For the last seven years, I have supported myself by selling my soul for paltry sums. It has usually been in the 2-3 Big Macs per hour range. I have washed dishes, loaded trucks, and delivered sub-par food for countless hours of my life simply so I can continue to live in this blessed existence.
It's not that I am upset by the pitiful vocations I have chosen, more like completely underwhelmed by the possible choices. Sometime between the ages of 17 and 22 the last bit of childhood majesty disappeared and I was confronted with an incredibly ugly world demanding 25 to 50 hours of my life every week for the foreseeable future.
Aside from differences in reimbursement, the possibilities amount to one reality: You are expected to sell yourself (mind, body, and soul) to an owner for a large amount of your time on earth. In exchange for this, the owner will provide you with the smallest possible reimbursement that he expects you to accept.
Capitalist Ladies, forgive me for using masculine pronouns to express my vitriol but the owner is usually male. Rest assured that I am equally disgusted with women who internalize the Capitalist paradigm and seek to profit off the backs of others.
As a young person deciding on my first steps into the real world, I made the seemingly rational choice to pursue a career that would pay me the most for my time. Possessing decent written and verbal skills, I decided to pursue a law degree.
Funny thing: You can't study law until you have received a college degree in some unrelated field. Economics, English, Philosophy, Humanities, Biology, Ethnic Studies. Whatever! It doesn't matter as long as you can convince the admissions assholes you're "lawyer material". Near as I can tell this amounts to 2 questions: Can you read a large amount for long periods of time? Do your morals and closely held beliefs have wiggle room?
So I pursued political science because it seemed mildly interesting. Another funny realization occurred about this time. College is prohibitively expensive. Taking out loans would account for the tuition, but I was still left with living expenses. The great American solution? Get a wage slave arrangement until you can become the owner!
After 3 or so years of college I became convinced that the desire for knowledge is crippled. It is the appearance of knowledge that is valued in our society. Sure, in the deep mildewed corridors of universities there are those few obsessed souls who pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake. By and large, colleges are supported by people who simply want to appear more intelligent. And people who want to bang out overprotected 18 year old co-eds living alone for the first time.
After honestly assessing myself I realized law school was not for me. Lacking that tangible goal, it seemed pretty inane to sink further money into a political science degree. So I dropped out.
It signaled a moment of failure to many around me, yet remains a triumph of my soul over the expectations of society.
I have since organized my efforts toward minimizing the amount of my time sold to an owner. In short, I became an unskilled wage slave. It's even less lucrative than it sounds.
So here I am: unsatisfied with the world but content with who I am, upset that I have to work but glad I'm not slaving as much as I could, less than fulfilled in many respects and skeptically hoping this blog will help.
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