what do you want?

i met someone in a bar a few weeks ago and told her i'm going to work at amazon. it was small talk. usually when i tell a stranger i'm into computers it's with an almost apologetic air. we were at a table of artists and a small indian physicist with a mullet. he was trying to convince them that students aren't very poor. i was shamed by his ignorance and was probably unusually quick with the apology. so quick that it caught the girl off guard. and i got to hear the question usually considered outside the scope of an engineer's imagination: "what do you really want to do?" my past responses have been negative. i want to escape the rat race. not work with computers anymore. everyone knows a self-loathing engineer. he realizes he's whoring his time and mind away but isn't brave enough to break away from his cash cow.

this time i had an answer. i want to write.