Adam was running behind, which wasn’t helping his case any more than the argument he had with his boss yesterday. For the past 4 years Adam has been working the same tedious position at an advertising company. When he got the position he had hoped it was only temporary and he would be able to move up to what he really wanted to do, graphic design. However so far his luck has not been kind.

  This stagnation in his work finally broke Adam, resulting in a rather blunt and likely overly aggressive rant towards his boss about not using his employees to their full strengths. His boss merely replied with “that's not what we hired you for”. Frankly the fact he wasn’t fired on the spot was a miracle as he’s seen others get fired for less.

  The office building was located in a dingy old 5-story building built in the early 1900’s but was renovated about a decade ago to “encourage economic growth”. He didn’t see how cherishing a dipidated building would improve the economy especially since besides the advertising company Adam worked for only 1 other business resided there, a generic tech start up that Adam was sure would only st a few more months at best.

  Pushing his way through the door he made his way up the stairs, the elevator had been out of order for the past 4 months and even before then he didn’t dare trust it. Rounding off the st few steps Adam found himself on the 4th floor, his breath a little ragged. He checked his phone for the time, 8:09. 9 minutes te, hopefully that wasn’t enough for his boss to notice or care about. Adam made his way over to his desk and dropped his stuff onto it carelessly. He looked about the office which had been strangely quiet. It was normal for the morning to be dull and full of maise but there was usually at least some background noise of either typing or phone calls, but there was nothing. In fact all of the other desks were empty. Panicked Adam darted to his phone and began scrolling through his emails looking to find one he may have missed, 9:26pm st night; “Company meeting at 8:00am sharp tomorrow”.

  Shit…

  Adam dashes over to the meeting room and finds everyone sitting around the rge oval desk. Releasing a held breath Adam slowly and as quietly as possible pushes the door open. Unfortunately for him one person, Mike spots him and because Mike darted his attention so then did almost everyone else, including his boss.

  “Well look who finally decided to join us,” his boss said with a slight sneer that Adam wasn’t sure if he was imagining or not. “Have a seat, I’m sure that whatever you’ve been up to the past 10 minutes has been very important”.

  Adam didn’t say anything but simply rolled his eyes trying his best not to start yelling at his boss again. He took a seat on the left side of his boss, it wasn’t his usual seat he liked to take during these meetings, that seat was currently being occupied by Melissa from accounting. The meeting didn’t take much longer after he arrived, his boss was just wrapping up about new ideas for some long time clients that had been starting to get a little feisty about their recent ads performing a little more poorly than usual.

  “Adam, stick around I need to talk to you,” his boss said as everyone began hastily shuffling out of the meeting room.

  “What do you want? Look if this is about yesterday I’m sorry I yelled at you ok!” Adam remained in his chair but was leaning back with his arms crossed.

  “As a matter of fact it is, and because of that little talk I had another little talk with employment and as of this Friday we will no longer require your services,” his boss said in a monotone voice, using the vague nguage someone always takes when firing someone.

  “Fine, you know what if that’s what I get for being a loyal desk monkey for the past 4 years I’ll rid you of my ‘services’ right now. This pce is a shitshow anyway!” With that Adam stormed back to his desk, collected his things and left the office for the st time.

  Upon getting back to his apartment and his adrenaline had started to wear off Adam realized what he actually had just done and colpsed onto his couch. His dog, Mochi, a small little terrier bounded over to Adam who shifted his attention towards his little pup.

  “Well since I no longer have anything else to do, how about a walk?” As soon as Adam said the word walk Mochi began bouncing and dashed over towards the door, shuffling in front of it. Clipping the leash and harness up to his dog Adam swung open the door and made his way outside with a happy Mochi beside him.

  There was a park not too far from his apartment, about 4 blocks south. It was a nice little pce, with plenty of trees and paths. It was a good pce to go when Adam needed to clear his head, and now was certainly one of those times. The biggest problem Adam realized about his situation was that although he was sted to be fired, he stupidly quit, meaning any shot he got at unemployment was gone. He needed to find a new job, and fast. Adam traced his usual path through the park, stopping about half way through to rest at a bench before continuing.

  There was a strangely rge amount of people walking about the park that morning. One would think that a Wednesday would yield few people except for the occasional retired or independently wealthy person who lived in the area. Meanwhile Mochi was prowling the area around the bench sniffing about for whatever it is dogs look for. Eventually Mochi grew restless just pacing around the bench and so Adam stood and began his route again.

  It was around 11am by the time Adam returned to his apartment. He had released Mochi from the harness and went over to pull out his ptop to commence with the monotony of job searching.

  The listings were as useless as they were plentiful. Adam had attempted to move to a different company a little over a year ago and had used these job listing websites to look, but heard nothing back from any of the applications he had sent in.

  It was a pointless game.

  Adam pulled up his portfolio, which he hadn’t added to in years and was mostly mediocre college work. He wasn’t exactly the most proud of any particur thing he had in there but since college he hasn’t had the time to work on anything actually fun or engaging, at least nothing special enough to warrant putting into the document of his “best” work.

  He got up from his desk and went over towards his closet. When he moved into this apartment he shoved all of his old art sketchbooks somewhere in there. There was one sketchbook in particur that came to mind while he was fishing around in there.

  Early in school Adam had acquired a passing fascination with web comics. They were just starting to rise in popurity at the time and he thought it was an easy enough medium; maybe he should give it a go. He never did but he had about a dozen or so concepts drafted out over the course of a few months. Surely one of those must be good?

  Adam eventually found the one he was looking for, the sketchbook was beaten up and clearly showing its age. He skimmed his way to the part he was looking for, a page listing out those concepts for a comic; a slice of life where a guy gets promoted all the way to the top of an art studio, a fantasy comic where a magical pasta chef cooks his enemies to death with delicious meals, a story about 2 birds falling in love in the big city, one of them just said “a sentient tree”. The list was enlightening towards Adam’s thought process at the time, it was so loose and carefree of the rules. Adam saw potential in a few of them and vowed he would probably, hopefully actually make one of them a reality. If not for a job but for himself, he desperately needed some artistic outlet, as his now non-existent job had stifled that childlike wonder.