Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for reading. This is the first essay in the new format of my newsletter: I send suggestions every Thursday based on things that have inspired me throughout the week and an essay once a month, usually memoir-style, about accepting personal truths and the crusade that is existing in the world. I could not be more thankful for you and your support.
What ‘Work’ Means Now
A few weeks ago, I fumbled my way through buying my first ever Powerball ticket. How much does one row of numbers cost? What does "powering up" mean? The teenage Publix clerk explained it the same way he'd walk an aging aunt through BeReal. But I eventually hustled out of there with all the numbers 20 bucks would get me. The Powerball pot, of course, was massive — $2.4 billion — and as I was driving home, I mentally scoffed at myself for participating in the collective craze. I also imagined what it would be like to win.
My thought process went as such: in the version of my life where a shocking amount of money is bequeathed to me overnight, the first order of business is setting up retirement plans for close friends and family. I imagined a whole charade in which I would clandestinely hire a lawyer and go through all kinds of hoops to deliver vast sums of money to my loved ones without anyone ever knowing it was me. ("What? You also received a notice you are the recipient of an enormous trust from an anonymous benefactor?"). The second action would be to buy a brownstone in New York to live and die in, a thing only the fabulously wealthy can do now. Even a fixer-upper, usually, costs over a million bones. Thirdly, I would help underfunded libraries and women’s clinics, though this thought doused me in melancholy.
But even after all that, I would still be rich — rich enough to never work again. And at that thought, I had an unexpected reaction: a pancake flip in my stomach. The same kind of anxious wave you get when you drop from the highest point of a rollercoaster or realize you're 20 minutes late for a very important meeting. When I thought it, I would never need to work again, it was like my new reality was already setting in: I was rich — nay, loaded — and instead of joy, my gut bottomed out.
Because if I never needed to work again, what the hell would I even do?
This is not a segue to launch into some campaign about work as all-important, the foundation for a meaningful life, the measure of a person — no. In fact, this visceral reaction to I would never need to work again tipped the first domino in a long and complex row. At that moment in the car, thinking about possessing a life-altering sum of money, it dawned on me just how much I've been looking outwards — and failing to see how my learned concept of "work" has twisted me.
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When I was young, all I ever wanted to do was make up stories. I had a creative system in place: I'd seek out inspiration (from shows on Nickelodeon, the Amelia's Notebook series, whatever my parents allowed me to consume), lock myself in my room, twirl (this is where I'd swirl around anything that could move like a ribbon through the air — a loose shirt on a hanger, a flag on a stick. I have some kind of compulsion with movement that jogs my creative brain. I still twirl to this day), and then, I would write. Most of my ideas were concepts for movies. For example, one was titled The Not-So-Perfect Angel. It was about an awkward-but-lovable teenager who almost makes it into heaven but needs to prove herself as a worthy guardian before she's allowed to join the varsity team of vetted angels. Breezing past how dark this concept actually is (a dead teenager vying for a spot in an exclusive club where the main draw is you aren't eternally damned... set in a Lizzie McGuire-style high school milieu), I was always in my happy place coming up with concepts. That one day my ideas could get made into real movies didn't feel impossible, but that wasn't the point. Creating, writing, was the point. And not once did I think about doing it for money.
I'm the first to recognize how fortunate I was to be a young person who wasn't distracted by the kinds of situations a lack of money can foster, who could spend free time daydreaming, not worrying about the welfare of my guardians or myself. This feeling of safety, this room to think and grow and play, should be afforded to all children. When the magnets started to snap together for me — when I began to understand the grip, the transience of money — I was eleven.
My mom had left her job after she became surprise-pregnant at 41 and my dad simultaneously lost his in a round of cut-throat layoffs. This, compounded with the lifestyle we'd developed (my brother and I in private schools, the works), and my parents' decision to seriously try playing the stock market sunk my family to a cavernous low. Sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety — it all descended seemingly overnight, clinging to everything I knew and loved like cold morning dew on camping gear left outside the tent. We were broke, and suddenly life was different.
