

profession to another (stock trader-->website/multimedia developer). After much thought as

to whether I simply lacked the something needed to stay in one place/profession more than a few years, I know realize this: Change Is Healthy. Don't be fooled otherwise. Strange that I had to find this out in Japan. Or perhaps most appropriate, since this is perhaps the 'Land of the Comfort Zone', if ever one existed.

george b {george@pdic.co.jp}

I escaped the Mormons.

I escaped the TV-gingle-like lyrics of the song drilled into me head as a child, "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam."

I escaped testimony meetings, family home evening, serving a mission, the priesthood, sacrament, seminary, endowments, creationism, virginity, garments, prayer, the boy scouts, strip-malls and the conscious willful supression of individualuality and critical thinking.

I took my identity back from those who told me who to be.

I took my life back from those who planned a cookie-cutter future for me without my permission.

I took my body back from those who taught me it was dirty.

I took my lust back from those who taught me it was wrong.

I stand defiant. *I* define me and no one else. Fuck them all.

Fuck my Bishop, teachers, parents, peers. And most of all. Fuck Jesus. I'm tired of hearing about him.

Dale Sorenson

Tim Hopkins {t.hopkins@netaccess.co.nz}

I escpaed a city. Dayton, OH. Thankfully I did not grow up in the gem city (still am not sure why it's called such).

Strangled suburban villages refusing to ackowledge each other and work together.

Left a lot of nasty habits with said city. Every escape leaves memories. props, masks and toys that made you realize you had to leave.

It only took 5 or 6 years.

And I still catch myself fondly reminiscing?

Have I really escaped?

kevin {kevin_d1@hotmail.com}

I grew up in a town of 400 people. no that's not a typo. my graduating class was 2. i escaped there into the comfort zones of corporate america. it always seems you leave one vice to inherit another. i suppose i will see where this vice takes me.

spun {spun@internetunderground.com}

I have also escaped from a bar fight by crawling on my hands and knees to escape the brawling skinheads. (poo)

tray {twindad@geocities}

I'm a web monkey who owns and operates her own Internet marketing firm. Let me tell you this: entrpreneuriship SUX!!!!

If you like cush, sleep and sunlight let someone else pay your way.

My clients are unappreciative and demanding yet I go the extra mile for them every goddamn day so that Peoples Gas won't flip the off switch and leave me without heat for the winter.

I lug home a Macintosh 4400 EVERYNIGHT so that I can crank out mindless marketing drivel and brochureware.

However, I'll tell you what I have escaped from: FREEDOM

no life to speak of... {loser@nolife.com}

This week I found out that the company I used to work for was shut down by the FTC and IRS, and that my ex-bosses are going to court on fraud charges. They had their huge homes and fancy cars seized.

I'd call that a positive escape.

Gregg Hartling {ghartling@venu.com}

As of late, I have found myself in a sort of waking stupor... Wake up. Commute to work. 10:30 meeting. Work till 4:00. Commute home. Do housework. Go to Bed. Repeat.

When did I lose my lust for life? Was I destined to live in monotany? Why did I let myself become all the things I felt contempt for, the drones, the zombies, the lemmings of life.

What happened to the shining, golden boy who would be king. What happened to the future world traveller?

Did I assasinate my childhood dreams for the cold comfort of a reugular, steady paycheck?

I don't like me anymore. I have answered the siren call of being practical and realistic.

Dave Stewart {dstewart@microfibres.com}

I don't escape. I hide. I pull the blanket over my head when the monsters crawl out from under my bed at nite. Nothing goes away really.

I fide that I trick myself into believing a lot of things. I can go on for days at a time telling myself that everything's alright and I don't need anything. I guess maybe it's better that way.

It's really easy to die inside. It's easy to cry and to break down. It's not hard for me anymore to just 'forget' things.

I tend to drag things on for long periods of time. I can go without sleep for a few days. I can go without talking for weeks at a time. And I can go without life or hints of living beings for a long long time.

