RIP Story : June 2nd, 2024

I don’t have a story to go with this image. This looks like the sort of image that would go in a “young investors” booklet or some brochure for “how to get out of debt” seminar. Images like this are the first steps into the chase and I can’t bring myself to writing a story about it.

I would rather see images that help guide people toward the life they want and instruct ways to build support systems required to maintain that life, for life. Images like this suggest there is one direction when nothing in life has that kind of trajectory. This image also suggests that the basis for life is coin. The basis for life should be happiness and relationships. That means some people will chase the coins, but the world I would like to see allows for those interested in currency to chase currency while not placing them on a societal pedestal. “Cool, that’s your thing, it doesn’t make you better than anyone else.”

I think about my neighbor who asked me to pick up his paper when he was on vacation. I was paid twenty-five cents per paper so I always had coins in my piggy bank. I think of that time in my life, separating the coins into whole dollars and making rolls to get cash. I would run down to Ben Franklins and get a candy bar and walk around the toy section buying foam planes that had platis propellers. I also bought parachute figures you could throw in the air and have the parachute deploy. They were a lot of fun.

I think of farmers and the YouTube channels I follow. I think about the amount of cash outlay required to improve a farm and the costs that go into fertilizer and livestock. I think of the risks involved, and how those risks change depending on what and where a farm is located.

I have some basis to write some sort of story, but I honestly see this image and I get mad. I get mad at the life we were sold in our youth and the time, seemingly a lifetime, we will have to spend unravelling that which was fed to use with no alternative.

Clearly, I carry some rage with this topic but I’m not going to trauma dump in a place where you’re expecting stories.

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.

EPILOGUE: Sometimes no is an ok answer. I’m not interested in this one.