Scenes from that time are branded with an iron in my memory. My parents in an all-out screaming match while I sat on the couch with my brother and infant sister, hamming up the happy in hopes they'd look over and see how lucky they were to have a family like ours (they never looked over, and my dad threatened to leave that night). Running into my dad in the hallway, his eyes red from crying, me asking, Is everything okay?, and the tightening in my throat when I pretended, for his sake, to believe him when he said he just got shower water in his eyes. Handily volunteering, at age 12, to babysit my siblings, but wondering mere minutes after my parents left for some stock market conference or another what I would do if they got in a car crash on the way home. The pressure to be a source of stability and happiness for my family totally rewired me, and money's influence — no, equivalence — with stability and happiness was burned in me like a tattoo on thin skin.
Funnily enough, my parents were convinced they hid the stress from us kids; as an adult, I've talked about it with my mother at length. And to give them credit, even when they were experiencing such financial woe, they never pushed me or my brother away from pursuing our interests, even though those interests seemed to be leading us towards starving artisthood. Yet it was around the time of the great income flux that I started to see my parents’ support differently. "You can do it," became, in my mind, "You can do it for money."
The idea of "pursue what you love so you never work a day in your life" has infiltrated American culture so deeply most of us don't even realize we're reciting the mantra in our sleep. How many times did we hear as children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and know, without a shadow of a doubt, we were being asked how we will make money doing something we like to do? Is anyone ever unsure what's really being asked when a new acquaintance at a party strikes up a conversation with, "What do you do?" Of course not — they are looking to understand us as a person and assume our jobs will clue them in. Careers, society tells us, define who you are. Or, if not your career, the side-project you're working on that you hope will one day make you money. None of this is new information, but to think about how normalized this idea of passions-as-work really is, how it's crucial to the all-powerful American Dream, is startling. I was lauded as a pubescent girl in braces and a training bra for "knowing what I wanted to do" in life, and "pursuing my passions.” I don't fault my parents for their support of course, but this overwhelming assurance that I was doing something right by gunning to monetize my raw love of craft now feels curdled.
It's already difficult enough to make and keep money in a system that feels like a dangerous game we’re never given a rulebook for. We don’t prioritize education on how to make enough money to retire comfortably, much less with wealth, even though the odds are stacked against us. Where instead of safety nets, we have mounting pressures on nuclear families to provide for aging relatives, and debt as a standard. Where it feels increasingly imperative to take the time — on your own, with little help — to make no mistakes when doing something as simple as opening an IRA, be skeptical of every lender, keep tabs on promising business IPOs, figure out crypto, or plan under-a-dollar meals for your family just to save for a future. Trying to acquire and keep money is already something we each are individually forced to "figure out." Doing this while also "figuring out" what you "love" to do should not be normalized. In fact, if this pinnacle of success is achieved — doing what you love, making lots of money doing it, "only" doing it 40 hours a week so you can also live a "balanced" life with friends and family to support your mental health, and saving heartily for retirement — that’s rare, like winning the lottery.
Of course, not everyone buys this impossible ideal we're sold — plenty of people do just work to make money because they simply live fulfilling enough lives outside of the workplace (though that choice is becoming ever less popular). But who we as Americans choose to idolize proves that the rat race does indeed have a finish line drawn in the sand: you win the trophy if you're making money from a passion. Any job before we find that holy grail is simply a stepping stone to be dirtied under those boots with the infamous bootstraps we keep having to pull ourselves up by. This line of thinking has become so prevalent, particularly for anyone with a modicum of advantage, that now, even if you're working a stable job with benefits and good hours around people you actually like, if it doesn't speak to who you "are," you can still somehow be failing.
I've held these thoughts for years. I see lots of holes in that Do What You Love cheese and I believe in fairness and realized support for Americans as a collective. What struck me in the car after my lottery ticket purchase, the thing I felt in my gut which never, ever lies, the thing that practically forced me to pull over just for a moment to register it, was fear. Because it dawned on me that I'd seen this impossible-to-win, do-what-you-love game for what it was, yet — somewhere along the line — I promised myself I would win it.
Even when I expected absolutely no one else to cross that finish line, I'd been training for the marathon with militant diligence. To "have it all" was my guiding star, even if it was exploding. I realized — as much as I didn’t want to believe it, as much as I was ashamed of it — making money was no longer just entwined with my deeper passion to tell stories; it had become a kind of passion all its own. If I never needed to work again, I wouldn’t be a part of the game anymore. But being a player has been a part of my identity for so long, what would I do, who would I be, without it?