I don't have to escape anymore. I can be comfortably numb. I can live with that.

Who needs to get away anyway, right?

"I'm too young to feel this old..." or so she said.

Sure.

Manda Peters {conner@sanasys.com}

Yada-Yada-Yada..The rest is timekeeping.

Chris DiBona {chrisd@svlug.org}

Ironically,the four hours of toiling to survive is the same for hunt-gathers cultures as it is for me. I kind of like that.

Derek Dujardin {dujardinda@aol.com}

...LA...

......SanFran...

..London...

.....Dublin...

........Cork...

...Galway...

Now I'm in a friends flat in Wiesbaden, using a German version of Netscape...

I expected everything to be "different"

Jesus...I'm 10,700 miles from home and I still feel like I did back there...

I'm trying to escape my father's death...

I'm trying to escape my love who betrayed me...she who thinks secrets are needed...she who can get furious when one of my friends starts playing "games" with me but who can't even talk about how she really feels...

I wish I could forget all that shit...

-----------------------------

I'm trying to escape needs.

-----------------------------

the need for love...

the need for direction...

the need for $$$...

the need for fear...

The worst thing now is...what do I do when I go home?

What IS home?

Everything there reminds me of her,

everything there reminds me of my fuck-ups...

fuck it...I'm going into town to talk bad german and take photos of funny german cigarette machines bolted to the fronts of apartment blocks...

Ich bin de kleine katze

matt in Europe {matthk@bigger.com}

lester {ralphlb@connect.ab.ca}

after that, the rest is easy.

Jeffrey {jeffrey@zeldman.com}

It was a very strange experience, everything I had been taught to believe and had believed for much of my life was turned on it's head. It took a few months to get used to, but I've always felt great about it. The only dampner to it is it's always a horrible thing to tell to family and friends who still believe. It upset my Mum a great deal. For me it's a very positive thing but for them it's a loss of a loved one into potential dammnation.

The other stange thing was that many of the cliched phrases that are used so often within christianity when talking about conversion to it seemed to apply most to me now as I was leaving it. Things like 'My chains were broken' 'I was set free' etc...

It's most bizarre.

However, making that final decision in favour of rationality was, I think, the best decision of my life. I've made quite a few other good decsisions before and since, but I think if I had to change all my good decisions that I've made over the last few years except one, that is the one I would keep.

Tim {EnglishTim@hotmail.com}

That is, there is no escape.

We are all locked in ourselves and can only sense others feebly - don't kid yourself otherwise.

I don't escape - don't wanna.

There is duty and then there is death. When I knew that, I escaped into bliss - ectasy.

God, you should know that by now.

Jeff Shepard {jshep@idt.net}

MB

Jeff {pajeff30@aol.com}

...we read Dostoyevsky this year, and his Underground Man explained that men like him, men of thought (or some rough equivalent) were propelled by inertia...and i'm afraid that my inertia is self-indulging and i'll look up one day and look around and be lost from my surroundings because i've been swept away...and i refuse to allow something as precious as life, and opportunity within life, to be cast away...

...reading another post, they wrote that money cannot be the only goal...and in reading "The Fountainhead" i came to a realization of a precept i well understood but never found the words to clarify...money as an end within itself is wrong and misguided, and while people are open to act as they choose (inclusive of the right to choose money as end) there cannot be fulfillment through money as an end, although money as an end can also translate into power--but power as an end is empty, too...but as i'm about to cross the threshold i know that there is nothing more important than actualization, to be achieved, for me, through writing and reading and thinking about everything--non-linear algebra, architecture, alternative rock, Microsoft--the Comfort Zone's allure waxes thin on my outer shell, and maybe this is the simple yelping of boy who has never faced a day of hardship in his life, but i close my eyes and shudder at the image of inertia, helplessly cast through life like a stone, cracking off the sides of a river bank as i bound my way to the bottom, and i clench my fists and lock my teeth in an embrace of my lip and focus--for a moment--on nothing...i take a deep breath and relax my vision...and look ahead, unafraid and ready...

