Is this really a tour of duty? I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like it is, when I’m justifying it to myself like, “Yes, this is my track in life! I’ve finally found it. This is what I was meant to do–live at intentional communities. Thus, I’m having a great time traveling and looking at different ones, while also visiting people I know, addresses significant to my family history and personal writing, and also making a documentary.” Therefore, if I’m following my dreams, this is a tour of duty.
When I tell folks what I’m doing, they get really excited, say they’re jealous of my trip. They don’t know that my dad recently offered to pay for gas and repair costs for a whole year, just out of the blue, just because I’m his kid. I quit my job last year and left Pittsburgh with over $5000 in savings to take this trip, thinking I’d round out 2008 traveling on this dime. Now I’m in Seattle, my truck’s been in the shop for 3 days, and the cost to fix it ($1300) will go on my dad’s credit card. As it stands, I only have enough money to my name to actually pay that bill if my dad hadn’t offered to. Is that only because he agrees with what I’m doing, or just because I’m his kid? I can’t imagine him offering me this money if I were traveling around selling drugs or sex.
But none of that really matters because he’s providing it simply out of the goodness of his own heart and wallet, although today we discussed a future repayment plan. But it’s clear now that without that money, I wouldn’t have been able to leave Seattle. And so, I think of myself as a spoiled brat, which I have ever since I became somewhat class-conscious. I don’t know what the definition of “rich” is. Some people would consider me rich, others would not. I grew up what I think of as middle class–my mom is a school teacher and raised me and my brother mostly by herself, although my dad was very generous with child support and also bought me whatever I wanted as a kid. I know I’ve never been poor, but does that mean I’m rich?
I quit my job last year and now have no income. Aside from my dad’s income, which I’ve always considered, and have been encouraged to consider, a “safety net,” I have no money, property, assets, or credit to my name. I do have my truck, but it is soon to be worthless, and has already cost me and my family more than it’s currently worth. Does that mean I’m rich?
I have no insurance except the vehicle kind, which I am paying. I was only covered under health insurance for 11 mos. since 2002 and that was working as a third shift baker for Panera Bread. I pay for everything in my life right now aside from some gas money and truck maintenance. I have no income and under $2000 left to my name. Does that mean I’m rich?
I’m college-educated. I went to college because I could conceive of no other option. My parents went, my brother went, so I went. I was not told of, nor did I investigate any other course of action. I got a degree in English, creative writing emphasis. I mostly made A’ and B’s, as I had throughout my life, and graduated with a 3.47 GPA. In college, I paid a nominal amount of tuition and other costs, with my parents having paid a majority of the costs (including rent at apartments), and myself now owing on most of a 17,000-dollar consolidated loan, of which I’ve only paid a small bit over the last 6 years. Since graduating, I’ve mooched off my dad while pretending to be an anarchist, had some very brief published writing stints that paid almost no money, worked in food service, traveled mostly on my dad’s dime, volunteered, and was a therapist in the social work field.
I feel like I’ve been given so many opportunities, economic and otherwise, and yet still I feel like a lazy, overpriveleged asshole. Although most of my views (political, economic, gender, sexuality, etc.) do not match the mainstream’s, I feel I have yet to find something “to do” in lieu of the American Dream: full-time, reputable job; house; car; spouse; kids; yard; etc. I get into discussions with people on my travels about health care, jobs, money, computers, farming, construction, unions, literature, writing, teaching, everything under the sun. The number one idea that I come away with is that I am so inexperienced at all these things and also afraid to engage in them and/ or commit to doing them that I do nothing instead. Most of my time in Seattle has been spent reading someone else’s book (Green Suede Shoes: An Irish-American Odyssey by Larry Kirwan), biding my time until I leave, purposely not writing in my journal out of an old habit. The habit grows as I get older–I’m 28 and haven’t written much since I graduated, or at least not as much as I think I should be. I feel like I’m so out of the loop by now, what’s the worth in writing at all? All my stuff would be shit compared to someone who kept honing their skills after college, grad school/ PhD. or not. I resist working for money, at least for someone else, and I don’t have the knowledge or confidence to work for myself. I am an anarchist, and I think of all the wonderful work I could be doing with kids (I was a therapist to kids with Autistic Spectrum Disorders for 2 yrs.) or in some part of social services, or taking up something new, like welding or being an electrician, both of which I’ve contemplated recently. But after my induction into “what it means to be an anarchist” in the early 2000’s, I’ve resisted doing anything that entails for working for profit, or somebody else’s profit. I have done it, but I didn’t like that aspect of it when I did, or the driving to the place everyday, working according to someone else’s schedule, not my own.
