Hello story fans, welcome back to another slice of storified action!

The music lovers amongst you may have picked up on the title inspiration of this one, I am a big fan of 10cc and Goldley & Creme, thanks to the excellent ecletic musical tastes of my Dad (or Pops as I affectionately call him) rubbing off on me over the years.

This piece is another one that I wrote for a Weekly Flash Fiction competition and the theme was “Under Pressure”.

Any comments or feedback that you have would be very much appreciated.

Go now and sally forth into this story nugget brethren – it calls to you, good people, please imbibe, scribe and be satisfied.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Don’t Want to be Under Your Thumb Forever (by David Ellis)

The humble deadline.

Without some kind of structure in place, we are destined to walk the earth with no direction, no goal, no valuable insight into yourself and no way of progressing beyond the ever changing sameness of the now.

I grew up despising deadlines.

They always seemed to get in the way.

They were there to hold you back, to stop you from being the truly creative person; they felt like a stone around my neck, dragging me deep down into the ether.

If only I had a few more minutes to tweak something, to make it better, to ensure that it was more perfect than you could possibly imagine.

Yet if we are not constantly under some kind of pressure, some kind of driving force to take us through to where we need to be then sometimes we can forever be lost adrift at sea, floating around in the nothingness that we have created for ourselves.

We cuddle and draw the ever expanding nature of it close to us and cradle it like it is a warmth to embrace, when truly it is suffocating us.

It’s like being at the fairground and all you can do is try to move against the mountainous sea of cotton candy that fills every square inch of your journey.

You can spend your time trying to eat your way to oblivion or you can take another path.

There will be traps that you will encounter.

There will be hardships, you will toil, travail, there will be travesty, it will be a tumultuous time.

But if you put in the hard work, you can get your fairytale ending.

I found mine on a cold summer afternoon, funnily enough coming out of fairground.

I had felt under pressure to impress my (then) girlfriend. Every prize was out of my grasp and I had lost at every twist and turn.

In the end, she was so sick of me constantly losing that she threatened to leave me if I didn’t win something.

That very moment, I hit every bullseye in the game because I was faced with a deadline – an arbitrary deadline but it put me in the right frame of mind.

The lesson stayed with me and I became a better person.

Sadly the relationship faltered soon after but I had now learned the twin lessons of sacrifice and deadlines.

If we don’t exercise some kind of discipline in our lives then we might as well be on the beach and build sandcastles all day, just to watch all our endeavours crumble and get washed away.

None of our actions will truly have consequences, as there will be no decisions and that’s no way to live a rich and fulfillingly satisfying life.

And if we have no direction, no guiding purpose then all this is for nothing.

Don’t let this be for nothing.

You’re not under the thumb if you’re under pressure.

Trust me.