Michael Schwartz {maverick@wwa.com}

That¥s it. Bye, thanx for your time.

Fernando {fernandobar@ultraviolet.org}

Sulieman II {fornah10@gbvaxa.uwgb.edu}

I don't know how i can brake my memory. Are you?

PS. I wanna eat this apple, but i don't know how.

voldie {voldie@innocent.com}

I just know that *this*, the office and the books full of statistics (Latin America: Average Incomes of the Employed Economically Active Population, by Occupational Category, 1980-1994, in multiples of the respective per capita poverty line), all this is not for me.

When E. told me how good it felt to quit, I laughed. And I guess I'm still laughing, except now it's for different reasons.

Matthew {lamacq@hotmail.com}

Stephen {tao@tinet.ie}

Much like timekeeping and insincerity, I threw it all away before I reached adolesence.

Sometimes people ask me why I can't just be normal and do what everyone else does.

That's normal?

Martha {hobbs@indigo.ie}

I'm escaping in a week and a day, on May 15.

I'm not escaping from anything in particular -- I've got no beef with my company. I just feel like I've outgrown it, and besides, I need to do something different with my life than program nine-to-five, five days a week....

I need to teach. That's what I'm good at. Everybody I've ever dealt with has told me that, and I've always known it -- it just took me a little while to remember that the most important thing is to do what you love.

I almost lost myself here in L.A. It's a great town, but it can do that to you. I've gotten soft, living at the beach for four years. I need to get off my beery butt and Do Good.

So I'm going to teach. Up in Seattle, back in the Northwest where I belong.

I haven't been able to think of much else for the last few weeks.

S. Ben Melhuish {sben@pile.org}

Paul Williams {paulwilliams@josephcharles.com}

You know The Lie I'm talking about. The Lie that has all the answers. The Lie that smooths over everything. The Lie that tells you not to worry.

The Lie that says you need a lot of stuff, and won't you pay for it with this plastic card that you'll burden yourself with. The Lie that says the only purpose in life is to go to school, get a job, work 50-70 hours a week trying to "advance" in the company, neglect your girlfriend/wife/kids, suppress desires, dreams, hopes, continually buy new crap you don't need, drink, smoke, take Prozac when the dark feeling that tells you this is all fucking wrong shows up, watch TV instead of talking to people, put effort into thinking how good commercials are, complain about the Spice Girls instead of how fucking miserable and depressed you are, breed a whole new generation of young little worker/consumers and get them started on the track, grow old, paralyzed with regret, suppressed rage, and emphysema, and die.

The Lie that tells you The Lie is the only way.

I stopped defining myself by my job.

I stopped suppressing my own needs and desires for the sake of someone who doesn't give a shit one way or the other.

I stopped hobbling myself because I thought I had to.

I escaped The Lie.

Scott {faust@tiac.net}

I think I'll take the backroad tomorrow.

DeeAnna {QuietPlume@aol.com}

I write for the Man now, but at least someone is moved to act because of what I do.

That's one helluva(n) escape.

Heath {muziq@ionet.net}

With me it was getting out of the military, moving in with a great family, losing it mentally, and moving out. Then meeting someone who told me too many lies and told me the coldest truth when she was pregnant with my child. The spiral continued. Then came the legal actions and the accusations she made to prevent me from seeing my son. Then the child support that broke me and forced me to live with my parents. It kept piling up and piling up. Losing jobs, losing self worth, losing dignity. Until finally I laid down and hoped to die.

But there was hope.

I started to realize what happened to me. I realized what my son's mother was doing and what she was. Then I realized that I needed to change. I needed to be SOMEONE for my son to look up to. I started making better decisions, started down the path toward a better goal. I took better jobs, learned what I could, networked myself into different job markets, I am still cleaning up the credit madness, and I am closing on a house soon. I am making my way toward success, to some degree. And my son looks up to me.

