Tom woke up (1) _ on Monday morning. MISERYHe always woke up (2) ___on Monday mornings. It was the idea of a whole week of school;

You already have chains around your ankles. You're firmly locked into society. You're on the conveyor belt and it's very hard to get yourself off You find a job, a girlfriend whom you might eventually marry, you buy a house together and start paying off your mortgage. You decide to have children and put them on the conveyor belt the same way you yourself were put on. You earn more money and retire, grow old, and finally put yourself into an expensive residential care home. Well done. You did it. You did exactly what this society asked of you. went to college until I ighteen. I passed A-levels, then my ent w surfing around the world what they call year". I really don't like the on a gap word "gap". When I looked in the dictionary for the word "gap", I found "Gap: A break in continuity, interruption.' allowed The society doesn't recognize this year as being important. You are to do it in fact you are told that future employers love it because it means you have done something interesting, shown your independence, and have something original to talk about in your job interviews. But once the year is gap over, you must start serious work earning money and making plans for the future. We love plans in the UK, because plans are security, and we adore security. The funny thing is, I don't believe security can come from a big house and a fast car or a degree. All these things create an illusion that you are secure. Security, in my opinion, comes from within oneself I'm on my fourth "gap year and I'm happy, truly happy. Every now summer I work as a beach lifeguard in Cornwall, the county which is a long peninsula in the southwest of England and where thousands of people go for their summer holidays. I don't earn a fortune but my life is rich. I wake up every morning and see the ocean. I surf every day if there are waves. can Surfing is the one thing in my life that truly makes me happy. If I couldn't surf, then, I think, I'd dry up and rot. Surfing means everything to me and nothing will ever remove me from the ocean. I save what little I earn in the summer which enables me to spend each winter in the sun with my surfboard Australia, Sri Lanka, Thailand.. maybe South Africa or South America next year so that's what am going to do I've realized that surfing makes me happy, so that's what I am going to do. I'll base my life around it in every possible way. I'll do any job and live anywhere, as long as I have the ocean on my doorstep. Many of my friends went to college and university and now live in the city and do the usual nine-to-five things along with everyone else. I spent a short time living in the city last year and I couldn't believe what I saw. People seemed so lifeless on the Underground in the morning. Nobody seemed happy or friendly. It was the land of the living dead. I truly believe that lots of people know what makes them happy but they choose to ignore it because it gets in the way of what they are really supposed to do: namely, work and earn lots of money. Life should be an adventure and if you're on that conveyor belt, it will not happen. Whatever happened to adventure? I don't want to get to the end of my life and think: "What if?" I often asked what my plans are. I also get asked where I see myself get going and what I want to do with my life. "When," they ask, "are you going to get a proper job?" They forget that I be the person who saves their child's may life on a beach one summer. Isn't that "proper" enough? I want to do exactly what I'm doing right now. Sure I'd like a little house and maybe bring a baby into the world, but I refuse to believe that the only way of doing that is by following the system. I don't want to see the world in the movies and read about it in books. I want to see it myself, smell it, hear it and feel it. I refuse to follow other people's footsteps