I came very close to not publishing this. For lots of reasons. But what the hell. It is how I feel. Is it how I feel merely at a moment of time? Isn’t every feeling… that? This is a really shitty way to think about life. It is simplistic, not very nuanced, and comes across from seemingly most basal and useless part of the mind. But it is me and it is a thing. Should I edit that sort of thing out of this site? No. Or Yes. But no.
I have a lot of experience with selfishness. I am selfish. I am not afraid to admit this. I think about it a lot—and by “thinking about it” I mean I try to find reasons I should not be selfish because that part of me that exists outside my real life experiences, that part of me that reads the rules of life from a book… that moral compass tells me to see the wrong in my ways.
But I don’t listen, often.
I am selfish. I need to be selfish. I rarely use this site beyond its intended purpose—to discuss OCD and mental disorders. However, selfishness is a part of OCD, but I hesitate to surmise that the selfishness that I feel right now has anything to do with OCD or my mental disorders. Selfishness, in various types, has been a thread throughout many of the articles I’ve written. It is a symptom or byproduct of OCD. I obsess in so many ways—and I obsess over things related to only me. That’s OCD selfishness.
I want to talk about a different kind of selfishness.
I want more. I want more money, I want more power over my life. I don’t want stuff—I rarely see material goods over a few bucks that make me happy. I have OCD—things like shelves and office products, no matter how cliché, do actually excite me. But I don’t even want money to buy more of that. I practice a form of minimalism that is beyond the scope of this article.
I want money because I want a safety net and because money can shield me from a lot of the bullshit of the world outside my brain. I guess we are circling around the idea of mental disorders and OCD after all—I want to spend time with those things. To solve them, or at least to gather the best from them. I need to do this free of anxiety. Does money buy happiness or at least relief from anxiety? Yes. If done correctly. A lot of people with money don’t do things correctly. I’m pretty damn sure I do things correctly, especially now with all of my myriad life experiences with money (I’ve had access to a lot, as well I’ve had almost zero with no help at various times. I’ve lived life, almost all places within.
Except having anxiety-goes-away money.
I am out to get it. I am selfish in that way, I have actively decided to be such and to seek such.
Where does this selfishness truly come from? We live in a world of terrible inequality. I suffer from inequality because I’ve gone about my financial life differently than others, and no actuary is going to see that. And at the same time I am a White Male American, so I’ve seen how unequal things are for me and against people of other genders, races, and nationalities. It is all bad. I don’t care if I happen to have a little more baked-in privilege—I am still treated unfairly when it comes to money. I know this because I know what I should be worth.
Sure, you can stop any time if this getting too insane sounding. I’m still going.
If this world is going to be absolutely wrong in how it spreads money around, then I’m going to go on a mission to be a part of the end that has a lot. No, I am not going to actively screw anyone over to get what I want. But I really, deep down, don’t care if it creates more inequality.
I’m going to do this through hard work. I already put in sixteen hours a day of work on a regular basis, and all with the goal of money. I’m going to fight this.
I’ve fought with more banks that I imagined there are banks at this point. I am denied access to certain mechanisms of money (credit, loans) because I’ve gone through some terrible shit in my life and have had more Sophie’s choices forced upon me than the average person. Or below average person. Or many people.
I don’t need to get into the stories, I prefer to leave those locked up inside or at times between me and those extremely close to me. Point is, it has happened. It is a real, human thing. I have never been a deadbeat in any sense of the word, even using the word seems to sully this entire article1.
The point is I’ve worked for years to go from having nothing to building a whole life back together. Except this time not taking on dead weight, and this time paying attention to—at least paying attention, if not doing a massive amount of work attempting to solve—my mental health issues.
That doesn’t come down to a number.
I’ve never quite gone into this part of my life. I don’t intend to much. I will just say I have worked insane hours, taken on an insane number of jobs at once, all to make things better for myself.
Now is the time I start taking it. All of it I can. Legally, but by any means within that framework. Things are already unequal for me. And they are much more unequal for others. I don’t care.
I’m going to die someday. I will insist upon a safety net of my own taking and building until that time.