“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be”
Charles Bukowski
Growing up, my father was a wholesale trading card sales person who sold sports cards (among other things) to liquor stores, card shops, comic book stores and the like throughout Los Angeles. Aside from obtaining a vivid geographical understanding of Los Angeles and discovering that eating fast food for each meal is not ideal, being with him during my summers, taught me a lot about autonomy. Autonomy has been something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and as something I’ve strove my whole life for, I may have paid a price for it.
“Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces, to be in this way independent.” - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
When I say autonomy, I am not referring to a political stance, which can be tethered with libertarianism, nor am I talking about individualism per se because I am a big believer in teamwork and community. It’s more the idea, or rather, the desire, that what I do is not part of a larger societal script or what someone else wants me to do. Obviously, we all strive for this, but very seldom do we achieve it and worse, we’re shown that it’s not the ideal way to live because, well… Capitalism. We are conditioned, sometimes forced, to follow certain paths and as we hit a certain age, we’re supposed to have obtained these things or have achieved these steps in order to “succeed.” Because of my upbringing and what I saw in action, I never got a true sense of that forced pathway and frankly, I am glad I didn’t. Aside from a city job my father had part time, most of our income growing up came from said trading cards and my father worked tirelessly, driving constantly and hustling - he even turned down a cushy office job because he did not want to be stifled by cubicles and dry air conditioning. (Do you blame him?) This stuck with me. What I saw growing up was not an assembly line day of 9-5 color gray, but rather a more Kodachrome colored world in which each day was a bit different and exciting. It was not always a success or even healthy, and in fact, there were many bad days, but there was a sense of life, drama and adventure instilled in me. My family lived through both feast and famine more than enough times to just get used to it, or to feel that there was no other way to live.
Where I now sit professionally has become precarious. I work in the job I’ve had because, aside from being exhausting and stressful work, it gives me autonomy and in fact, the position I have held for a decade has given me both a steady paycheck and a work / life balance that allowed me to pursue music throughout it all. My job gave me a life since I was 25 and it was there for me through traumatic life events, great successes and even pandemics. But, the dearth of work out there right now, and my desire to be autonomous, has led me to take work that I didn't think I’d be taking at this stage in my life. Ew. See what I did there? I said this “stage in my life” and let it take hold, but it’s truly been eating at me for the last few months. Since, I do not see myself coming up for air anytime soon, I could do one of two things:
Get a steady, corporate job with some nice golden handcuffs, but do the same thing do in and day out for the unforeseeable future.
Continue to strive for autonomy and do the things that make me happy and give me purpose even though struggle and hustle are the day to day.
For me, it’s always 2. To some, this could be seen as misguided or stupid or irresponsible, and they’re not wrong. However, to know and feel the ebb and flow of having some money and then zero money is something I'm just used to. With that, I make decisions that I want to make (like the ol’ millennial adage that one who buys a $6 latte is an asshole) but these things give me joy and life and purpose and because I know how fleeting it all is, I don't take things for granted, especially my over priced lattes!
Even though I may be used to the ebb and flow of freelance life and how to maintain during the bad times, this time has been a much harder pill to swallow. I’m now having to pivot in a way I haven’t before. A gig that gives me full autonomy, but makes me, like $10 an hour, a food delivery driver, does in fact suck, and can be dehumanizing, but the freedom does allow me to do what I need to do beyond just the work. I can be free with my thoughts, I can think creatively and I even have time to build ideas and think ahead to try and make money doing the things I love, rather than slog away mindlessly doing busy work for a weekly paycheck. Besides, it’s a means to an end, not the end. Of course, I admit I am fortunate enough, at least right now, to have this not be my full income and I truly empathize with those who need this. The way I get through it is that I realize that what we “gig workers” give up in pay, we get back the most important thing we have, which is time.
I'm likely just flailing here, but I really believe that in order to break this chokehold capitalism has on us, I think it’d behoove us to be more free with our thinking and our actions. However, convenience is so…convenient. How could we resist? One might argue we should accept that this is the “new norm” and ride it out. But from what I see, homelessness is extremely high, the cost of living is unfair and most of the creatives I know (ie; my friends) are not working, or barely working and are feeling the same thing I do. Most of my conversations these days are about this, in fact. Friends with corporate gigs have had enough and those like me, who are lucky to not be in that setting, are realizing that finding any job is seemingly impossible and that we are told we should be thankful to be making $100 for something we’ve poured our hearts into and I think that’s unfair. The system doesn't give us any value, so we should value ourselves as much as we can. It’s the only way out.
I had a friend say that she prefers the freelance life because she can connect with new people all the time and not feel stuck in one place. I have another friend who has a solid job, but it doesn’t fit her anymore and she feels she has no purpose there. Just last night my friend and I were talking about this and he said “I want to do the job I love but can’t lose the job I need.” This speaks to so many people I know and love and it’s tragic. We should be allowed to share with the world the thing we’re good at and actually be compensated for it. Instead, we’re beholden to algorithm bosses, or golden handcuffs with promises to buy more things and we’re fed a big fat lie that we’d be happy with it. We don’t need stuff. We need purpose and we need to share it with everyone. We’re only on this earth once, and frankly, not for that long.
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” - Marcus Aurelius.
This is all to say that I am thankful that my parents instilled a bit stubbornness and personal value in me. It may not have been conscious on their end (I’ll wait till they read this and gauge the response) but it worked. If I died tomorrow, I’ll at least know that, even though I had gone through some major hurdles, I had mostly lived my life by my own accord. Memento Mori, right?
Thanks for reading. I promised last time that I’d get back to fun music anecdotes, but I can’t shake these feelings right now and I feel this is a place for me to be vulnerable with you all, so thank you for being here with me now. I hope you’re all happy, healthy and hanging in there.
Till next week…
Further Reading: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/autonomy-moral/
Further Listening:
Thanks Diane. I am not pitting one against the other. I'm just explaining my experience and my feelings. Many people have jobs they love corporate or otherwise but others have to scratch an inch to be mobile and perhaps, for lack of a better phrase, thrive in the chaos, which is something that I align with. And agreed that the arts should be funded better and that people who create should be taken more seriously But we are caught in a capitalist's net.
I'm not the most succinct in my thoughts but there's definitely a lot to chew on with what's happening right now.
The scary thing is that it doesn’t even look like corporate full time jobs are even stable anymore… so I guess it’s now up to us to choose instability on our own terms or someone else’s?