The 9-5 Coffin: How to Spot the Living Dead and Never Become One

Read This Before You Become the Guy in the Cubicle Next to You

Pirates Only, The only thing sweeter than her is the freedom I stole back from 9-5 corporate America.

LOOK AROUND (AND WAKE THE FUCK UP)

It’s 7:03 a.m. and my hands are still wet. I’m sitting on my board, right at the water’s edge where the waves nibble my ankles, sunlight crashing against the horizon in shades of gold that would bankrupt Van Gogh if he tried to paint it. My girl is behind me on the sand, pouring red syrup into a Corona for me her own invention, a sunrise drink for a sunrise man. She laughs, tells me I’ll ruin the buzz if I paddle out before I finish, and the sound alone makes me wonder how anyone survives a life without this kind of chaos.

I’m typing with wet fingers, salt drying on my arms, heartbeat full of mezcal and myth. I’m alive.not “practicing mindfulness” alive but dangerous, defiant, what will he d -next alive. And it’s only because I got the fuck away from the living dead parade you call a job.

I want you to see it, no, I want you to feel it.

So I want you to do something right now, before you scroll on, before you lose your nerve or let the next dopamine notification sedate your edge again.

Stop whatever you’re pretending to do at that job you swear is “just temporary.” Put down your microwaved “breakfast bowl,” take off your lanyard, and look around.

Not with that quick, apologetic side eye you give your coworkers when you’re making a bathroom run. I mean really fucking see the people you’re sharing your oxygen with.

CUBICLE FLÂNEUR

Glance left there’s Bill.

Button down shirt puckered around a gut holding on for dear life that’s never seen a fucking gym or treadmills, staring into the void between his monitors and pretending to work. Bill’s highlight of the month? Winning a $25 Starbucks card at the all hands for “above and beyond” performance, as if his dreams can be caffeinated back to life.

On your right, there’s Karen.

Karen’s the unofficial office mom, thirty years deep, offering you advice about “getting your foot in the door” and warning you not to burn out her eyes dead as pond water. Her most rebellious act is putting two creamers in her coffee instead of one. She’ll retire the same day they finish paving her spirit over in the parking lot.

Across the way is Dave.

Dave’s been at this company since 08’. He calls every meeting a fire drill and laughs at his own dad jokes like the punchline can save him from the reality that his kids think he’s boring and his wife has fallen in love with her Jui Jitsu Instructor. Stupid bald glasses hair on the side of his head fuck.

Then there’s your boss.

Walking monument to ambition’s suicide, haunted by quarterly goals and bald before forty and a nose red enough to make Rudolph jealous, mainlining five cups of cheap coffee before lunch just to make it through a day of reading emails from other men in ties. Sitting. All. Fucking. day. He hasn’t made a real decision since your mom decided you should be born.

And let’s not forget Jan in HR.

A personality built from inspirational instagram posts and PowerPoint slides about “workplace synergy.” She’s memorized every corporate compliance video ever made and would absolutely narc on her own mother for taking an extra smoke break.

Now, take a deep breath. Scan every hunched back, every bitten lip, every forced laugh around you, every alcoholic face, every crippled by comfort body, every pale skin and dead wide eyes.

Could you live their life?

Would you trade bodies with any one of these people? Would you wake up happy in their skin, wear their faded dreams, call their wife yours, laugh at their old jokes, and choke on their carefully measured regrets?

Or would you realize just for a split, savage second that you’re on a path to become them?

Would you recognize that you’re already halfway down the same fucking conveyor belt, and the only difference is the flavor of your existential snack?

THE MOMENT I WOKE UP

I used to be there. I know the taste, the texture, the psychic fungus of 9-5 life.

My wake up wasn’t an explosion. It was a slow, sickening dawn.

One afternoon I was microwaving a frozen “bowl” in the break room, laughing at a reel on my phone, and I caught a glimpse of my own face in the metal door. Behind me, a line of coworkers, all variations on the same doughy, half dead man just older, grayer, more resigned.

And I saw my future. Not a bright flash, but a slow fade, a grayscale timeline of birthdays spent in fluorescent light, dreams traded for pay raises, wildness flattened into shit.

The worst part?

