A Content Writer's Existential Crisis During LockDown
It’s 5 O'clock in the morning. I finished my content writing task quite early. Yet here I am in my room, watching girls - those Instagram Reels and… ofcourse, Porn!
I haven’t gone outside the home for more than 15 days. And, I’ve become quite accustomed to this! It seems there isn’t anything outside there for me. The lockdown has been extended by another 15 days. Deep down, perhaps I am relieved - I don’t have to face the outside world.. The walls of my home have become my world. And those pixels on my smartphone - Are the people real whom I see on my phone screen? Or, are they all programmed to interact with me? Is Narendra Modi real? Is the news real news? Or are they just elaborate stories that the machine created inside the Matrix?
Are the articles that I’m writing actually helping anyone? Or, are they coming just to keep me within the confines of a routine. After all, a sense of purpose keeps a human being in control.
Neo Anderson was upset when he realized that the world was not real. I will be quite happy. To hell with the world getting hijacked by machines. Isn’t the world already Lord Vishnu’s dream? If this is not reality - I can be anything I wish. Yet, I can’t learn to code. Tried it. Too difficult for me. I’m struggling to get leaner. Perhaps these flaws prove that the world is really… real!
But then again, a story that has no conflicts and ups and downs becomes boring. Perhaps the world - the unreal world - where only I live - and the others are just projections - is full of flaws to create these ups and downs.
Or perhaps, the world is real - I am not real. My story is not real. My career is almost perfect. At my home, my family seldom fights. I got my mother’s love. Two girls on Facebook gave their phone numbers to me… Why is everything so positive. Lakhs and lakhs of people have died of the second wave of Covid-19. Why haven’t I died? Can an imaginary person die?
But then, who the hell is imagining me? And why the hell is he allowing me to think of these existential questions? I am thinking - Am I therefore?
…Meanwhile, the sun has risen up. Or perhaps somebody up above - like the director of The Truman Show - has just shouted - “Cue the sun.”
Hmmm…. So the world can be unreal. I, myself, can be a programmer’s figment of imagination. But to me, this world is real. At least “they” want me to think that this world is real. And to my world - to every person in it - I am real. So who the hell cares. This is as real as it can be…
Once again, I place my hands on my keyboard. This unreal ME starts writing an unreal article for an unreal client to earn some unreal money to get some unreal happiness….