Ultimate Grey

I was just a kid. We kinda got trapped in this little town after my Dad left. I was tired of being poor, tired of not having the clothes all the other kids had.

I was 17 when I started working. I started at this factory that made brake pads. Every morning I stood in a lineup of 300 men. One by one slow march to the punch clock. The smell of hot steel and metal shavings. Sparks from the arc welder machines.

I will never forget the smell of that place. It looked worse than Folsom prison. Hardened miserable faces. Grey. Ultimate grey.

I forget my employee number, must have been 10,000 and something. 12 hour shifts on your feet so long you chew gum just to quiet the screaming in your head. You stand on a line putting brake pads on a belt. 1,2,3,4 then 1,2,3,4 then 1,2,3,4 paint mask on your face, couldn’t stop the asbestos from getting in.

You start coughing up blood in the sink. Only 9 hours left to go. It was so hot, we had a fan but it was for the machine, they really didn’t give a fuck about the people on the machine.

When the line broke down and the boss was busy I talked to the guy across from me. He was a computer programmer. Nice guy. Never really asked how he ended up here. The new guy started the other day. He was 56. He just got out of jail, 20 years in. Tear drop tattoo on his face back in a time when that meant something.

It hits you one day. Next to me is a computer programmer and behind me is a convicted murderer. I’m a kid and we are all here. It doesn’t matter what I do in life. I’m going to be here. Your dreams, your aspirations and your life doesn’t matter.

When you grow up with nothing you form a lack mentality. Never really reaching for anything far. You are happy to have something or anything to call your own. You settle for being treated badly. You make money and you spend it as quickly as you earn it because your mind tells you it’s not yours.

You find love, or something like it and you feel somehow not good enough. Never good enough. Everyone else is doing great and my life is just bad.

Shut the fuck up and drink. Like the rest of us. You ain’t special. So many people listen to The Wall by Pink Floyd and identify with it. All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.

Now...

That mentality is your downfall.

You got a dream. You do it. I don’t care if you gotta work 18 hours a day and take care of your kids after. If you have even 30 min a day to connect with what you want to do...do it.

I have watched people build their dream over the course of 9 years. Buying little things to build a business and storing them in their basement. Day by day and piece by piece until the time came to spread their wings and fly.

You are dying.

Some of you are already dead.

Living in a purgatory of Netflix and PlayStation.

Get up, go look in the mirror and tell yourself. Nah man, I ain’t gonna die like this. You keep saying it until you fucking believe it.

For the people that are inspired by this....

Go..

Your life starts now.

Patrick Ackroyd 

2023