More Than 9 to 5
Part of Musings of The Sawdust Sage™
Overworked. Underheard. Still Showing Up. Or, as corporate likes to call it: Living the Dream.
What happens when your soul is scheduled into Outlook? When “Let’s circle back” becomes a battle cry and coffee feels like your only dependable coworker?
More Than 9 to 5 is a survival manual disguised as poetry.
From boardroom absurdities to inbox-induced identity crises, the collection explores the frustrations, routines, contradictions, and occasional ridiculousness of modern work life. Through sharp humor, candid reflection, and a few well-placed jabs at corporate nonsense, James Allen, writing as The Sawdust Sage™, gives readers room to laugh, breathe, and recognize a little of themselves.
Written for anyone who has ever muted themselves on Zoom and screamed internally, survived another round of “synergy,” or quietly wondered whether the meeting could, in fact, have been an email.
No jargon. No motivational poster wisdom. Just honest, wry, and sometimes unexpectedly moving reflections on the hours we trade for a paycheck and the lives that continue beyond them.
You are more than your badge number.
You are more than 9 to 5.
And this book never forgets it.
How More Than 9 to 5 Began
More Than 9 to 5 grew out of years spent inside corporate America, where some things were too familiar not to notice.
Meetings that could have been emails. Jargon that seemed designed to avoid saying anything plainly. Calendars packed so tightly that actual work sometimes had to be squeezed in around the conversations about the work.
Those things annoyed me.
But they also gave me material.
After retiring, I finally had the freedom to look back at those years from the outside and write about them without worrying about stepping on corporate toes.
I knew the territory. I had lived it. I understood the rhythms, the frustrations, the absurdities, and the quiet moments when people wondered whether anyone else noticed how strange some of it had become.
What started as observations and irritation gradually turned into poems and reflections.
Eventually, those pieces began to belong together.
More Than 9 to 5 came from that realization: there was enough humor, frustration, and truth in everyday working life to fill a book.
And, fortunately, no meeting was required to approve it.