No Such Quantity of Money

It’s said that entrepreneurialism is the last vestige of the unemployable, but that depends upon the employer.

I miss getting a salary, but you know what I don’t miss?

It was nice getting a magic paycheck every two weeks, but what I prefer about this life is having greater agency over how I spend time away from my children, because that’s exactly what it is:

We are exchanging money for time that cannot be recovered, and until my final breath I will resent the time I will never get back because I was sitting in an avoidable meeting discussing a topic of no lasting consequence.

My life is different now.

My kids can tell that I have been enjoying myself, which means that I am enjoying the people I am working with and the projects that we are working on, and my little “home office“ is a common area where my children chill just out of view of the camera, and they curl up and eavesdrop.

This weekend, my 16 year-old said “this is an important project, isn’t it?“

I said yeah, how can you tell?

She said “you are really enjoying yourself, it’s how you get when you’re writing a good story.“

And she’s right. I love writing short story fiction, and when I get into a creative mode I am floating.

Not knowing what to say, I said: “it’s my intention to leave this world better than how I received it,“ and she said “I know, you’re weird like that.“

The people who said they loved me pursued a scorched earth campaign because they were so angry with my decision to reclaim my life.

Working for yourself is described as “feast or famine,” but the periods without compensation are still feasts if you are spending it in the company of others who share your values.

By comparison, what’s a famine?

A famine is living in a 2,600 sq/foot home in NE Portland with a person who increased my life insurance when doctors told me that I was at risk of early death, and with the full support of both her mother and my own, drove me into the streets as an expression of “tough love” in the middle of a medical emergency.

I was locked out of my home and my finances, and took to sleeping in my old SUV as I tried to stay in my children’s’ lives, as I shared in the following article:

A feast is being taken in by a cohort of homeless fellow veterans who call themselves the Leper Army, and witnessing them observing the ancient traditions of xenia as one of them gave up their bed to ensure I had a safe place to lay my head.

And on the topic of values, you might have to reclaim your life if you realize you’re among those who are operating out an incompatible world view; a lot of people speak the language of values while demonstrating behaviors which betray their loyalty to money.

Coming from generational poverty, I used to think money was a vehicle for achieving liberation, but frequently it becomes the basis of slavery, and I’m not into it.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen what it’s like on the other side, and it’s liberating to currently be among people of such high substance and quality.

This weekend my youngest 13-year-old twin asked if we could go to the store, and for hours we walked the aisles as she told me funny and insignificant stories about what’s going on in middle school.

It’s not about the stories, it’s about the investment of her father‘s time that left her feeling important and substantial.

She perceives that her dad is working on something important - I am - and it feels good for her to see me drop what I’m doing so I can walk the aisles of the local grocery store, bumping into each other and laughing as she talks about what’s going on in her life.

She said “aren’t you busy?” and I said “I’m busy pushing you down and running away because your farts smell so bad” and she burst into laughter.

As a child I gasped for the smallest bit of attention from two parents who were more focused on their exciting social and dating lives than the lives of their children, but fortunately: I received high-fidelity attention from my grandparents and their siblings, and it showed me that there’s another way to do this thing.

We don’t have to wait around for a person holding us in an icy grip no closer than arm’s length; we can find others who share our values and we can life this life to its fullest.

There’s no such quantity of money that can purchase this thing, and yet, once we recognize this kind of wealth, we can begin deliberately creating more of it.

This is a halo, as I describe in the following article, which reveals that many of y’all are already doing the thing. That’s the good news.

And with a little more focus y’all can extend the reach and the warmth of y’all’s respective halo.