I still don't recognize the man in the mirror, but the real person inside is in his eyes, and that is a step in the right direction.

Pehaps it's not about "Comfort Zones" as much as it is about transcendence.

Only time will tell.

Lance Zielinski {landain@hotmail.com}

chuck sedlacek

Need I say more?

freddie b. {fbaveystock@stlukes.co.uk}

Once, I escaped from the doldrums. I walked outdoors and marveled at the glory of the broken Oak outside of my apartment in Chapel Hill. I looked up at its gnarled trunk and could only see its intense beauty of pattern that, just yesterday, seemed to be nothing short of an eyesore. I had just come down from my final and most rewarding acid trip. How is it that this tiny piece of paper blessed with man-made chemicals and stigmatized with a strict jail sentence was able to do what months of forced kindness and deep introspection was not. Who can say, but what I will add is that this escape, or shall I say awakening was sudden and intense, resulting in my return to school after years of restaurant slavery (and to this day, I always tip 25%) as well as my return to utilizing the advice to end all advice, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Fantastic was I.

But...

I think I am falling back to sleep and no matter how much I fight, no matter how many kicks and screams issue forth from my lithe frame, my eyes are closing and I cannot see as much as I used to. Escape is never permanent.

Robert Hodgin {roberth@ids.net}

I escaped the deli manager that thought a break ment not having any customers to wait on even though you still had to work. Many 8 hour shifts with little or no help went by. I'm still glad I called human resources on her fat ass. Went to part time after that and started work for a temp agency during the day. Was the best thing that happened to me. Stayed with that company for 6 years and relocated 4 times. I put in my notice the day she left for vacation. In the letter I gave to her boss I let him know what kind of a manager she really was. She didn't even know until I got back. My last day was the sunday before christmas. I wasn't the only one who left. My timing was always impecable.

The temp agency put me to work as a receptionist. The phone never rings so I surf the net all day or read a book. In my first month I read the last three paperback books of Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Each book is between 700 to 800 pages long to give you an idea. Since the first week I felt I deserved this job after having to work so hard. It's been 6 months now and I'm running out of things to do. The world web gets smaller every day.

So I've found a school in california to study computer programing. I've always wanted to learn. Yes, I want to write, act, direct, blah, blah, blah, but my ignorant world doesn't seem to allow for such pleasures right now. Why? I was never taught how to live in the real world. I need the sweet taste of experience. I need to do it alone. It's a means to an end I keep telling myself. I just hope it's not my end.

So come this friday at 5:00 I begin my last weekend in austin. Monday, I pack the U-Haul and leave my self centered roomate and his 'little' world behind. What a loser, broke every damn house rule he felt 'we needed'. I also leave the few friends behind I have made. Only one is worth keeping. I have known Sean for about 8 years (seems longer) he's the brother I never had.

A few weeks at my parents shouldn't be that bad (I hope). but after that it's whatever I can fit in my car and just me and the road and then its Texas to California.

I wait patiently now for the feeling I can imagine while I drive away. I imagine the stress lifting slowly with each passing mile, with each passing town, with each passing second. And with that I will finally be able to breath again. To not feel the pressure on my lungs anymore or the tremendous weight on my shoulders.

The escape of family.

The escape of friends.

The escape of past memories to be forgotten. Of a life not much liked. That should be released into the void of distance. That should be released in the void of time. But the good memories will always stay. Those memories that once surfaced bring a smile and don't let go. Those will always be my most cherished possessions. Those are what I will never escape from. Only escape to.

scott allan {sauvix@hotmail.com}

Now I am forced to deal with the fact that my former employer is the SysAdmin who continues to force his way into a position of power. Regardless, I am free and there's nothing he can do to change my mind. :) Ahh, I feel much betta.

Fuck youE. Blue.

Thank you for listening.

Hapless Wonder {hapless@haplesswonder.com}

E. Blue, I deeply regret any discomfort I've caused you. I sincerely hope that you can find it within yourself to forgive me for my rude, inconsiderate and unexcusable behavior.

