Apology.
I don’t expect anyone to understand what I am doing here. It’s non-stop work. All the same, it is pure joy. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to write and narrate daily. This is a gift I give myself.
We are seasonal creatures. The developed world expects us to be linear. Expects us to be as consistent as our beating hearts. Emotions and feelings don’t work like that. The daily office grind kills a creative writer’s soul, and I will never return. Ever. I’d rather die. And I’m prepared for death. And that understanding breathes life into my soul.
Being a person with nothing to lose means that you can only ascend from there. It’s true power. I quote the words of my dear friend Franz Antoni when he once told me, when we were both destitute in 2020 at the start of this horrible fucking pandemic — “What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t eat? I die? So what?”
Know this—money is quite beautiful—yet its purpose often goes misunderstood. The truth about money is that it exists in order to make the creative process comfortable. It helps you to be good to your family, and give them what they need. It makes you appear like a better person.
I put aside what little money I had for a few years while I was on rock bottom, and put it into crypto. It has greatly appreciated, and allows me to give myself the gift of daily writing, and take care of my immediate family. I no longer need to listen to anyone else’s suggestions as to what I need to do with my life. And that is power.
Then again, being hungry is also powerful. You give up something on the physical plane in exchange for spiritual power.
If you work for money, you become a slave to it. It is caustic in that way. Starts to put itself in front of all else, including human life. It gets in the way of our own sanity.
This is all to say — money should work for you, and not the other way around.
The way to get through all of this, is to appreciate your individual self. And create, not caring what anyone else thinks. To believe with conviction that what you are doing is done in the light of loving service to friend, family, neighbor and stranger.
And remember what Riley Mortimer says, “If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.” Remove fear from your life, and you become unstoppable. It requires taking risks, and letting it all go.
Let it all go. That’s the message. Forgive yourself. Move on. Keep on creating.
-W.V.Carleton