"Patent Pending", Part 4

John was speeding down the freeway on his way home. His heart was beating and a bead of sweat was snaking its way down his temple.

Five years ago, he never would have imagined that he would be in this situation. Having graduated from a small but respectable college with a degree in Business Management, he had left the institution with a mixed sense of apprehension and excitement. He was ready to get out into the workforce and become the next Bill Gates. After a month of holding out for that one great job, he slowly began to lower his expectations, mostly out of necessity because his money was growing very thin and he had a mountain of debt from his student loans. He took up a job at a small business as a salesman selling bathtubs, toilet seats, and various other home furnishings. He hated it, but he told himself that it was just temporary. It was just until he had enough start-up capital to form his own business. After a while, he started to learn that any business owner was never going to succeed unless they branched out and took the field in a whole new direction. The greatest success stories were always of those who took an existing product and added a small but useful gizmo. Invention wasn’t a matter of breathing life into dust or telling the waters to become still. Instead, it was much more like duct-taping two cans of beer with straws to the side of your ballcap.

After six months of selling porcelain thrones to young newlyweds, he knew that he needed to get out. A fellow Business Graduate, David Scharfe had been his best friend in college. The two of them had spend many nights in the basement of the Economics building playing Frisbee in the halls and having roller chair derby while procrastinating for their upcoming finals. He and David were always competing to get better grades. David would always beat John by a fraction of a percentage which would frustrate John to no end. After college, while John was busy selling shitters, David had taken up a job with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. After his stint with home furnishings, the two of them had met over drinks and seeing that his friend was in a rut, Dave offered to put in a good word with his manager. John was hired in 2 weeks.

When John started at his new job, he was giddy at the chance to be working in what he considered the hub of creativity in America. Dave and John worked in the same building, only two cubicles away from each other. They would get lunch together at a small taco stand called “Dos Tacos”. Everything was great at first. John was filled with ambition once again, and had great plans of moving up in the company and gaining the experience that he would need to start his own business, selling some incredible new knickknack that would take the world by storm. A year came and went, and John and Dave were both up for review for a position as acting department manager. The previous manager had slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and fractured his third vertebrae on the side of the tub, dying almost instantly. John had pondered at the time that perhaps it was his retirement from selling bathroom fixtures that had led to this fortunate-unfortunate opportunity. Perhaps if he had sold his late manager a Royal shower unit, model BRS-602, he would have been content in the knowledge that he had saved a man’s life.

The day of their review came, and both workers proved to be exceptional, becoming the sole two officers to make it to the final round of selection. In the end, however, Dave ended up taking the position because he had been with the company 6 months longer than John.

John was once again reminded of how it seemed to be his fate to always be one inch behind someone else in the 100-mile race of life. John fell into a depression, and lost interest in his work. The hundreds of applications that came through the office were only daily reminders mocking him of how someone else was making it big with their ideas, and forging ahead in the competition for resources. In the grand scheme of things, John was not the intellectual alpha male. Rather, he was the silverback who challenged the alpha male and lost when the match had come down to a split decision in overtime, now being forced to live at the edge of the group.

One day, while having coffee in his favourite coffee shop, “Arabica”, he overheard a couple at another table talking about creativity. Since his job revolved about creative individuals, he was intrigued by the young woman who was speaking at length to her boyfriend about how he should foster his creativity more. Eavesdropping on them, he was struck with the plain simplicity of it all: her key to success was simply to carry around a notebook with her wherever she went and take notes whenever an interesting idea came to her. John finished his coffee and excitedly left to find a bookstore. Once there, he found what he was looking for: a lovingly bound evergreen leather book, unlined, its snow white pages pristine and inviting. Holding it in his hands, he closed his eyes and could picture the pages dissolving from white into brilliantly scribbled ideas in black ink. Twenty years from now, he would be able to look back at this moment, retelling his story to the reporter of BusinessWeek, about how his life had changed that day. He held his future in his hands.

And so, he wrote in his journal. It became his bible and his confessional. It was his ancient alchemical tome that held the secrets to his own brain and the universe. It was his most abiding dream, bound up in 300 pages of perfection. And now, he had no idea where it was.

John’s attention was sharply yanked back to reality with the high-pitched whine of a cop car behind him. His eyes glanced at his speedometer, and he realized that he was going 100 in a 60 zone. Shit, he thought. Once again, life was telling him that he would not be on time for his expectations. He slowed down and pulled his car over to the side of the road.