E. Blue, I am truly sorry, and humbly ask for your forgiveness.

Additionally, I apologize to the contributors to Fray.com itself, as well as the moderators for abusing the open-forum atmosphere.

Matthew Tanner {hapless@haplesswonder.com}

First I escaped a really nasty, loveless,sick relationship. Great...For a few months.

Then I escaped way too much alcohol and lonliness. Stumbled upon the girl, and then, woman of my wildest,and I do mean wildest, dreams. Still alot of booze. How much is too much?

After a few years I escaped being single. We got married!

Escaped a shitty little hole of an apartment near the city.

Escaped being childless.

Escaped a job that was sucking the life and creativity out of me like a giant evil vaccuum cleaner.

Got a "good" job. Slacks and a tie, window office the whole deal.

My heart and soul are still slowly drained everyday I get into my little metal box and crawl to the office.

So much for my life as a musician!!!

Now I'm trying to escape this god awful American Dream shit!

I've got everything I've always wanted. A beautiful and brilliant wife, gorgeous daughter, a career in a field that has done noyhing but explode since I jumped in and yet........

I try to escape, at least in my mind, every single day.

I dont ever really get away from feeling like Harry fuckin Houdini.

And for my next great escape......

Dan

i moved away from the house of my parents, from a frustrating job being a webslave, from my hometown, where almost every little friendship was gone after friends escaped. my love living in another town.

so i left.

eight months later, i want to escape again. my job, frustrating, this city, known but unkwown, my love still far away.

only this little fray thingie keeping me in front of this monitor.

frequenz {frequenz@disinfo.net}

Shawnakova {Shawnakova1@hotmail.com}

Such is life...

Onye {tigra17@hotmail.com}

It's scary. I never thought I'd be motivated by money. But I yearn for that fresh and new "out of debt" feeling. I've always wanted things that haven't required money, it seems - the real stuff, at least. Now I want plane tickets, and car payments, and everything else.

Perhaps this is my inferno? It seems exciting now. But I know I'll have to leave the box eventually.

skrubly

Skrubly {skrubly@yahoo.com}

Lost in the confines of my own wild,

whacked, wonderous, sometimes woeful

imaganation : I kinda like it there

:)

msjamazonia {dennaulls@netscape.net}

still finding myself with a growing sense of certainty that we are all jonah on the road to a ninevah outside of the biochemical/electrical structures that taste and smell as comforting as mother.

and yes i have escaped a thousand (jobs) only to have a thousand (jobs) *(insert the noun of your choice).

miketheheadhunter {miketheheadhunter@yahoo.com}

Which is a good thing, every now and then.

But, given enough time, it turns into something you didn't ask for.

Mithra {aramaic@hotbot.com}

Jey {mcgann@spitwad.com}

I have escaped from a bank job.

Every time I escape, I am escaping

from my future. It is the way that

I build myself, build my reality.

I escape because I want to be what I

am, not what I am not.

William Payne {william.payne@stud.umist.ac.uk}

She awoke at 5:00 and was on the road at 6:00. It was truly peaceful to be on the road that early in the morning.

She was going against the flow. Put her in 5th and turned the seat heaters on opened the sunroof a little and popped

in Hejira.

"No regrets Coyote".

She mouths the words, and they felt as if they had always been there.

This was going to be a great ride and this was how this album was meant to be heard.

I drove west as the sun rose behind me. Flashing orange slivers of light off of the mirrors and across my face.

It smelled like snow but the sky was blue and brightening. I really felt calm, for the first time in days.

"It was a hexagram of the heavens, It was the strings of my guitar, oh amelia it was just a false alarm."

This was giving me too much time to think. 100 miles out and I can begin to see the rise of the Berkshires.

Glaciers melting off the sides of shorn off cliffs. Deep inside they appear to glow a phosphorescent blue thru the

morning light.

What am I going to do about this insane job? How can I have a relationship with a man 1,000 miles away?

