Promotions

With regards to some meaningful advice I received, I offer sincere thanks, and I offer a counterpoint.

This lifestyle I currently employ is a result of a project I started as a young man. The project was, in essence, to transcend the lifestyle given me by my single mother as I was raised, to avoid her fate, and to become an insider in our financial system as opposed to a distrustful and bitter outsider. Her, and therefore our, stresses were all seemed to relate to money. A life free from the pressure of money eluded her and us in such a way that I vowed not to repeat what I had seen it and her do to our family. I wanted to make a name for myself, when my mom wanted to be able to change her name. I wanted to have successes that were not handed to me and were my own, instead of latch on to someone else’s successes and then bring them crashing down. I wanted to succeed where she had failed.

Starting when I was 13, I began to accomplish those things. It felt great. I poured all of my energy into it. First it was cycling. Then it was photography. Next it was education, Finally, it was a job and a place among men in this society. I won bike races and I sold photographs to magazines. I graduated at the top of my class and I got the job. When I was at the job I was given money and praise for the work I would do.

I also wanted to be successful in another area where my immediate family had failed. I wanted to have a healthy and successful relationship. I found a worthy match, and she was an artist. I respected the project of art so much that I sacrificed my own desire to be an artist and chose a lifestyle where I could make sure that my she would have the means to do her art. My project would be the sum of hers and mine. The project to build this lifestyle would take years. It would require some years at college, some years as a slave to the system, then, ideally, would require some years of educating myself. That woman is gone, but that project continued. To be sure, the project has changed. But had there been no project to begin with, what might have happened?

This project has led to knowledge and discoveries that could not have been anticipated. There have been things that did not go perfectly. There has been time that could have been better used. There could have been a more direct path to whatever goal I may have now. There could have been even more thought and better relations with others.

To judge this existence from the outside, without understanding that it is the result of a project taken on at an early age, too heavily discounts it. Similar to Maximin, no one in my family or my circle of friends or acquaintances ever told me about this path or pushed me down it. This path was my own. I never failed to meet expectations and I never beat expectations others had for me, because there were no expectations from others. As is written in the castle, though, I recognize that any successes I speak of could be akin to Frieda’s rise from a dairymaid to a barmaid. This led only to a night rolling around in spilt beer. These successes I speak of may be illusions designed by a society bent on enslaving me. But, would I recognize that if I had not achieved them? There are many great obstacles in the world, and they become greater the greater your goals.

Besides this “misadventure” that is currently a muse for writing and not much else other than mild humiliation, this may well be the “pinnacle” or perhaps the low point of this project, depending on your perspective and what you consider ideal. I do not disagree that years of hard work are ahead (the pursuit), but those years would be wasted without the years I have experienced. Without the successes I have had, would I understand the work that is yet to be accomplished? This has been my path. This path led me to a point where this is the advice I am being given, this is the woman I share my life with, and these are my values. Without this path, and the successes (or failures) along the way, I would not be in a position to understand the advice, have the woman, or know what needs to be done next.