It's Like I Just Put My Brain in a Locker

I recently finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It was a good read, and 600 pages felt like nothing because Murakami is nothing short of entrancing when he writes. It takes no effort to do the reading, but his books will really make you think as you try to figure out what the heck is going on.

I came across this passage that I feel sums up my frustrations at certain points in my life. I don't feel this way currently, but I'm recording this so that in the future I will have Murakami's much more eloquent words to describe my feelings:

Lately, it's really been bothering me that, I don't know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange? I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And because I'm so tired from work, the "free time" I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don't have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don't have to work on weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning I've let go, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out.

I'm not so burned out right now that I feel this way, but I know I have those days when school and work have been less than intellectually stimulating and I feel like I'm caught up in this cycle, so I'm saving May Kasahara's words for those days.