Start with the Question, the Complaint, the Dissatisfied Ramble

I want to throw out everything I own.  I want to build a ramshackle cabin in the woods and live in it.  I want to quit every job and not take another and just write.  Do you know how hard it is to write when all you do is work at jobs that somehow leave you poorer than you started?

I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I can’t tell you how deep it goes without unleashing a bitter and fruitless rant.  My best energies fall to waste; my best talents are obscured.  My money that I work and work for pays the rent of a shit apartment and little else.  It is difficult to make time for loved ones.  The more hours that I clock in, the less that I have to show for the time spent.

What am I doing?  How do I make it better?  When I die, what will have mattered?  What can I do that will not have been in vain?

I want to tell you that it is fine to feel this way, but I am not sure that it is fine.  I am not sure that I should be ignoring the huge, visceral instinct to stop wasting my time.   It seems like we are encouraged to think that any and all work is of value just because we put our energy into it.  I have my doubts.

What if I opted out of capitalism?  What if I opted out of rules?

Perhaps this sounds like useless dreaming–a ramble about a magical world that is not real.  What I know is this:  my body, my spirit and my mind have needs.  I cannot care for myself without giving them time and attention, but to have food and shelter I am expected to spend every waking moment “earning” them.  I would rather learn to make them myself.  I would rather ask for nothing.

I want this life on my own terms.  I want and want and want.  I have no answers.