There is a line out there – how fine? Who knows… But there’s a line one has to straddle, between making a living on the internet and maintaining possession of one’s soul.
Since 2000 I’ve been making pennies fall out of the sky via the interwebs… In some years – there are many pennies. Some years – not a lot of pennies… I’ve been forced to supplement my pursuit of said pennies many times – with any assortment of jack-off dreams – like being a chef – or an IT guy – or a catering whatever-the-FK…
At times – I’ve even romanced the idea of doing them exclusively – and leaving the “raining pennies” bullshit to the birds…
Many times – I’ve honored the thought of leaving all of this creative stuff behind and taking up residence at some “real job” just to get the bills paid – and no longer have to sit around and come up with the “next great idea” ala Matthew McConaughey in “The Wolf of Wall Street”… “Fugayzi, fugazi. It’s a whazi. It’s woozie. It’s fairy dust.”
Yeah – that’s right – it’s just like that… Fairy dust? Or falling pennies? One you can put in the bank – the other – pure hopium… One – tangible bullshit – the other make believe…
But somehow – somehow – people keep dropping pennies – and I keep running around with a coffee cup trying to catch them all. It’s this whole side-hustle as your main-hustle life that I was living at the dawn of the century (Yes, I can actually say that. So can you).
I’ve been trying to make this shit work for over 20 years. And every day I’m faced with a choice – keep exploring, fighting, pushing, looking for more pennies – or pack it all in and go fold sweaters at the mall…
My conscience wouldn’t let me do the sweater thing – but sometimes it hardly lets me do the penny thing either… It’s a fight to get up every GD day and try to create something – but it’s the drive to create that will not really allow me to rest. Like a dog after a bone – I function single mindedly… Create or die. Create or die. Create or die. That’s kind of what it comes down to.
If I wasn’t creating something, or thinking of creating something – I’d be dying inside. If I were stuck in the mall with a name tag, or at some kiosk making breakfast crepes for the great unwashed masses, or driving a cab, digging ditches, or rotting in a teller window – I’d be dying inside…
But then – you have this cesspool toilet collection of the human mind and all of its conjuring known as “the internet” aka – provider of pennies… I must dance with this serpent on a daily basis – trying as I may to avoid opening too many doors to darker places.
It’s not easy – as with all of the beautiful things you can find with a simple search – abysmal caverns of horror and dread lurk around every corner. Navigating the net without stirring any of the muck isn’t an easy task.
Navigating without seeing certain things? Even harder. No amount of eyewash will clear the images from my brain of the things I have witnessed here… That being said, with all the ugliness – it’s often a safer place than some in the real world. More frightening – is the increasing parity between the two… But I digress…
I sit contrite – in the wake of the last 35 years of my life…
There are a great many things where in reflection, I’d like a mulligan. Again, and again, and again… A great many regrets, missed opportunities, times where I could have certainly played my cards differently… In this, I’m certain I’m not unique…
But one thing I will never regret, nor apologize for, even if it cost me everything I could have ever had, is my curiosità, my quest, desire, hunger, thirst for learning, experiencing, ingesting, digesting and excreting all that I can possibly push across my sensory palate while I play shepherd to my inner child during my time on this forsaken rock… I will not, no matter the consequences.
Because to deny it – is to deny the one thing that may ever give me the opportunity to be great at something – and that’s a price I’m simply not willing to pay…
So the choice, however painful, seems clear…
Want to live?
Just keep chasing pennies.