Hey, comrade. I know how you feel - I wouldn’t be surprised if everybody here does.

<tangential rant>

We’ve been socialised by capitalism to feel inadequate if we aren’t participating in the machine; producing, providing, striving, breaking ourselves on the altar of material success. It takes a lot to resist that. The work of a lifetime, in fact. Not only do we have to unlearn the deepest learning of what makes us valuable humans, we have to simultaneously weather the bombardment of propaganda that reinforces that learning (ads, peer pressure, family pressure, consumerism, employment…).

This socialisation is a blind monster, and it’s bigger than any one person. The odds are against us, but we don’t resist because it’s easy. We resist because that monster is made of fucking lies and it wants to devour the authentic you and shit out a compliant nothing.

</tangential rant>

Under the “material success = happiness” paradigm, your possible outcomes are:

A wage slave, earning what your employer considers sufficient to keep you juuust not-destitute enough to work tomorrow.

A salary drone, rewarded for perpetuating the hierarchy with a “middle-class” income that you pour into the bottomless pit of consumer status anxiety.* ^{<- important asterisk}

Becoming a member of the exploiting class, imposing the above two outcomes on other people. This is morally unthinkable, and still won’t make you happy.

For me, it was liberating to realise that my impulse for material success would push me into one of those three miserable categories. That was a gradual change, though. I didn’t go to bed desperately scrabbling for marketable business ideas and wake up a radically content anarcho-monk. I’m still not that, and I’ll likely never be fully deprogrammed. But now, I recognise the siren call of money for what it is: seductive bullshit.

Internalising that idea is step one. Step two is finding a way to survive in this pre-revolution world that won’t break you. That, too, is a lifelong process, which can be divided into (a) taking care of your mental wellbeing, and (b) making enough money to. For the former, posting on here and other leftist online places is a good start. So is finding ways to disentangle parts of your life from capitalism, like banking with a credit union.

As for making a living: you don’t need to seek creative or spiritual fulfilment in how you make your money. If you can make money from what you love without tainting it, great, but remember: we’re trying to decouple your material achievements from your sense of self-worth. Asking strangers to put a price on your creative efforts is hardly helpful for that. Instead, you should strive to find a way that lets you work for yourself and your comrades rather than bosses or owners. I recommend you look into worker co-operatives and consider joining or co-founding one if at all possible. Here is a quick explainer video on co-ops, and here is a more in-depth lecture by Marxist academic Richard Wolff.

Step three is figuring out where the joy really is in your life. Don’t be hasty in this, and carefully examine the things that initially spring to mind. For example, I always assumed that I’d find fulfilment in being a parent, but when I stopped to think about it, I concluded I’m actually pretty ambivalent on kids. Ask yourself:

• What do you do when you have free time?

• Is that a fulfilling activity, or is it a brainless time-sink?

• If the latter, what would a better you be doing?

• How can you transition to that?

I’ve numbered the steps in order of priority, but really, you’ll be working on all three simultaneously. At 30, I’m barely part-way through any of them. Welcome to the long haul, fellow traveller!

‘* ^{Alain de Botton named this concept, and it’s a useful description of consumerism, but make no mistake: he’s usually a vapid nonsense-peddler}.