SLACKEN HOS
Like probably every single
one of you reading this, I was raised with a pretty strong work ethic. Not by words, which can usually be forgotten,
but by example. My dad always worked a
regular job and came home to work on the domicile ( get a fix-er-upper, work on
as cash came available, sell for a profit and do the same again after moving
but one step up in amenities ), taking his daily dump one of the few times he
could get any reading done. Mom might
have “only” been a homemaker but she did most things from scratch/homemade and
did side hobbies or chores for extra income.
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I remember hating it. Always chores ( fences, chickens, orchards,
garden ) eating into my reading time.
When I “escaped” to the military I quickly got into a middle class
working existence ( it didn’t pay middle class but it was mostly non-physical
labor ) and loved the freedom of long leisure hours where I could read as much
as my little pea picken heart desired.
Then, I had kids. Back to working
like a mule, non stop, two jobs all the time, not much reading ( although still
better than only whilst sitting upon the Throne ). I certainly loved my kids and was happy they
were there, but unfortunately all of life’s joy was sucked away by their
mother, a black hole emptying all nearby souls.
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It didn’t seem like it
except in hindsight, but things improved in that the second job became writing. Not Working For Da Man but for myself. I’ve been at that for twenty-five years,
although only twenty of those were daily ( I was mostly working extra hours for
a real paycheck the first five ), serious writing. Twenty-five years of working two jobs. It wasn’t mucking out animal pens, digging
ditches or toting bales, but it was a life devoted to work. I don’t think I could fairly be accused of
being a slacker. I am a bit sad that my
father who I respect the hell out of was too consumed with a life winding down
and numerous health issues to really see and comprehend what I considered my
success in becoming self employed.
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Or finding a truly
wonderful woman to fulfill my life ( finally!
What the heck were the Fates waiting for? ). This is what retirement should be. Not buttloads of money to spend on
consumption but fulfilling work and a meaningful relationship. Okay, I rushed “retirement” a bit ( by ten to
thirteen years ), but with the medical industry I can’t count on anything but a
premature death. And it is retirement
from working for hideous ass clowns, not retiring from working. Now, why am I repeating all of this? Simply, it is a wonderful thing recapturing
the true meaning of the work ethic, which had been high jacked by the Capitalists.
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Relax, Francis, I’m not
going to go on a Leftist screed and call for Hillary to have even more wealth
and access to the nuclear launch codes.
I mean Capitalists comprising control by central banks and big business. I’m not crapping on your utopia vision of
capitalism which never existed and never can.
By financial monopoly every human endeavor and activity was monetized
and distorted, controlled and taxed by the elite. Your hard work was mostly wasted by most of
the rewards flowing to those bastards.
Just think about one aspect of your life, shelter. For most of history, the poor built their own
homes. It was a spurt of labor using
local material and it needed only periodic maintenance thereafter.
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Housing was an effort, not
an expense. Now, you work a minimum of a
quarter of your work day, merely to rent your dwelling from your masters. Building codes and zoning and regulation keep
it a matter of excess labor and little control.
That is monetizing the economy, outlawing laboring for oneself. And being “self-employed” is a step up from
that, but it is by no means freedom from forced monetization. It is freedom from being demeaned and abused
by incompetents that siphoned away 95% of your gains to the company for their
own job security, but you still must labor mightily for the benefit of the
elite. In some ways, self-employment is
merely a pressure release valve for social discontent that is largely
psychological with its benefits.
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So, self-employment isn’t
about gaining much freedom from the bankers.
It is about gaining freedom from numbness. Most preach about that freedom being attained
by wealth. As in, once you have enough
money you have the freedom to do as you wish.
The problem with that is, it is an ever retreating elusive target. For all the millions on the treadmill trying
to get rich, a mere handful achieve it.
And all those striving just enrich those already rich ( for instance,
the ghetto drug dealer risking his life allows the judge to pull in $200k a
year ). I prefer genteel poverty. It is much easier to attain. And, very important here, you free yourself
from the stress and strain of the workaday world.
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No one is saying you aren’t
working hard. Or not stressing. But, you ARE doing so for your own
benefit. Yes, the professional takers
siphon some away. That is just their
vig. Their tax. By unfettering your mind from money and
materialism-as much as you are able-you actually have time to reflect and
enjoy. You free your mind. You have the mental energy to reflect, and to
have deep thoughts. And to enjoy. When you multitask and take on impossible
demands, one half canceling out the other, you just stay numb mentally and
spiritually.
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Far better to take a pay
cut and be able to enjoy your labors.
Hard work becomes not about money you must mostly give away, but just as
reward for personal effort. How often
are you able to complete a project and enjoy it for the sake of a job well
done? Not at work. The corporate culture doesn’t allow
that. But at home. Not buying something, but creating
something. Those envious will probably
use the low hanging fruit and first thing call you a Slacken Ho. You don’t make enough money. You don’t “contribute to society”. But we all know labor for creation and self
satisfaction beats a paycheck any time.
Yes, we all need money. That is
mandated. But it sure is nice to
minimize that.
END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2y0khv5 )
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
You took the long way to get there. The last 3 sentences were the meat.
ReplyDeleteWealth is not a place but rather a state of mind.
I suppose having a billion dollars would be nice (I say suppose because the ramifications of having that billion are beyond the scope of my imagination), but I wonder what that would do to my character. Would I become someone else? Someone else that I hate?
I have never been even 1% of wealthy but I have had more than ample income in the past and it's sort of a disease. The more you make the more you spend - it takes money to make money. So I started finding ways to change that dynamic, thinking that it's "not how much you make but rather how much do you get to keep". About 15 years ago that became my life goal and I live that way still.
