Monday morning, early alarm because I'm going to the office. It's a 45-min train ride, 1 hour door-to-door. It's cold, dark, and dreary. The drive to the train station shouldn't be long, but apparently there's some anxious drivers out and about. I arrive with 2 minutes to spare and speed-walk to the platform; "Yes, I made it".

The train, which is of a type "Intercity", normally has one stop before my destination. I checked the online timetable and noticed it was 4 minutes late. No need for speed-walking. Behind me I'm hearing the electric gates close and see a train on the horizon, however, it's not stopping and drives right past. I stand, and wait, in the same cold and dreary weather.

Bells ring again, this must be my train. It's a "Stoptrein", a commuter train which stops at every station. There's no place to sit, I have to stand for 30 minutes until I can finally get a seat when most people get off at one of the bigger stations. Eventually the door-to-door time will be 90 minutes.

Futility

I managed to get a window seat, haven't bothered to put in my earphones to listen to music; something I'd normally do. I'm just 'rawdogging' this train ride, staring out the window and contemplating everything. "This should become a blogpost" I think to myself.

We ride along the highway, there's morning rush hour traffic. It's also why my drive to the station took longer, people will take shortcuts, but it's rather futile. "Everyone on their way to work" I think, because clearly this 9-to-5 is so great. In the Netherlands there's a high percentage of people working part-time, and a lot of service jobs that are, or could be, done remotely. But all of that is negated by the Netherlands also being one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.

I work one day a week from the office, and once every two weeks as well, for another type of event. Today was an office day. My train keeps driving, at least once it's moving, it moves. We stop at all these stations and the train gets emptier and emptier. We drive by a big office complex, the parking garage is full of cars. All these people arrived before 9am, their cars alone in the grey parking lot, all the people, some in grey suits, in their grey building. I can't judge what the interior is like, but I imagine it's grey as well, if not in colour, then at least in atmosphere.

Big Corp ©

I wonder how many of these people are necessary for business operations. I feel myself being jaded, jaded by what I'm seeing in enterprise corporations. The idea that everyone has to be present at a certain location, at a certain time, to do — let's face it — meaningless work. The amount of wasted hours because of bad efficiency, pointless meetings, and bureaucracy is staggering. Yet everyone seems to accept this as normal.

I'm not saying start-up culture is amazing, but at least it strives for efficiency, doing things correctly ^[1] and being flexible when it comes to people.

Maybe I'm just missing the type of people who'd like to provide excellent work but also guard their work-life balance, people who aren't afraid to speak up, or those people in management roles who know what they're doing. Working in an enterprise has given me a whole new perspective on the "work hard, play hard" motto that start-ups seem to have. I used to hate this phrase, as I figured it was just an excuse to work people to the bone. But I rather work hard than pretend to work hard, while actually doing nothing of value. I see so many people in positions they shouldn't be, but can I blame them? Not really, they also have to partake in this capitalist society, and are perhaps better suited for dealing with all this pretend-play than I am.

We pass the town, and green fields with cows come into view, I wonder if they're cold. A nice retreat for my brain, as I take the opportunity, to think of something else for a minute. The train curves around the tracks, I can see the highrise buildings of Amsterdam come into view.

Metal music to the rescue

I'm writing this blogpost and listening to my soothing music; #MetalCore. My randomized playlist gives me an old one; "Still Remains - The Worst Is Yet To Come". I overhear the lyrics "days are getting shorter" and I look up the rest..

So, I'm fearing
the worst is yet to come.
Days are getting shorter.
Close your eyes for a while.
Rest a little longer.

I jokingly call it soothing, as for non-metalheads it may not seem so, but it's genuinely comforting to me. I feel my anger reside, and get back to work, capitalism wins again. I guess I'll close my eyes for a while, and rest a little longer.