2024 Week 44: Letter to My Past Self From 3 Years Ago

 

So, you've just quit working, eh? Decided to try your hand at being professionally unemployed? You claim it is to satisfy your curiosity, from reading about early retired freegans, about life outside the mass of functioning economic units (that is, to work and consume). You think of it as your very own Walden, an experiment to discover the necessaries of life:

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. 

It is vanity that inspires you, even if it takes you a while to be honest with yourself about that. Your heart is broken, your ego shattered, from the loss of the writing/publishing career you had put nearly all of yourself in. The economy has rejected you. To preserve your ego, you now try to rewrite the narrative. Now, you are the one rejecting the marketplace. You go, girl!

Later you will learn that voluntary impoverishment is not as fun as it looks. But for now, feeling cool and alternative will fuel you for the next couple of years.

But to return to the beginning. At the start of your venture, your perspective is largely pecuniary. You scrupulously check every last bit of your portfolio, making sure you have sufficient money in your investments and enough petty cash to last you for a year. This patting of your pockets allows you to stall for several months. Eventually, you realise the money has nothing to do with being "ready". You just have to do it.

In any case, your ideas of how much you would spend as an unemployed person are all wrong. While employed, you spent maybe $700 or $800 a month. You expect to spend no more than that when unemployed. But the benchmark is wrong because you were needlessly frugal. You had little to no hobbies, preferring to extract all your pleasure from work. 

In year or two, when you are no longer able to indulge in workaholism, you will discover new diversions that you thought were beneath you. You will develop a taste for avocados and blueberries, sushi restaurants, physical books, fountain pens and fancy notebooks, cute dresses, and hanging out at cafes and pubs. Your newfound sensitivity to consumer pleasures will increase your expenses to $1,200 to $1,500 a month, which you will (believe it or not) be glad to spend.

The real issue is not money but time use. In the next 3 years you will find yourself most disturbed not by the lack of income but by the lack of meaningful occupation. Hitherto, you have been so absorbed in work that you do not have positive interests outside of employment. 

At the very least, you get to test your long-cherished belief that writing is your Great Passion. You will learn, in the next few years, that you are not a particularly passionate wordsmith. You write for money; it will line the wallet but leave you cold. You meet people who write for art's sake, who seek recognition as artists by being published; again nothing stirs.

No, what actually interests you - which will take you almost 3 years to figure out - is new experiences and ways of life. The experiences have primacy. Writing is only a method of documentation.

In time you will get a new Quote to Live By, from New Grub Street:

When already there was more good literature in the world than any mortal could cope with in his lifetime, here was she exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be more than a commodity for the day’s market. What unspeakable folly! [...] And all these people about her, what aim had they save to make new books out of those already existing, that yet newer books might in turn be made out of theirs? This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print—how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit!

Being "in between jobs", you will get many chances to test out occupations of interest. You try out gig work, working in retail, volunteering, social work, pet sitting, travelling, and teaching, among others. You approach these projects in the hope that they will reveal your next Grand Passion. Well, shall I spoil it for you? They will only give you mixed results. 

You will eventually make peace with the fact that you probably do not have a Grand Passion. It will be a relief. You are really just a pleb who is happy to waste money on pastries and books you may or may not read. This means that, occupationally, you can do just about anything. You no longer expect to be divinely fulfilled by work.

As for how you will develop psychologically: your Type A tendencies will eventually fade. It is difficult to be high-strung when there isn't much going on in your life apart from pet chores, plenty of sleep, drawing in your journal, desultorily reading, going for writers' meetups, and yoga. 

You will go through boom-and-bust cycles of boredom and inspiration. You will feel lonely, especially after your partner quits unemployment and goes back to work. You will have been out of the workforce for so long that employment seems quite remote, practically exotic. 3 years later, you will come full circle and start wondering what it would be like to be an employee once again.

By now you must be thinking: then what is even the point of me quitting? I will admit, it is difficult to classify your sabbatical as success or failure. But does that matter? You will have enriched your mind with Austen, Tolstoy, Stevenson, Orwell, Waugh and Kafka. You will have done a good amount of travelling despite your limited income (perhaps more than you ever did when you were salaried). You will have discovered the endless amusements of people-watching and drawing. In short, you will find things worth living for that are not work-related. Surely that makes it all worthwhile?

It's revealing and embarrassing but in the spirit of being ~vulnerable~ I am showing you my timesheet. I went to Kino on Tuesday and after spending literally hours I finally decided to buy the Luddite FreeField Vertical notebook

source

and a Midori MD Journal in plain A5:

I am really obsessed with MD notebooks now. The paper is just the kind I like - a little toothy, doesn't bleed. The designs are ultra-minimalist and the few design elements they contain are delightful. Like the 2025 planner's pleasingly off-centre calendar, the tear-off corner of the 1 Day 1 Page Codex Journal. I think after I fill out the FreeField Vertical I will get the MD grid journal. It has a super unobtrusive 8-panel 2-page spread design which allows you to use it as an (undated) weekly planner - or change your mind and use it for regular notes or drawings.

Apart from indulging my notebook fetish, this week I've been busy with job and residency applications, family get-togethers on Deepavali, and... being sick (both Jon and I). Pleasing things from the week include: fresh bedsheets,

the tiniest bus,

my neighbour's new plant,

and snuggles with Charlie.

I also binged on Edgar Allan Poe's books this week. The man is a master of words - there are some completely crazy scenes in Arthur Gordon Pym I can never forget. (Thirst, delusion, fever, madness, cannibalism, sharks, stench of death, white mists, Tekeli-li!) It is not an "enjoyable" book. It's unsettling and unsatisfying. I read up on it for days afterward; the most illuminating essay I have come across is this one from Public Domain Review. 

 

As for the Tales, I came for the Auguste Dupin mysteries but found myself rather preferring the horror ones like The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart. I liked the hyper-rational voice of the insane characters. And Poe is particularly funny in stories like Loss of Breath and The Gold Bug. Overall, though, I think he loses to H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Aickman in the classic scary stories department. (I have not tried M.R. James)