She asked Me what I did for a living, a smug smirk fermenting underneath her bloated self-importance. To which I replied:

"If you were to pick out a piece of scrap wood from a lumber yard and bring it home, grow out your fingernails, and claw at it for a devoted length of time each day, eventually, you'll penetrate its hardness–leaving behind the visible marks of your knuckled-down strain. That's what I do–basically."

"What do you do?" I retorted.

"I'm a real estate agent," she replied.

Although she had accrued a comfortable living, it had become clear to the both of us that her entire life up to that point had been an undisclosed letdown. People spend their lives chasing wealth, status, security like a dog chasing its tail, but in their futile pursuit they lose sight of the truck barreling down the street toward them, apathetic in its course.