I want out.
The happiest I feel is in one of two places: The first is a tropical beach with my eyes closed. The warmth of the sun and the light breeze gently touch my skin. I can hear the rustling of palm leaves, the distant caw of seagulls, and the lapping of ocean waves. My mind is blank. I am existing in time and space and in this very moment. I am hyper-present and nowhere all at the same time.
The second is prospect park in brooklyn on a summer day with low humidity. The outdoors feels like the indoors. The band plays on the long meadow. I am lounging, the only thing separating my body from the grass beneath me is a light blanket. Dappled sunlight beams through the tree canopy. The air is filled with music, laughter, and snippets of stranger’s conversation. I read a book, I smoke a joint. This, no doubt, is living.
Inevitably, I am required to go to this thing called work. The ol’ 9-to-5 (which for me is actually an 8:30-5:30). I don’t mind my job. I mean, I don’t mind the actual work that I am required to do. What I have grown to hate is going there. I get up at 7am. I shower, make my oatmeal, I get dressed, do my makeup. I’m out the door by 8. I walk 10 minutes to the subway. I wait on the sweltering platform with air quality that falls far below the EPA’s standards for clean air (this is true – MTA stations have concentrations of a pollutant called PM2.5 that are 77 times higher than above-ground air). I ride the packed train to work. A mysterious drop of subway liquid falls on me. I get off in TIMES SQUARE, the most vile, disgusting, wretched pit of hell. The station smells like human feces. I walk around a man, nearly nude, just lying on the floor. I walk up the stairs to the street and make sure to stand clear of the person shooting heroin in between their toes in the stairwell. (It should be noted that my intent is not to shame these people that the system has failed so horribly. The city has the means to create real change in these people’s lives (safe injection sites, etc) but they choose not to. I’m just saying that I hate witnessing this day in and day out.)
I go to my office. Sometimes there is no one else there. I log in, check my emails, send my silly little replies. I wonder why I had to come in. Why it was SO impossible for me to work from home.
Sometimes the accountant is there. A sexist, a bootlicker, and an absolutely obnoxious man. I feel the tension in the room. I am sitting in silence with a person I have no respect for.
I am good at what I do. I finish my work early. I am typically left with at LEAST an hour of each day where I wonder how to look busy. Because when my bosses are in, the glass wall of their office looks directly out at my computer screen. I would gladly fuck around or be on reddit or shop online if I weren’t so exposed. But no, I open and close browser tabs from 4:30-5:30.
The benefits package is garbage. I pay $350/mo for shitty health insurance. I fought tooth and nail for them to set up a 401k and there’s no matching. I had to BARGAIN for 15 PTO days because I had 10 and they were giving my coworkers 15. I have increased my salary by 73.3% since I started here two years ago. I have made myself integral. I have fought for every last dollar and encouraged my coworkers to do the same.
But I’m tired. I don’t want to do this until I’m 59.5 or more. I want to build my own tiny house by hand and travel around, avoiding winter. And most of all, I want MY TIME BACK.
I read an article in Money magazine a few years ago that changed my life. It was about the movement that was forming around a book called “Your Money Or Your Life” by Vicki Robin. This movement is known as FIRE (financial independence, retire early). My mind was blown. “There’s a way out?!” I thought to myself. And I have been chasing that ever since. But the road is long. In the meantime, what am I supposed to do? How can I make the day-to-day bearable? By getting back MY TIME. I don’t want to leave when it’s dark and get home when it’s dark in the winter. I want my unpaid lunch to actually be MY TIME. I want to work from home. I want flexibility. I don’t want to give one more single solitary minute to my employer than is absolutely necessary. I have a life to live. Should that be robbed from me because it’s “normal”??? I’m frustrated. I’m tired. I want the freedom to choose how I spend my time in this one life I’ve been given on this rapidly decaying plantet in this rapidly decaying society. Let me be, let me live – Thoreau said, “I went to the woods to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life” and I’ve remembered that since I read Walden in my high school AP lit class. I’m not meant to do this every day until I die. I want out.
Recommended reading for the disillusioned:
How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell,
Post-Capitalist Desire by Mark Fisher,
How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm