Pyramid Schemes and Groceries in Life Is A Circle, Or A Torus

Watching a few videos on YouTube about searching for jobs, I clicked a few videos about creating YouTube channels themselves, curious how people even get started making all these channels about jobs. Channels full of advice about how they grew they channel, that always stop short talking about what content their channel is about. Scrolling history, nothing but videos about … creating videos. Are they pyramid schemes of some sort? It’s like the mystery of some celebrities who seem to be famous because, simply, they’re famous. How did it start? I don’t understand it.

It feels all insurmountable. Especially because every tip is about being the most bad-ass in human history at whatever topic, including making a YouTube channel.

I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to be the most bad-ass. I’d rather a quiet life. I really just want to live a simple life where I’m not worried about basic things like food and healthcare. I am not so sure American society is really designed for that though – either you accumulate wealth as an (aspiring) capitalist, devoting your entire life to being an entrepreneur to accumulate even more, or die, poor and forgotten if not outright despised for being “lazy”. It’s not a healthy society, to say the least.

I’ve been dipping in and out of depression this week. I’ve slept a fair amount, but not a great quality of sleep, sometimes feeling near as tired when I wake up as when I went to sleep.

But when I can take a moment to catch my breath and force myself up to do something, I do get a little glimmer of hope. Cliche a bit, but doing some stretching, trying to take a few deep breaths to calm my breathing, and going for a walk help a lot. There’s a certain “zen” to just folding laundry. It gives me a break from my thoughts.

If I could live like this permanently, without worrying about money, I’d be happy. That’s kind of an irony of all this. In some sense I have exactly what I want… but it’s tough to enjoy on its own when everything feels so precarious. Not when it remains unclear when I’ll find a next job, unsure how to start my own business, with looming threats of escalating violence and war due to extremism both here and abroad. I almost wonder if there’s some level of survivor’s guilt – I’m doing reasonably well actually, for now, while so many others are struggling. So I almost feel I have no room to really complain. And, then, that little fear in the back of my head, festering, that I’ll be struggling too if I don’t find an answer.

I start thinking of all the bad things that will happen when you run out of money in this sick society. I think about the alternative, getting locked into some soul-sucking jobs, and wonder how much that’s really better. We’re “homeless” either way. Either get evicted or spend your whole life in a workplace, away from home and loved ones.

I want to find a way beyond this. I want to be in a better position, so I can help other people do the same. I don’t know where to start. Probably a lot more people know how to do it than me. I have never been very good at asking for help.

Last updated October 30, 2023