Recently, I spent some time on some farms that were also intentional communities, or “communes”–i.e., places where folks live and work communally and don’t necessarily need to work outside the community to bring in an income. I had fun doing this work, relished it even–learning to live in community and doing the physical and mental labor it takes to grow your own food. These were things I had waited my whole life to start learning, and I’m glad I enjoyed it. I was worried that I would find it novel for a while, then get bored or scared to commit as has been the case with most other things in my life. I still have that thought in the back of my head as I travel toward a 6-week internship on another farm. But more than that, what about my future?
People say live in the present. That’s all well and good until the money runs out. People say Smash the State. That’s all well and good, but the State still rules our lives and it isn’t just as simple as smashing it. What will be in its place and how will we structure that? I don’t think most people on the planet are yet prepared to have that discussion and are content to pretend that nothing’s going completely wrong. People say get a job. I don’t want a job, but I do want to work. The jobs available to me are shitty. The jobs I like take years of training or a degree I don’t have and I’m not yet willing to commit to the training, let alone the price, of what it would take to qualify. People say go back to school. I still haven’t paid my undergrad loans and have no interest in moving up any sort of corporate ladder to get better pay to pay my current loans and more if I get a grad degree or other undergrad one.
I feel so confused, lazy, and ineffectual. I feel I have no talent, no wisdom, nothing to contribute. What the fuck is my direction in life? What has it ever been? Everyone else seems to know what the fuck they’re doing. And yes, I know these are absolutist statements and meant to gain sympathy/ empathy, but they are really how I feel!
So I’m a rich white kid by some folks’s accounts. Where’s my soapbox? Do I even get to have one? I hate rich people, yet others consider me rich and they judge me for that. How can I express grief, hatred, sadness, anger when the people around me have undermined the importance of my life? I have this experience but it’s not valid because I am “priveleged.” What the fuck is that? And so I have to not judge even people I consider to be rich because that is hypocrisy and I am tired of being hypocrtical and passive-aggressive and judgemental. But what am I to do with a person who judges me because my life has been easier than theirs based on how much money we’ve had? Not to say that my life hasn’t been fucked up, especially in the past, mostly emotionally speaking. Yeah, I went through some fucked up shit. But people seem really willing to accept physical strife much more readily than emotional or otherwise. Even so, now I’m valid because I have something fucked up to talk about. What if I’ve had a good life with nothing worth complaining about? Then others say I have a responsibility to help others make their lives better. Bullshit! Says who? Anarchism’s all about self-determination, right? Well, not all about, but I did not choose to be born–what sort of responsibility do I have to any human being? Or any other being for that matter? Who made up the rule that we should all help humans before animals or plants? We’re already over-populated and polluting the world beyond salvation (even my use of this computer is fostering that). Someone once told me that I had a responsibility to make a movie about my life because I am a transsexual, that it’s my responsibility to educate people about it. The fuck it is! I decide what my responsibility is, and if I have any at all.
But then there’s the part of me who wants to help, and who wants to not be an ignorant asshole about it, in as far as helping people who are from different socio-economic, racial backgrounds than me. I’m sure someone out there is already criticizing my use of “PC terms” and that’s one of the things that makes me hesitate in taking any action. I’m all for hearing people out on their experiences and venting about how myself as a priveleged white person may have contributed to their strife. I am not for hearing it and then being made to feel evil solely because I am white and priveleged and not being allowed to express my feelings as comfortably as anyone else. There are folks out there who don’t think I should even have a chance to speak in a discussion like this because media and government and employers and housing authorities already speak for me and allow me opportunities based on my appearance and what it symbolizes. I’m egalitarian, and so I feel anyone should have a chance to speak regardless of race, class, gender, and sexual preference among other things, and any person should be listened to and respected even if no one else in the room agrees with their statement.
In closing, and totally unrelated, I know and am thankful for my family who has helped me out in this case and many in the past, and the fine folks here in Seattle who have been hosting me for several days.
And now, look at what I’ve written. I’m sure someone out there can look at it and say, what a whiny bastard–look at all you have, all you’ve been given, and all you do is complain and sit around wasting your life. And yet I’ve written something. Just like everything else, I’m not sure of its worth. Just like everything else, I am the one who must impose a value on this writing. Just like everything else, I don’t know why the hell I have to do that except to keep my sanity and try to motivate myself to continue. Just like everything else, I don’t know how to do that without undermining my own socially-constructed beliefs.
Over and out,
CBW
PS–Comments are welcomed and encouraged.
