Money, Money, Money

I read a blog post recently that talked about the notion of monetizing hobbies. The author described a situation where a woman she met, who made herself a very nice dress, had been constantly pressured to sell her work.  She goes on to discuss the idea of “find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

This got me thinking. The recent opening up of career options for people using the internet I’ve viewed mostly as a positive thing. There are a lot of ways for people to making a living doing what they enjoy these days that just didn’t exist 30yrs ago. If she wanted to, this woman could turn her dress skills into a career and sell them online. Having that option is great.

But that idea of should she, really does bug me. I’ve become more and more disillusioned with many of the fundamental underpinnings to our present day capitalistic society. One quote from the blog, in particular, stuck out:

Whenever I have some time to myself, I panic. Unstructured time — especially spent alone — is phenomenally rare in my life and I feel an overwhelming obligation to make good use of it. I should get some laundry done. Meal prep. Ask each item in my dresser if it brings me joy. Figure out how to fold a fitted sheet. Paint my nails. Work on the play I’m writing. Do a face mask. But instead, I deal with my option paralysis in the least helpful way possible: by scrolling through my phone alone in the dark until I run out of battery (literally or figuratively) and put myself to bed feeling like I’ve lost something valuable and hating myself for it. I can’t be productive, and I can’t fully relax, and I can’t possibly be alone in this.

With my work writing, and now that my son’s in school, I have a lot of time to myself. I go through cycles where I find myself with time and I feel this panic she describes. I feel this ever-present need to do something productive. This is compounded by this stupid toxic masculine message that society has soaked into me that because I’m male I should be providing for my family. And that I’m a loser because without my wife’s income we would be homeless.

I’m fortunate that I make enough from writing to cover our gaming habit. Which plays further into this whole idea. I write about gaming because I enjoy it. But also feel like I have to in order to justify the money we spend on gaming stuff. Money that, if I didn’t earn from writing, would have been earned entirely by my wife.

This all feeds together with that feeling of needing to be busy otherwise I’m wasting time. Then I take on more and more things. Then I’ll take on more. Or plan some new writing project. Or go looking for more projects. Or start some house project that I decide needs to be done right now because I have five minutes.

Then, I’ll have no time for writing because I’ve committed myself to so many different things. Which will make me feel guilty for not writing because I should be earning money. But why?

I don’t want to get into an economics discussion but look at it just as this feeling that saturates everything.  Why is earning money so important in our society? Why do we view the loss of potential money as a failing?

I say all of this from a position of extreme privilege. For me personally, we live comfortably. Many, many people have no choice about needing to squeeze every working hour out of life because they’ll go hungry if they aren’t working three jobs. But that is a different discussion than what I’m focusing on today.

My wife likes her job most of the time. She likes that I’ve been home for my son in his early years and am available for all the other things he still needs. My not making a traditional income doesn’t bother her. And, most of the time, it doesn’t bother me.

But there’s still that ingrained societal implication that it’s wrong. She feels it too when she wants to do a craft project on the weekend. The pressure to be a mother and spend every non-working moment with our son. Or to do productive things around the house. Or to work on a project that’s going to be a gift rather than just something she wants to make.

When I picked my son up from school, I have two choices. I can go 30min early and sit near the front of the line, have half an hour to read a book and then get him within 5min of school letting out. Or I can wait till 20min after school’s out and the line has thinned out. I like the reading time. But I often feel like I’m wasting so much time.

Related to this, we just passed March Madness time. and Inevitably, we saw articles pop up about how much productivity will be lost during this time and how much money companies are losing. An entire concept that drives me bonkers.

You can’t lose something you don’t have. It’s an opportunity cost, sure, but what articles like those never seem to grasp is the other side of that cost. What’s the opportunity cost of being hyper-focused on productivity and trying to squeeze every last dollar out of every activity?