Wednesday, May 13, 2009

401suc(k)s

What am I doing here. What am I doing here. What am I doing here.

Was coerced, or herded, really, into a meeting about 401(k)s and how I need to start worrying about my retirement today. If I want to be fiscally successful and independent, I should be putting 10% of my income away in a hidey hole. That's a great sentiment but then I would no longer be able to buy groceries. But really, eating is so passe, so I should probably give it up anyway.

No wonder some people believe the world is going to end soon. "Our" (as in the Western world, and probably beyond) priorities are absolutely fucked. We are cogs in a machine and most of us don't even care. What is life? Life is not working. Life is not money. Life is not stuff. Life is people. It is blood, it is spirit, it is the sun shining and the clouds raining, it is walking and breathing and loving and speaking and connecting and playing and so many other things that are in-quantifiable, therefore of no great importance in the modern world for that very reason.

Yes, I realize that it is wise to save money. It is something that I have to do in order to live in this world. But I get scared to think that someday I might be so involved in the quantifiable that I forget that those are DETAILS. My father told me that I was just going through a phase, that I'll grow up and come to realize that yes, the world is about money. If my notions that the world is much larger and more beautiful than a dollar bill can encompass are actually a phase, then I hope I die before I come out of it.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Some days I wish I was steering. Others I'm happy I'm not. And the rest of the time I wonder who or what is supposed to be steering.