Why don't I live out here? Quit my job, work in a factory? What am I nuts?

"We got drunk on alcohol and on love the strongest poison in medicine of all."

120 miles out Stereo so loud I can't hear myself think. Doing my best to feebly attempt to sing.

Roof all the way open, coat off 18 degrees. I don't care this feels so good. Who needs to work?

What is the point? Maybe I'll just veer off here and go to the Adirondacks.

Drive around until I find an empty cabin on a crest of a ridge and cut my own wood? ~

Sign says Albany 30 miles..... Oh well it was a good dream while it lasted.

Crowded House -Finn's voice like an angel drags me across his heart and bleeds his soul out "

.. But the cradle is soft and warm, It couldn't do me no harm"

I lean my head back, drift.

Driving is as close to flying I can feel on this earth.

I dream at night of being able to fly and as the dream fades and I drift towards consciousness

I am first riding in a car fast with the top down always fast and winding down a road,

and then it begins to shrink in size until it becomes a motorcycle and then a bicycle, and a tricycle, and then I fall to earth.

This too makes my heart ache.... like the music.

"The guilty get no sleep in the last slow hours of morning - experience is cheap I should have listened to the warning, but the cradle is soft and warm"

I am here.

I have to face people again. The class is non descript and non-enlightening. I do meet a very nice woman, we walk for awhile.

I walk around Albany while she leads and talks - it is pretty city, but sad.

Beautiful buildings that have been allowed to decay when the money had left the city, and the ugly buildings placed precariously close to the elegant.

An obvious mistake on some poor city councilman's record. Makes it all a little askew. Rich/poor; Glamorous/perfunctory.

Fleet owns this beautiful old railway station. Marble floors and columns with 50 foot ceilings of tin.

Open mezzanines with ornate ironwork balustrades. Gargoyles on the facade. And a huge globe atop a spire at its center.

What a place to hold a ball! People whisper in reverential tones in her lobby,

afraid if they speak to loud they will disturb the ghosts that race through her, rushing for their trains that have long gone past.

Hurrying to their wives and children in the suburbs. Then the money left town.

The city becomes a ghost town after 5:00 at night. All the inhabitants flee to their homes far away.

No wonder she is decaying, there is no one to enjoy her beauty at night. Every woman wants to be the bell of the ball.

I get back in my chamber and find the road home. Where's my James Taylor? I am going to be driving from Stockbridge to Boston.

"covered with snow..so was the turnpike from Stockridge to Boston though the Berkshires look dream like on account of that frosting,

with 10 miles behind me and 10,000 more to go." she sings it softly out loud to herself.

Damn can't find it. Continuity you know? Hejira goes back in... rewound....

"No regrets Coyote."

Snow squalls hit me and buffet the car from side to side as I drive back through the mountains.

Beautiful sheer drops off to the side and more glaciers; their inner blue light is now diffused with a light cap of snow.

The sky is bruised with light illuminating from behind, and the snow is fast and furious.

I know it will not last but it is truly beautiful, I cannot believe how lucky I am to not be inside today.

I wish my eyes were shutters and my mind film. I wish I could bring it home and develop it.

So that when someone looked at it, they would feel the same as I did, driving alone on that road, feeling dangerous and safe at once.

Closer to home the sun begins to come out and the squalls dwindle down to an occasional flake.

I finally see why some people feel the need to drive across country and I begin to make notes, in my head.

~ Find out details on cross-country drive, how much time can you get off work? Is this crazy?

Could you do it? Are you just being a ridiculous romantic about it or does anyone have a better reason >to< do it?

I think it would be very good for the soul. I think mine needs a little help.

"There's comfort in melancholy, when there's no need to explain"

She climbed to 85 and her mind went to autopilot. Joni broke her heart but it was okay she was flying.

"Like Icarus ascending on beautiful foolish arms, Amelia it was just a false alarm"

But she knew she would have to come back to the ground.

