Narcissism
I'll be deciding later today whether to throw in the towel. I already know what I must do, but, like Frodo, I'm reluctant to do it. What I must do is move out of a double-storey cottage where only one of me is staying. I'm loathe to do this because...well...because I'm lazy. Because I like living here. I like all this space. I like the area [other than the constant beep beep beep of mini bus taxis].
I realise that as soon as I leave I am acknowledging something quite humbling: that my standards of living are dropping, or contracting.
It is sheer lunacy, after having lost my job in September, to expect to be able to pay the sort of rent I'd anticipated my girlfriend [now ex] would be sharing. Now there's not one salary coming in, there's just so much freelance money here and the odd photo gig there.
If it's so clear that this chapter in my life is over, why am I not facing the music?
Because I think I'm more important than something as simple as reality. This is exactly the same problem going on in the rest of the world. We know we have to change our habits, how we live, what we consume. We know we must, but we don't want to do it until we're forced to. It probably will come down to that.
For some fascinating background on this topic, I suggest you read this:
I'd like to know what folks imagine we are recovering to. To a renewed orgy of credit-card spending? To yet another round of suburban expansion, with the boys in the yellow hard-hats driving stakes out in the sagebrush for another new thousand-unit pop-up "community?" For a next generation of super-cars built to look like medieval war wagons? That's the "hope" that our officials seem to pretend to offer. It's completely inconsistent with any reality-based trend-lines, by the way.
Read the rest here.
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