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For Life or Money: The Problem with Being Me, a Slave to the Wage


The key problem with me is that I have not solved my biggest problems and I likely never will. That's because I don't believe that I can, on any real level, to be honest. Life and the world has failed to kill me, and so have I. Despite my best efforts on multiple occasions, I am still here because I am incapable of it. Sure, I could seek psychological help, but it will ultimately fail and be a waste of time and money I don't have. The patient has to fix himself at the end of the process and I can't do that.

I live with people whom clearly despise me for not putting aside my own moral principles for the sake of becoming a slave to the wage, rising through the ranks of some multi-national corporation and earning obscene sums of money in the process. They have no faith in my abilities to rise above the situation and make a life for myself in a Capitalist world. I don't blame them, since neither do I. We all agree that I can't do enough to get out of this horribly stagnant and detrimental situation, so that I might strike out on my own. Yet, I find myself doing little to nothing constructive in that direction, can't bring myself to consistently and unrelentingly do what must surely be the right thing for me (at least in the short term, anyway). I must surely be selfish and deluded to think my life could be any other way. The crux of it is that I don't want to be alive and continue my existence when the work that keeps me going financially erodes my mental health and spiritual well-being, while the work I do that restores it doesn't even pay minimum wage.

I love the weekend work I do at the local kennels, because it keeps me sane and is more valuable to me than any money I could earn from it (or any other job, for that matter). However, it isn't sustainable in the long term. Neither are any of my other endeavors, for that matter, which I find depressing. (As Robert Kiyosaki states in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, being employed for wages isn't a long-term solution to the money problem, but a trap masquerading as one if not used in the short term.) Who volunteers to go further into hell as a means to escape it? Yet, it seems that is the very thing that I must do to keep on living long enough to die on my own, with some degree of peace. Truly, the only way out is through. It is either that or something so radical as to be beyond me at present.

To me, the phrases "I don't want to" and "I cannot" are two ways of expressing the same concept: "I am not able to", due to how my brain malfunctions. It may be a temporary thing, like a mood or state of mind, or it may be a case of learning how to solve a long-term problem I'm facing. It's rarely a constraint beyond my control, since most of those can be removed through the application of time and money (at least in theory), the latter is one of/on which I always seem to be short. In any case, the end result is the same.

Part of the problem is that I don't have a realistic view of my abilities (or lack thereof): I always think I'm terrible to mediocre at just about anything I do. That's what imposter system does to a person. Regardless of what the truth is, I essentially have to lie to potential employers if I am to promote myself and persuade them that I am great at what I do and that they should give me a job. If Donald Trump genuinely believes he is the best at what he does, always, then I am, to my mind, the opposite. That's how I perceive it, anyway. That may be because I've got the mind of a teenage boy trying to make it through life in a world that sees me as a middle-aged man ...


Thumbnail image: Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels

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Great White Snark
Great White Snark

I'm currently seeking fixed employment as a S/W & Web developer (C# & ASP .NET MVC, PHP 8+, Python 3), hoping to stash the farmed fiat and go full Crypto, quit the 07:30-18:00 grind. Unsigned music producer; snarky; white; balding; smashes Patriarchy.


The Snark Returns: Random Musings from The GWS
The Snark Returns: Random Musings from The GWS

SW/Web developer: ~12 years of C# (yay!) & ASP .Net MVC, Java (blargh!), Python (woot!) experience. I'm currently hitting faucets and writing for crypto to stake/invest . | I work part-time with animals. Sadly, my cerebellum and medulla oblongata aren't Einsteinian in proportion. However, I possess a Brobdingnagian vocabulary and get by with being a barbigerous logophile. I can probably write you into bed, if smashing Capitalism and Patriarchy turns you on. Kink is political!

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