I saw a meme this morning that said “the two worst feelings are having a job and not having a job”. It was serendipitous because due to some snags, I won’t be starting the new job tomorrow. I’m now going to start on Monday, but there was a period this afternoon where if or when I’d be starting the job were entirely up in the air. That’s after 6 months of unemployment. You can imagine, it was a ride. For the last six months, I’ve meditated at least 30 minutes per day. Sometimes, it’s more than hour. When I’m not meditating, I often read books on Buddhism or listen to dharma talks, though I’m also still reading and listening to podcasts on history. It’s been almost 4 years since circumstances allowed me to go on a multi-day retreat, though. I’d like to do that again in the next couple of years.
I’ve had something that I first thought in my 20s confirmed for me over the last 6 months. If I didn’t have to have a job to survive, I’d never work or have worked. I have more than enough interests to eat up every waking hour while staying physically and mentally active. If there were some way for me to do it, the day after my 13 year old dachshund passed away, I’d start looking for Buddhist monasteries to apply to as a novice. I don’t believe, though, that there is any workable way for me to walk away from both what I own and what I owe in the next decade, especially after this lengthy unemployment where I have taken on so much debt.
For various reasons, often not of my choice, I’ve been slowly, but surely downsizing over the last two years. I own less. I spend less. What I can do is continue to downsize. That means leaving New Orleans, probably in 2025. I own a condo in Atlanta that I’ve been renting at a small net loss for a while. Almost break even. It’s only going to keep getting more expensive to be a renter in New Orleans, for more reasons that I care to try to enumerate. I do have better job prospects and an easier financial future in Atlanta. But, theoretically, if it all worked out right, I could sell my large loft condo and downsize to a studio in the same building, a 70s era office building that was converted to condos in the 90s. Over the last few years, I’ve downsized from a high tech sport sedan, to a small SUV, then to a small wagon. I can’t go car-free in Atlanta, but I can get to where I’m only driving 3,000 to 5,000 miles per year there. I’ve done it before.
One of the compromises I made with myself when I gave up on academia and went into tech was that I would enjoy the fruits of that career choice. I lived a high tech, very digital life in my 30s and 40s. I had a lot of gadgets and toys, a lot of tech shit. 7-10 years ago, I’d have been the guy who eventually splurged on an Apple Vision Pro. Maybe not when it first went retail, but within a few months. Now, if I had my way, I wouldn’t even have a smartphone. I’d just have a $50 flip phone. And I can continue in that vein. I can keep downsizing. And almost certainly, I’ll never be able to drop out. I may not even be able to retire. But I can make my life simpler and cheaper and more analog. More real.
And that’s also probably the closest I’ll ever get to escaping capitalism, which I’ve always wanted to do, even before I had even the tiniest spiritual inkling about anything.