Always Work Hard

I realize that I need to work for myself. I really am not meant to engage in low-paid labor. I would say that none of us are but some of my coworkers are not just content but feel the need to stand up for our bosses at any turn. All jobs feel like exploitation and low-paid ones are the WORST! They try to make up for the lack of financial compensation with a mixture of fake enthusiasm and fear. And these conditions are only going to worsen as the population increases and the number of jobs decrease due to increased mechanization. Also, employers are going to continue to put the jobs of two or three people onto one employee and they will accept it because they know that there are ten other people just waiting to take that job for even less money.

As this wise author put it: "We’ve been all fooling ourselves, while everything has gotten so shitty around us." All of this is going on and yet the general 'common sense' wisdom is still that of 'personal responsibility' even though no amount of personal responsibility is going to change the global people to jobs ratio. 

That being said, I'll dip into my optimism bias and say again that I must start my own business. I'll say this (and try to believe it) even though the majority of businesses fail. And many of the ones that don't fail make just enough to keep going. Way back in the beginning of this blog I wrote a post about starting my own consulting business. I don't know if I want to stick with that idea but I do know that I need to be doing my own thing. This nine to five life (ESPECIALLY for exploitative wages) is not the business.

I also need to develop some personal discipline because while I've never been able to see myself overworking to make someone else rich, I can't have that mentality towards myself.  I'm inspired by a fellow female pessimist to start making money in my own way. 

Although, it's not a money-making venture, I've even started the blog I mentioned in this post. One thing I know is that I need to become more active in this thing we call life. It may be absolutely horrible but I still need to *sigh* make the best of it.

P.S.: the following quote is from the comments section of a Time article. It was a response to a recent college grad saying she was grateful to have a retail job even though she wanted more. This is EXACTLY how I feel about modern day low-paid wage labor (usually with no or prohibitively expensive 'benefits'; seriously though, when will the U.S. jump on the universal healthcare bandwagon?):

"I don't think you are selfish. I think you are ridiculously generous to be grateful that someone is allowing you to make tons of money for them while you barely even get a fraction of the value of your labor."

no one is coming to save you

I like to think of myself as a rational person but it is becoming increasingly apparent that I am just as irrational and prone to fantasy as the next person. Possibly even more so because I see the harsh reality of life and yet I still yearn and want my own situation to be different. Mine! One being out of over seven billion others. I know emotions mean nothing and yet I have been crying all last night and into this morning  as if that will change anything.

I know I am not the first person to be in this financial quandary. It's basically a commandment of Personal Finance: Don't Co-sign Anything! Or if you do, know that you are now as legally responsible for the debt as the original signer.

I knew this when I signed. I felt the sense of dread as I signed. I did not want to sign. I knew we were crazy over-paying for this car due to Mom's bad credit. (Mom knew it too.)

No more sacrificing for the financial black hole that is my family. I have done it too, too many times.

I should probably stop calling them too. Everything about my family depresses me nowadays. I feel like I come from a family of failures (with a few exceptions) and that they are dragging me down.

To be born into a world with inept genetic companions.

I should not have signed that car note no matter how much pressure I was under.

I can never forget: no one is coming to save you. no one is coming to save you. no one is coming to save you. no one is coming to save you.

Your family has shown you more than once that they don't have your best interest at heart when it comes to money. Stop letting the mirage and fantasy of the type of family you would like to have blind you to the family you actually have.

The one without a father and where 'struggle' is the motto.

It is what it is.

There are people in much, much worse conditions than myself and no one is coming to save them and yet my actions show that I somehow expect my situation to be different.

*sigh*

I fee like I should end this with some type of "I just have to make the best of what I have," but I am tired of doing that. Life always demands more and more from you. It never ends. I am so young and I am already so tired.

Life is an abusive lover.

The successful are just the best exploiters.

And the rest are just happy slaves.

And there are the few like me. People who just don't fit into the regular paradigm and are, for all intents and purposes, trapped.

No matter how much I run from it, the real world always catches up. I don't know how I will be able to live in such a world without finding meaning in work.

Wow. That was kind of long and disjointed. It really represents how I feel right now: depressed and tired with random bursts of frustration at the situation I find myself in.

But it is what it is.