It was sobering. I like having money. Who doesn't? We need it to live. But I never would have gone as far as to equate it with a purpose in life. I never would have agreed to that — I don't want to agree to that. To recognize such a truth that day was twofold: it brought me deep shame, for one. Like I'd been talking the talk while a low-battery mobility scooter did my walking for me. But it also felt like I'd ripped open a stubborn bag of potato chips with such force all its contents burst forth, up into the air like fireworks. Like everything was finally out in the open, even though it was a mess I had to clean up.
I remember my first year in New York after college, the overwhelming feeling of failure that year. I wanted to be a screenwriter but I had no idea how to do it — who to network with, how to make money storytelling. I remember sitting in my room trying to write something to show potential agents, but not being able to pen one good idea on the page. I remember feeling like I needed to succeed, now, and all on my own. I was broke again then, so worried about money all the time, but unwilling to take any job that wasn't getting me closer to my "goals." What would life be like now if I had given myself an ounce of grace? What kinds of connections would I have made if I had simply been okay with organizing my time to do paid work and live, not as an intertwined double-helix, but as two separate codes of DNA, two different bodies in one large life? And then I think about how my pendulum swung squarely to the other side. When I finally did start to make money, when I started to feel comfortable again, how many times did I neglect my pull to create, instead filling my time with paid gigs or making other people happy, just to hold close that sense of safety and love I needed as a kid?
In a society that hawks individual success, there is never anyone to blame but you for where you are and what your situation is, even though every shred of evidence about living in America speaks to the contrary. Just take my thoughts after buying my Powerball ticket — that I'd want to help my loved ones retire, secure housing, and single-handedly fund crucial community programs because systems aren't in place to do so is nothing short of appalling. That I was not only caught up in, but promoting, the very game I hate to see us all play, left me empty.
It must be noted, there's nothing wrong with finding and doing a job you like. Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with making money — I'm the first to admit I like nice things and the kind of lifestyle a little extra money affords. And this is also not to say that that having ambition is wrong. In fact, I think ambition is one of the sexiest characteristics a person can have. It’s more about redefining how making money and having ambition fit into the bigger picture of our lives. That, and understanding that if we work steady jobs and aren’t doing what we love, we aren’t failing. That it’s more than okay to knit without opening an Etsy store. That if we're doing something we love as paid work and not making that much money, we still, as human beings, deserve basic rights. And if someone out there is doing what they love and making a shit ton of money doing it, they haven’t just succeeded — they are a freak case. Truth is, all of us are not-so-perfect angels. But we shouldn't need to fight tooth and nail, or prove ourselves, to be welcomed through the pearly gates.
I’m making slow progress, but its progress nonetheless. I'm actively declining paid gigs offered to me on top of my 9-5 so I’m not working overtime, and I’m trying to adjust my lifestyle so I’m not panicking if one of those extra jobs slips through my fingers. This is just me though, and as I’ve mentioned, so many people aren’t afforded the luxury of saying no to any kind of paid work. To focus on how to be a part of movements to change this feels like a much better use of my time than trying to fill my own coffers.
And as it's a new a realization that my relationship to work and making money must be fundamentally altered, I still have my moments. Just last week I almost bastardized this newsletter by turning it into a shopping list I thought might be more easily profitable, a concept I quickly backpedaled in favor of doing what feels more authentic: writing stuff like this, even if it's harder, takes more time, and probably won’t make me rich. I still hope to be able to make enough from these essays to pay my editor (and that will mean, probably, asking for a small amount of money for people to read them), but if I don’t make enough to net zero, it doesn’t even matter. For the first time in a long time, creating, writing, is the point.
Just this morning, my sister texted and asked if I wanted to walk on the beach with her. A year ago, I would have been awake at 6 a.m. feverishly “working” to finish a paid gig I really didn’t have time or energy for, and would have automatically declined — but this morning, I was simply enjoying myself. So I refilled my coffee and walked down to meet her. When I told her I was almost finished with a new essay, she was so happy for me, expressed she was glad I was finally writing again. “That’s, like, who you are,” she said.
I looked out to the waves, dotted with surfers. They bobbed with the ocean and I was lulled by the turning of the earth. I’ve never felt more uncertain of anything in my life — where I will be living in three months, what I’ll do for money after my current contract ends. But I have who I am. And I’m working on that.