An Affair Most Sordid
One of the oldest adages we learnt as a child of the polite society was that money can't buy happiness. I try to cling onto this as much as possible, even though for most of my life I am plagued by financial problems. I want to believe, and to a degree, I do believe. But if you ask me when I was the happiest I'd ever been, it was the brief moment of time when I managed to live the short-lived dream of a white-collar worker in the hottest industry, allowing me to splurge on my hobbies, pay off family debts, move to a good flat in a nice neighborhood in town, and still somehow save enough to last me 1.5 years of unemployment come tech winter.
Let me explain.
While my relationship with money has always been tumultuous, I've been much blessed in my relationship with people. I met my kind of people in college and we're still in contact more than a decade later. I never have problems associated with toxic and/or imbalanced relationships. They assist me in time thick and thin, we cover for each other and never make a big deal out of disparity in spending power. We're just as happy to hang out at home cooking whatever is in the pantry as we are getting a nice meal in town. We could play with real toys, or we could play with boards we printed along with a sheet of translated crib text. In this sphere, I'm pretty much sorted.
I have a rich creative life since I was a kid. I could be left alone to my own devices and I would invent all sorts of projects to tackle. Spare time does not unnerve me. Why should I dream of corporate labor? I could do the labor of my diabolical fantasy instead. During this period of abundance however, it was the thing I had to sacrifice. There was simply no room for writing or drawing or coding when I worked one full-time job and two part-time jobs plus all the things I had to handle outside.
So how did money come into the picture?
I'm a grumpy sod, the sort of person who'd been 70 since they were 17. In short, I'm not usually a fun person to be around with. Most of the time I'm cranky and overworked. The rest of the time I had to face the reality of being a sandwich gen kid in this economy. Add anger management issue somewhere and you have an incendiary combination.
It doesn't take a psychotherapist to trace my insecurity. Back in middle school, I resolved to make it out of town, climbing the hell out of the future laid out before me. I succeeded. Or so it seemed for a while.
When money stopped being a problem, I could receive phone calls from my family with confidence instead of trepidation. knowing that I could handle most disaster (of which there were many). This caused me to be more jovial, losing the bitter edge that would explode into shouting matches. Apparently phone calls with your parents don't always have to be overwrought.
Also, someone had to pay the bills but at least filial piety wouldn't cost me my own plans.
I initiated outings and gatherings cheerily, knowing they wouldn't put pressures on my budget. I could take turns in covering for other friends. I could talk at length without worrying I took too much time out of "working". I could pick and choose the kind of projects I took, because I knew passing the ones that didn't align with my values or my quality time with other people wouldn't lose me the roof over my head.
My home life was easier, as my significant other no longer had to find me in sullen disposition. I was significantly healthier too, as when I was not in a hurry to hustle, I cooked more for myself and would take care to prep fresh ingredients for more wholesome recipes.
Money can't buy happiness, but it could certainly buy me time and space to figure out happiness.
Following the tech winter in which I lost a job every December for three years in a row, I burned almost all my savings to stay afloat. A year after I managed to land another gainful employment, I still haven't fully recovered. When I got the basics covered to start saving for the future again, the news broke that our contract was about to end, and the political climate wasn't conducive for me to try to continue with different contractual terms. By this time, my health has declined to a point I couldn't deny. I'm also no longer enthused to participate in this rat race.
On a nicer note, unemployment gave me time to restart my creative practices, so there's that.
My relationship with my family deteriorated as I hadn't been able to send money home and the anxiety over failing to provide caused me to regress to hurtful comments. I do prioritize myself, but my family is not to blame for the situation and resentment would not help anyone.
I try to cut back on my expenses to prepare for the coming unemployment period (should I fail to find another job, which feels very likely with the current jobseeking landscape), this means less outings. I'd rather my friends cover for another friends who could attend only rarely, because I see my friends often enough (they usually hang out at my place when we aren't going out).
To no one's surprise, I also reverted to being an overthinking prickly demon at home, my mind racing to math the math so it would math. Not an easy thing to do when I drop by the grocery store and see that the math I worked out painfully already threatened to not math anymore.
Honestly, I could see that I was a better person when I shifted my mindset to be a better person. Things came easier when I wasn't worrying, but I also didn't worry because I had something to back it up (which I don't really have right now). It was also easier to believe the path would open when I was in my teens.
How much the entire thing affects me is quite bothersome. Now that I have the awareness though, it is something I can work on.
I like my daily drawing a lot I plan to turn it into a zine, though I would also have to reconcile the fact that doing so will make it public. There's also a matter of whether or not I'd slap a price on that (who am I kidding? We know the answer is no. Would Pay What You Want makes me feel better? I don't think so). Sigh. I do have another VN project to work on for a jam in April, and that one would be 100% free as always.