Nobody in that he’ll hole had a life I wanted. Not one.

Nobody was a role model.

Nobody could show me what a free man looked like.

Their ambitions were safe, predictable, low budget, distracted by something and always, always postponed for “someday.”

That day, I realized If I stayed, I’d become them body, mind, and spirit and boring life.

And if I left? At least I’d have a shot at being someone dangerous and undeniable, even if I crashed and burned.

OCEAN VS. OFFICE

right now I’m writing this with the sun melting my skin, my girl’s laugh louder than the city, my only “quarterly goal” to paddle out before the waves get crowded.

My breakfast is beer with red syrup, handed to me by the only woman I’d ever call in sick for.

Every moment is raw, unscripted, and a little reckless.

I look back at those office ghosts suits, ties, shoes that pinch, commutes that kill and the contrast nearly makes me dizzy. There’s no one out there at the break because everyone is racing to their job, it’s fucking nuts.

They measure their time in weekend hours

I measure mine in sunrises, sets, and the number of times I get to say “yes” to another day nobody else can touch.

WAKE UP FOR THE WALKING DEAD

If you’re still in that room look around again.

Not with envy, but with brutal, unsparing judgment.

Do you want to be anyone here?

Would you let your daughter marry a man like any of your coworkers?

Would you trust any of these people to pull you from a burning building, or would you die waiting while they scheduled a Zoom call about the safety protocols?

Do these people have a life worth reliving?

Every excuse you give for staying is just another shovelful of dirt on your potential.

Security, health insurance, the “market” it’s all a scam, a sedative for wild animals who forgot how to hunt.

Let the fear in.

Let the shame crawl up your spine when you realize you’re sleepwalking toward a life you’d never consciously choose.

And let the fury drive you to finally fucking change.

THE BEAUTY OF ESCAPE

You want to know what happens when you finally jump? When you finally quit being another background NPC in your own life?

You wake up on a beach with salt on your skin and the ocean roaring in your chest. And maybe you can meet me there.

You get a woman who wakes up early to make you a drink and laughs when you spill it.

You forget what day it is and never care about a Monday again. Days of the week don’t even register in your head, time isn’t the same anymore.

Your old coworkers will keep trading donuts and cholesterol stats. You’ll be writing your own myth with wet hands, sunburned cheeks, and a grin nobody in a cubicle will ever understand.

WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

• Look around. Study every man, every woman, every lifeless face.
  

• Ask yourself Would I trade lives with anyone here?
  

• If the answer is no get out. Walk. Run. Paddle the fuck away.
  

• Chase something wild, dangerous, and yours.
  

• Let your life scare people who love security.
  

• Refuse to become the warning sign for the next generation of sleepwalkers.
  Write your own legend, even if you do it with sand on your screen and your girl making fun of your rapid typing. I finish my drink. My girl tosses me a sarcastic salute, tells me I’m still too pale, and the sunrise bounces off the water like it’s daring me to live even louder.

Im about to paddle out. Sunlight slicing the water, salt on my tongue, and nothing behind me but the sound of my own laughter echoing off a city of zombies. Out here, the blue swallows everything the rules, the excuses, the old you. Freedom is born. But Only legends survive in open water.

So here’s your fork in the sand.

You can shrink back to your little shitty sad box, counting weekends, begging your boss for scraps of “freedom,” and watching your ambition rot in a microwave piss lunch. You can read this, nod along, and go right back to being another robot on the payroll easy to replace, impossible to remember. I’ll know you’re out there working away you bee. I’ll still be laughing.

Or you can snap.

You can break the script.

You can say fuck it let the world keep their rules and safety nets, I’m ready for the black market.

You can grab life by the throat and demand it pay you what you’re really worth.

That’s what the Money & Freedom Black Market Playbook is.

It’s the secret manual for the ones who refuse to be average.

It’s the code the outlaws run, the dangerous, forbidden playbook for anyone who’s sick of being told to “wait their turn” while their best years bleed out in beige rooms.

Most people will close this tab and slide back into the static.

But if you’re reading this and your blood’s buzzing , if you’re already tasting the air outside your cage, you’re not most people. You’re exactly who I wrote this for.

The wild ones. The exiles. The future legends.

God bless the wolves.

-Day