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Why am I writing this? I’m lost. I’m stuck. I’m unemployed. I have no idea where to go from here.
My teeth hurt but I have no dental insurance. I haven’t had a physical in years. I could be diabetic, for all I know.
I am home all day. Sometimes I go to the grocery store to see the other unemployed. We are meticulous shoppers. We only buy necessities – a dozen eggs, bread, milk, chicken, beef, and a vegetable: usually broccoli. Fruit is a luxury.
I have ten thousand dollars in savings. I have to make that last. I have to stop paying my credit cards for a while. I just can’t afford it. I have to sell some books and cancel some services. I will miss my Netflixed documentaries.
How can I make money? I can try to sell my writing, but who would pay for this shit? And besides, I need a more immediate solution.
Substitute teaching is a possibility. I’ve done that before. It’s easy. You sit in a room with a group of unruly assholes and basically ignore them for ninety-five dollars a day. I can do that. I am very good at ignoring people.
Or I could go work in an office. I can sit in a cubicle for eight dead hours with no sunlight doing busy work. I would get more depressed, but no one would bother me. And corporate expectations are so low it’s next to impossible to fail. I could do that.
I could make a lot of money if I sold shit. But I can’t sell shit. I can only sell shit that sells itself. I just can’t get emotionally excited about a product. I could sell marijuana. Marijuana sells itself. But I am not ready for a life of crime, just yet.
That’s why I won’t teach, Teaching is fraudulent. Teaching does damage. Teachers tell children and young adults that they are wrong about everything. Teachers bend their thoughts. Teachers corrupt their beginner’s mind. Fuck teaching as a profession. I want to teach by living.
But I have to work for money. But I don’t like my choices. There is just no place for me. I feel rejected by the world. I am in pain. I am suffering. I am learning the difference between the two.
The pain is in my body. The suffering is in my mind. Suffering is the voices in my head that say I deserve the pain. I have internalized that belief. I have internalized a lot of awful shit. I’ve been rooting through it for months.
I feel like an archeologist. I dig into my mind. I excavate my thoughts and memories. I find so many errors. I hold delusional opinions about myself and the world. I feel so important to myself. But I’m not important at all. I really matter to me. But I don’t matter to the world.
I wonder if that’s normal.
I have always tried to be honest. I thought it was virtuous. I have always written honestly. I thought it was my duty as an artist. I take my responsibility to the world very seriously. So, why does the world always discard me? Why was I fired for my writing?
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This post exposes the crisis in the American creative class. How will future works of art be created when basic survival requires the majority of the artist’s time. How many poets and painters, writers and performers, wasting away in the Waste Land of corporate America.
Tom Hardie chronicles his struggle to find an artistic voice while selling the majority of his time for food, shelter, and gasoline.
I believe we are witnessing the first stirrings of a great poet. He writes prose poems about the viscera of Americana. It is often ugly and depressing.
Postmodern realism is all about stimulating the reader’s gut.
Just basic whining. If you want money get a fucking job. Slacker.