What is the point of making say $10 an hour if it costs you $5 an hour to do so? Why not just make $5 an hour and cut everybody out of the equation? In many ways living like that becomes so much easier. But it changes how you see things.
At that point, you have become a criminal that no one knows about, yet. Your life has got to become very secretive and you have to see 3 steps ahead all the time. And you have to learn how to read a person character, quickly, and have alternate plans when things start to go awry. And be very frugal.
Being self employed this way is tremendously rewarding and, to me, seems like the way man was meant to live - except for the criminal part, which is mostly a manifestation of the communist environment in which we live now.
100 and 1 years ago we didn't have to live like criminals. The money you earned was yours to do with as you choose and people were smarter than because their choices were there own. Now, the gov't owns everything, especially all the money you will ever have, and if you ever make bad choices they will step in and save you. This has created an environment of slaves, criminals, and nitwits.
The slaves play by the rules.
The nitwits were self eradicated in the past.
The criminals put their peace of mind above all else.
Which are you?
The slaves are about 95% of the population and the nitwits are about 30% of that 95%. Both groups are a pox on the remaining 5%, so we watch out for them all the time for they will let the air out of our tires.
Both groups are a pox. I love that saying. A pox on both your houses. A pox on your black hide. Unfortunately, I'm sure a real pox isn't too far away ( traditionally, the end of the civilizations life sees plague )
Delete“Would I become someone else? Someone else that I hate?”
DeleteI suppose that a lot of it has to do with how you lived in your formative years. Take Benny Hill (whom by the way, was a funny old bastard for a Brit) for example:
“Hill never owned his own home in London, and instead preferred to rent a flat rather than buy one."
“He also never owned a car, although he could drive.” “Despite being a millionaire many times over, he continued with the frugal habits that he picked up from his parents, notably his father, such as buying cheap food at supermarkets, walking for miles rather than paying for a taxi unless someone picked up the tab for a limousine, constantly patching and mending the same clothes even when the balance on his account at the Halifax Building Society reached seven figures.[13] The only luxury that he permitted himself was foreign travelling and even then, he would stay in modest accommodation rather than five-star hotels.[13] In one of his obituaries, a story was told of how he reportedly refused to mend his mother's leaky roof because it was "too expensive"
“Hill never married nor had children. He had proposed to two women, but neither accepted. Because of his eccentricity and reclusive lifestyle, rumours circulated that he was gay, but he always laughingly denied them." Hill was a huge Francophile and enjoyed his visits to France, notably to Marseilles, where until the 1980s he could go to outdoor cafes anonymously, traveling on public transport and socialising with local women.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill
Sounds sort of like an English version of Jim 😀
Close, but I hate public transportation and women accept my marriage proposals ( since there is already something wrong with them ).
DeleteI am right now trying to develop a 5 year plan to get off the corporate shackles - even just being ABLE to get the shackles off will be a huge stress relief.
ReplyDeleteThe worst corporation I worked for was the Army. The second worse was the teeny tiny Food Bank. Two bosses and a board of directors were the entire bureaucracy and they did their best to be as bad as an organization a thousand times their size. Death To Corporations!
DeleteQuickly (I'm about to start work ... I enjoy my job & the company I work for/with so it's cool)
ReplyDeleteThere's a book called Early Retirement Extreme (I scored it as a PDF for nothing more than googling it). TL;DR version is minimise your expenses, then go harder, no really try. Awesome - now save save save.
When savings / investment income = or exceeds your bare bones lifestyle you can retire.
Another frugal web advice I read was from a left wing site. Basically he said, earn just enough to fund your self chosen austere lifestyle and no more. That way the state can not tax you to fund their war machine. I think I was in my Libertarian fantasy stage back then. but that idea, earn enough for yourself and nothing that they can tax stuck with me.
Lastly, there's currently a MGTOW movement. A lot of the stuff I read from them encourages people to have low stress jobs & earn enough to do the things they want (play video games, hike, etc)
But, but, but...if you don't earn tons of money, No FLIR For You!
DeleteHousing is what really screws most American’s, so if you can somehow find an alternative around conventional housing, you’ll be ahead of the game in spades. If you were to take the cost of housing out of the equation, an ordinary paying job would meet your needs. I’m about your age Jim, and both sets of grandparents had their homes paid off long before retirement, and that was on one income. That tells you right off that despite the enormous jump in wages since then, the dollar simply doesn’t have the same spending power as then. When I mention this to others, and make the claim about missing my opportunity to secure land back in the 80’s, I usually get a response to the effect of “yeah, but that was a lot of money back then”. But it really wasn’t comparatively speaking. I recall when I got on at one job (circa 1985) I was quite happy that I would be making a $1k a month. Now I was single, and if I were a family man, this might not have been so great, but it worked for my situation at the time. I only know that a purchase then, wasn’t as painful as a purchase now of the same product. I like to use the wool shirt example that I have used in the past. A $35 dollar wool shirt wasn’t as painful to my pocket book as the same wool shirt today at $80 to $100+.
ReplyDeleteHow anyone thinks $150k & up is a good deal is beyond my comprehension. I started wages at $8k a year early 80's, $25k mid 90's and it never went above $15k since then except my casino job prior to the '08 crash, which don't exist in NV anymore. Maybe the Vegas Unions, but it ain't worth living there, even before house costs. And that doesn't factor in medical. No way by any stretch of the imagination are wages close to keeping up.
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