Now I don’t know much about how to make money. I know enough to know I can make my share, but from a long time ago, ever since I remember, really, I have not cared about these games people play. I would rather lay in the grass and read a book. It is not that I do not want to care about building a career or having a series of calculated steps that make my time and life appear spotless on paper; I cannot care. It is not in me, and the more I accept this, the happier I become. The greatest injustice we could do to ourselves was to live a life that wasn’t our own.
The world runs on money—my beginnings have taught me as much. It did not have to drive my life—this, I had learned much more recently. I was not naive, but I was now more open to the idea of living life the way I wanted to. There was no aversion for money in me. In fact, I very much wanted enough of it, but a plethora was out of the question—I would not know what to do with it. The most important thing I could offer the world was my soul; therefore, giving it was impossible. The next most important thing I could offer was my time, and that I wanted to spend on things that inspired me, instead of becoming a pencil pusher, following instructions verbatim, creating instructions for others which they followed to the line.
Sure, I could do this and get a life where I would not have to worry about much, but I know I will worry still. I will worry I am not writing enough, or thinking enough, or even sleeping enough. There was always going to be worry. It was about the kind of worrying we were okay with inviting into our lives. If I had to work on something—which I have to anyway since coffee grows expensive by the day—I was better off making smaller bets that saved me time and did not once ask for my soul.
When I think of all this, I remember a normal day: me, sitting in a seminar hall, reading Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, not a care about the jargon on the screen ahead. I should have known then what I know now. All of that is a means to an end. Words to me are an end in themselves. A good sentence is where I start and where I end. All in between is nothing but padding—context for my life to exist.