“Isn’t it time to get yourself an honest job?”
I knew that she didn’t mean it in a bad way. She cared about me. Yet, the question irritated me. I interpreted her words as society’s condemnation of my lifestyle.
I felt like society could not tolerate that I worked intermittently as a contractor and in-between projects gave myself the time to think. Time to wander about the streets of the city. Time to observe the world as it orbited around me. Time to capture words I found on the beaten path, scribble them down in a notebook and arrange them into poetry.
I was perfectly aware that society pitied me for renting a small room in a former commercial building downtown, while they thought I could easily become a middle-manager in a large corporation and buy a house in one of the suburbs. Society felt I was squandering my talent by strolling quietly around the town instead of speeding in a Dodge RAM.
Society did not find it honest of me to refuse to do everything I possibly could in order to maximize gross national product. It didn’t think I paid enough taxes so it could give more tax-breaks to cryptocurrency mining data-centers. It was appalled by the missed opportunity of green energy utilization resulting from my low power loitering.
Society had its expectations and I was not complying.
Screw society. I was happy.