Jo {anais56@aol.com}

Which is where my escape begins. I'm going to L'Abri in Massachusettes for a three month term, where I will not work for three months and set up my own curriculum. I will live in a big house with several strangers and eat my meals (which I will have helped cook) at a large table with these strangers and take part in communal living. At the end of this year, I will load up my Festiva (practically a free perk from work---love those automotive benefits of working at a dealership) with everything I've not shipped for storage at my parents', and drive the dotted line to the North, where the leaves change, the stars are visible and the ability to escape and start over just seems more elusive, more appealing.

And from whence do I escape? New Orleans, with its indulgence and creatively disguised low self-esteem. Credit debt and loans that look to never be paid in full. New Orleans, one of the funnest places to visit when you don't have to stay around to clean up the mess. The SLACK capital of the fucking earth. Rid me fast, I tell the screen. But no, here is where I wait, where I rack up big bucks and rape my HMO while I still have it, tack tack tacking away on this here antiquated machine given to me by a customer for bringing his Mitsubishi back to life.

L'Abri is my initial escape, where I may again find myself. I had lost myself in all my petty circumstances where life became just the stage in which ruthless dramas ran their course. People come here to get lost, as a rule, and so I lost my soul and regained it, with a little help from people like my kind boss who have cared enough to help me get back on my feet, a place I'd yet to be until now. But what he doesn't know...is better than the truth.

Corny as it looks in print, I believe that the only place to escape to when running from the world is love. Friends, family, that one person who may still be out there who would hold my head when my head won't hold on. That is the escape that allows you to go back out there and deal with the fact that some things cannot be escaped from forever, and that life would be a lot more boring if they were.

I say, if you love your job, great. If not, see it as a way to do the things you love when you're off the clock, which in some way always requires funds.

"You there, with the paintbox. You there, with paper and pen. Me, I've got this blunt instrument. I'm gonna play on till the end."

Skin, by Vigilantes of Love

I'm not actively pursuing the high school English teaching career of my idealistic college years. Nor am I a published writer, despite my site that provides hope. But I am still seeking to escape from the hum drum and always will. I will continue to seek love and other childish fancies, because that is what keeps me going and keeps life and the world worth escaping from.

There are escapes through discipline, by going without that which the world tells you that you desperately need. There are escapes from within your mind, precious thought processes and memories that cannot be stolen or lost. There is the escape into the arms of someone who can hold the sick tyrant at bay for a night, through a movie, through portions and shades of what life you have. I am searching through all three, and even if I've yet to find them, even if I've spent my whole life simply searching, it will have been more bountiful than watching "The Real World" re-runs with pizza and beer, thinking that these people know true freedom, that I have somehow missed out.

templeton {laurauhl@mailcity.com}

There's an old Jewish story about a man who is dissatisfied with his life. He packs up, leaves his wife in the door, passes his kids in the yard, and heads out of town to seek paradise. That night, he takes off his shoes and points them in the direction he was travelling. As he sleeps, a demon comes and points his shoes in the opposite direction, back the way he came. The man wakes in the morning, puts on his shoes, and heads off. Soon he comes to a familiar looking town, towards a familiar looking house. He passes familiar kids in the yard, and approaches a familiar woman in the door. He's still there, but everyday he wonders to himself, "Is this paradise?"

Tim {tim.ereneta@eudoramail.com}

rosa

"Dew"

whew.

i could have married tim, the plumber. could have had a house in the burbs and been a weekend mommy for the two kids from his previous marriage. could have spent the rest of my life trying to figure out his mother's recipe for meatloaf.

nuff said about that.

i could have married michael, had his three kids, done his stinky foundation-laying laundry for 10 years, only to have him go Jehovah's Witness on me and have to divorce him.

that was a seriously close

one, he was very pretty.

instead, i live in san francisco, work at a catalog call center, co-habitate with a man who considers me his equal and occasionally his better, and write in my spare time.

did i escape? i think so.

cyn {flamingoleg@aol.com}

phitz

I don't.

