Money. It Always Ends Up Making Me Feel Blue.
Like the great Holden Caulfield once exclaimed.
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
- Holden Caulfield
Money makes the world go round. The truth doesn’t warrant any further exposition.
The thought of not having enough of it sets my teeth on edge. Just the visuals of struggling to pay for the bare necessities put me in a fucking depression. This is of course hypothetical. As long as I hold on to my job, it won’t come to that. It is one of those jobs which won’t make you rich but will keep you well fed. The truth is I can sail smoothly past my prime and beyond if I keep my job. It is probably the easiest thing to do. But why? Why suffer the daily grind — the coming and going — which won’t come to termination until I consciously quit? Why tolerate the people and the work for a pittance.
Most people don’t ask themselves that question. Or, if they do, they don’t have any special talents, or imagination to fill in the blanks of their lives if they choose to quit. As I write this, I feel a Deja vu, because I have fenced with this quandary before: I have quit twice on jobs which were far less tolerable than this one. Those jobs put me in a fucking depression. And however much suited to my temperament my present employment is, it is still a fucking pain in the ass. I am an extremely free minded person, and therefore any claim to my time and energy sours my mood and crushes my spirit. Which leads me again to the central problem: money.
I don’t want a lot of it. I just want enough of it to untether myself from any labor-wage exchange structure and the attendant compulsions, and live peaceably and do whatever I please. And it should not be a unicorn dream. I am a minimalist (lovingly so), single, with no spouse or children, and no financial burden to speak of. All I need is regular inflow of enough money to keep my going concern of one person afloat. I have not figured out how to manage that. And I hate the idea of having a job forever. Till then I am blue thinking about how dependent I am on this servile structure.