Tuesday, August 28, 2018

i'd rather be a housewife, i guess.

maybe that's the truth of it, isn't it?

*shrug*

no kids.
i might compromise on the partner thing.

no kids.

but, if you have a cool basement for me to hang out in and create while you're at work, i might consider fucking you in exchange for access to it.
i've decided that my purpose in life is to make art.

and, while i acknowledge that i have been less productive than i'd like, i don't want to waste my time making money.

i want to get back to making art.
i just got an email offering me a job for $30/hr.

i'm assuming it's bullshit. but, here's the funny twist - i have been headhunted, and i've been headhunted by...

...csis.

that's the canadian cia.

i told them to fuck off. at the time, i was working, but i didn't want to work for the government - that was a rejection on moral grounds. i just didn't want to work for an organization that does what csis does. i was hoping to get something a little less heavy, in the private sector,

in the long run, i learned that there isn't really a private sector in canada, or not in the way you'd imagine it. the dominant contractor in the private sector is the state. that is, you can work for the state directly, or you can work for the contractors that the state hires, but you're working for the government, in the end - or you're working in a coffee shop.

i would have preferred the coffee shop, but they never called me back.

at this point in my life, the idea of sitting in an office is not acceptable to me. i'd be terrible at it, really. i just wouldn't want to be there. my skill set may seem appealing from a distance, but i just don't have the patience to bullshit it any more - i wouldn't want to be there, and i wouldn't pretend i do.

but, you might imagine my life would be different if i made $30/hr. that's, what, $60,000 a year? what the hell would i do with that?

buy a car!

nope...

buy a house!

eh. probably not.

buy a boyfriend!

definitely not.

i could maybe buy a few guitars.

you know what i'd actually do with it?

i'd get the cheapest apartment i could find, bicycle to work and then dump the money into stocks. if i can dump $100,000 into the market after a few years, it shouldn't take long to live off of the dividends.

because that's what i want. i don't want a mortgage. i want a guaranteed annual income.
and, this is what i've been saying for years and that i've tried to escape from - and sometimes succeeded in it.

capitalism is just a waste of fucking time.

every second you spend in capitalism is wasted doing some stupid triviality to balance a spreadsheet. even when you're trying to get out of it, it is impossible to enjoy your life - you're working, or you're avoiding working, you're trying to sell something, or you're trying to buy something, or you're trying to rent something, you're just constantly lost in these pointless market mechanisms that gain you nothing substantive at all - you're just doing the same stupid thing either way, which is throwing away any concept of creativity or meaning in the finite amount of time you have before you start decomposing...

there's no way to make capitalism meaningful.

there is no task within it that is worthwhile.

it is millions of people wasting their lives away doing nothing of any meaning or importance, because they can't find anything better to do, anyways.

and, if i have to fucking die like a dog on the street to avoid wasting what time i have left, then so be it.

all i can muster up is a general fuck you for being oppressive.

i would rather be dead than employed.

and, i'll prove it if you force me to.
what's really going to piss me off, in the end, is that i've wasted the last year on this, and reached no meaningful conclusion - that all of this struggle for a healthy escape has been a waste of time, and that i couldn't have even spent it better, due to the deplorable conditions in the unit.
what is the difference between wasting your life homeless and wasting your life working?

it's wasted either way.

but, wealth does not provide for escape; only poverty provides for actual freedom.

poverty is superior because it provides hope - a hope for escape from the wastefulness.
i grew up on welfare in a housing project in the southern part of ottawa.

and, while i didn't come to terms with it until later, i have been transgendered my whole life.

i've spent my whole life evading violence and living in fear.

these are lessons i've actually learned very well, and are at the crux of what i already am. i don't need somebody to tell me what it's like to be poor. i don't need somebody to tell me what it's like to be marginalized. i'm well aware of this. it's at the core of my existence, and a defining component of my life choices.

if i hadn't been through such levels of poverty in the past, i might have been more keen on wasting my life in the triviality of capitalist labour. it is because i know the pointlessness of existence that i know the pointlessness of capitalism.

you can take notes if you want.

but you're honestly just wasting my time.
let this be a condemnation of capitalism to whomever is taking note of it.
i just want a smoke-free space to work on my art.

and, i'll fight through whatever means necessary until i find one.
the most important thing that i've learned from my previous time spent homeless is that this is a state where trust is impossible.

you cannot meet friends when you're homeless.

you cannot trust the kindness of strangers when you're homeless.

and, you do not want other people to know that you're homeless, when you're homeless - especially not other homeless people.

when you're homeless, everybody you meet is a potential thief, a potential thug and a potential rapist.

you consequently do not want to stay in the same place for more than a few days, lest you draw suspicions to yourself. and, whenever possible, you want to take yourself to areas that are away from other people, as they can only possibly do you extreme harm.

homelessness is a condition where extreme paranoia is a precondition for your own safety, and naivete is a one-way ticket to certain death.
i've been aware for a while now that there appears to be something weird happening here.

there were two places i was in the process of putting something down on, and they both mysteriously evaporated.

i don't know what the purpose of making me spend some time on the streets is. but, you're bound to learn more about me than i am to learn about the process.

the fact is that i actually have been homeless before, on a couple of occasions. this experience is not likely to be different than the other ones.

i am not going to rely on the kindness of strangers, or interact with the other people on the street at all. i will be spending my time in libraries and coffee shops. i will be straight edge during the process. and, i will have a singular focus on getting out of the city and setting the studio back up somewhere else.

anybody that approaches me during this process and offers me drugs or alcohol is likely to be met with physical violence. i have no interest at all, whatsoever, in being inebriated while homeless.

i'm not going to go on a wild adventure, either. this is not the time for that. i will stick very close to very safe spaces, and be concerned very strongly about my safety as i'm doing it.

i'm not a wild party person. i am not a "free spirit". i am a nerd. and, a homeless nerd is still a nerd.
see, this is actually a good example of the pitfalls of understanding hierarchy through the prism of identified groups, rather than through the prism of class.

it was true, in the twentieth century, that seniors were at a relative disadvantage in society, as each successive generation on this continent continually increased it's share of the wealth. that was a constant up until the 70s. see richard wolff as one good source on this topic. but, the fact of the matter is that, since that relation has flipped, wealth has actually begun to correlate with age. - and, in today's society, seniors are actually the people with the most amount of wealth, influence, property and power.

so, a rule that allows for age discrimination in order to benefit seniors is absurd. "seniors only" restrictions are now protecting the most advantaged and most privileged group in our society. if the idea is that discrimination is ok when it protects a disadvantaged group, that group is no longer the elderly, but the young - and the discounts should be provided to millennials, instead.

as of right now, it feels like seniors have simply legislated themselves above the law.

fifty years from now, the situation may reverse itself, again. and, we're left with a constant we should have realized in the first place - we should have focused on class all along.

the idea of seniors-only housing in 2018 is not a tool to help the disadvantaged, but a means for the wealthy to keep the poor away.

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-discrimination-against-older-people-because-age/4-general-principles\
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/06/19-06-2016-j-reacts-to-silence-about.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/06/19-06-2016-j-reacts-to-clinton-machines.html