Right now, I want nothing more than to leave this sterile, cold, sick building--to go outside in the warm sunshine and enjoy my last few months here--to accumulate some memories that I will want to have later.

Instead, I'm parked in front of a CRT under bad flourescent lighting, listening to the nitwit and his speakerphone.

Nothing's really stopping me. I suppose I could get up, walk out and never come back. But I keep hoping that the money I make today will make me freer three months from now, when my income isn't guaranteed.

I hope the tradeoff is worth it...

Tim

As a child, I dreamed of bigger and better things for my escape. If I had a crystal ball back then, I would have broken it and crawled into my daddy's lap. Now, he doesn't look at me the same and I have to pick up the peices by myself.

I'll be ok. I have my humor, a huge smile, and God. It's just so hard to start fresh when I can't forgive myself of the things I did or didn't do. The perfect girl in my mind is laughing at me and I just sit still.

Michelle {HoohaLove@collegeclub.com}

I know now what The Comfort Zone is, and I'm more than happy to have escaped it.

~*~Day~*~ {moongirli@hotmail.com}

merry part

The Pandancer

pandancer {pandancer@hotmail.com}

it has only been 3 months - but i think it will last. if not, i'll take off for romania...

chris {ghezzo@hotmail.com}

me

::::::flap....

annieanniebobannie {Atch T M L@aol.com}

In quitting my job I not only escaped boredom and unsatisfaction, but I also the security it provided.

Armando {armando@bellmas.org}

Dumped by mum and dad as a child called a lodger and endured mental at home and school torture so much I couldnt function,marriage a disaster labelled because of unemployability so i have switched off I live alone my only vice too much coffee!

who needs domestic scenes,the emotional crutch of having a partner!

so what if you got money

so what if you educated

your trapped just the same

So i'm a labelled sad loser

players only love you when your playing or something like that!

you just have too walk away

but hey no one shouts at me any more!I just keep away ,lonliness aint that bad the less you play the less you lose!less things go wrong

and ones decisions are clearer

Its all a charade anyway

Flavour of the month and spin!

A bed boots a roof a meal and peace thats enough!

shaun {barontollbooth@yahoo.co.uk}

No Moment was the same, and I could never predict when it was to happen. Most times it was very sudden, and, like it, I was suddenly out the door without a thought or glance behind me.

LuLou {LuLou@doomtart.com}

The worst was removing salt packed cod from one bin and placing it in fresh water. I was 13. After that I'd done my High School fast food joints, a stretch fixing jet engines in the Air Force, University, a series of graphic designer jobs at various levels, digital pre press and currently digital retouching.

We rarely know from the beginning what we are good at. I am quitting my 9-5 soon for a freelancing career. I'm very good at what I do now, and it isn't bragging when I say so. I have found my niche. I may not make MORE money than I am at my 9-5, but I will also have no boss. No company policies, no dress codes. I can work in my bathrobe where they send me home if I do that today.

Money does provide a comfortable lifestyle. Sooner or later a person has to decide if they like what they are doing for a living. Are you trading happiness for comfort? Is there something you are good at that can provide comfort through happiness? Are you willing to take the chance?

I can't wait.

Disco Jeezus {axis@shadokil.net}

other interests and rebellion. I sold my soul to the corporate devil.

I was smart enough and so I got better and better jobs within the corporate structure. Now I work in "high technology" *grimace* In a dungeon all day with no windows and wearing operating clothing. A dull constant throb of a career. God, I am too far gone to let go.

My dreams are only outside of work anymore. I am a corporate moron raging against the machine. I long for color and a window and peace from corporate politics. SOMETHING MORE!!!!!!!!!! But I have a home and a husband and friends and stuff!

Yes lots and lots of stuff. Stuff in every nook and cranny. Stuff Stuff here stuff stuff there, here a stuff there a stuff everywhere a stuff stuff...... Well you know the rest don't you?

Karen who barely dreams anymore

razmataz

razmataz

Heather {mytytee@msn.com}