Here is what that path looks like:

1. You no longer care

His cool job wasn’t always cool. He had just stuck around and it became cool around him. He is lucky. He knows this. Many of his friends are teachers and non-profit workers, people who put in hours for which they are never paid, could never be paid enough. He realizes many people spend their workdays dead-eyed and demeaned. He sees these people in the subway and in the restaurants he goes to and behind the security desks when he stumbles into work at 10AM. He has had these jobs; he knows.

Now he works at an internet company at a time when internet companies can pay people like him to drink beer and write jokes for billboards and videos.

But knowing you are lucky doesn’t make you happy and it doesn’t make you care. At least not in his case. Happiness probably comes from some combination of diet and sleep he simply doesn’t have the discipline to maintain. You can’t be happy if you are hungover all the time; and you can’t care about your job, no matter how lucky you are.

2. You feel guilty for being lucky and not caring, but this only makes you avoid it more

He was losing ground. That’s what it felt like. He pretended to work hard and he actually tried to care, but he didn’t actually work hard and he failed to care. And so he checked his email a lot, hoping someone would ask something small of him; something he could do in 10 minutes right now so he wouldn’t have to do anything else. And then when he’s done with that, he checked his personal email; and then Twitter; and then work email again; and etc. in a never-ending loop of apple-tabs.

Hopefully this charade would take up enough time until his calendar told him about a meeting he had to attend or it was reasonable for him to leave and head to one of the three bars he rotated like a series of crop fields you don’t want to overuse.

3. At some point they see this. They must see this right?

His coworkers seemed to focus. He saw them sitting on couches and in conference rooms. They didn’t look like they were simply checking their email.

People gave him projects. Some times he gave projects to himself, but he never seemed to finish anything. Other people finished things. They shut their computers and crossed things off white boards. He just kept apple-tabbing his day away.

Did they see it? This loss of ground and lack of focus? They must see it. There must be a day not too far away when someone from human resources sits him down and talks to him about his “performance” and did he need “any help” and maybe he should “take a few weeks off” to get himself “back on track” and everyone here “really appreciated him” and just wanted him “healthy.” How long can one go one coming in late and leaving early? How long can one joke about the bottle of whiskey at work before it’s not a joke to anyone?

He didn’t know. And so he waits. He doesn’t work anymore. He just leaves early and he waits.

4. You just want to sleep and rest. Why can’t you ever just sleep or rest?