Much of what I write is about money and how interest and compound interest accumulate over time: it's about how we keep trying to buy ourselves more time while the problems are pushed forward in front of us, piling up on the horizon.
With that, I also admit that what I write is about everything other than money: in particular about how we humans set ourselves future goals, and imagine that everything will magically change for the better one day; how we are able to excuse even the most idiotic behavior and create coherent fictions that magically explain the absurdities we always inflict on each other and ourselves.
This may sound nonchalant and is not because I have accumulated enough money not to care. On the contrary, I'll probably end up having to fight to make ends meet. It just doesn't really bother me. I am healthy and fit and know that I am able to use my hands for what they are meant for: tinkering and building. And then I simply have faith that life will turn out and that opportunities will appear.
Imagine if we were able to mobilize the same creativity when it came to dodging and challenging the claims of money and the market's latent growth logic.
(Interest-bearing debt fundamentally conflicts with all natural principles of equilibrium, and makes both tapering and presence extremely problematic).
Now. Just two years after we knocked down the old, floating café in 2018 and began the major reconstruction of the cable installation in Hvide Sande, I ended up selling the company on 1 March.
I have never doubted the potential of the place and I have enjoyed the vast majority of my 13 seasons on the water. But I'm also looking forward to being able to prioritize my creative work and for a period cultivate my creativity full-time. The fact that I actually have no idea at the time of writing how I will pay my bills a few months in the future, I choose to see as biting.
The truth is the money doesn't really concern me—not anymore.
This may sound nonchalant and is not because I have accumulated enough money not to care. On the contrary, I'll probably end up having to fight to make ends meet. It just doesn't really bother me. I am healthy and fit and know that I am able to use my hands for what they are meant for: tinkering and building. And then I simply have faith that life will turn out and that opportunities will appear.
Of course, you can't go to the bank with a business plan that contains nothing but high expectations and a confident belief in your own (unproven) creative abilities.
No one will believe that this kind of thing can pay interest over time.
On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent you from investing the majority of your available waking hours in creative work, practicing your skills and building momentum. Is it necessary to take a paid job to make ends meet, you do that. It will neither be the end of the world, nor a valid reason to put your creative urge on the shelf.
We live in the twenty-first century. No one is forcing us to get stuck in the throes of neoliberalism. We no longer need to be faster, taller or stronger than we were yesterday, and we don't need to consume or produce more things.
Things and products generally take up too much of our everyday life and we could easily choose to relieve ourselves of that pressure. In fact, we have every reason to fill our time with exactly what money cannot buy: hours in nature and days of closeness and presence.
We are living beings and have the ability, and thus also the obligation, to create the coolest stories together. Let's give each other that gift, now. The timing could hardly be better. We need—and to that extent can also afford—to rewrite tomorrow's narrative.
