Notes from the Fringe: Laughing All the Way to the Bank

The Price of Freedom

I invested the last of the money that I earned from my last writing and teaching gigs by putting it in the bank.

Hardly blogworthy, since there is nothing unique about the practice of saving money for a rainy day. No biggie-- Especially if what you're worth right now comes down to P2333.33. Sheez Louise, today's upper middle class kids get to put in six times that amount.

It still galls me that my pals are used to dealing with money in excess of fifty thousand pesos per earning period and I'm sniffing 'round the economic refuse bin. But that, sadly, is part of the price I pay for choosing to live my life unfettered by corporate restraints.

But for all that crap, I finally have a bank account where clients can electronically direct their well-spent, hard-earned money for my services rendered. At least I feel like a man again. It's a new start.

What price, freedom, indeed? Not all of us who live on the fringe (hence my blog) are as dogged, as determined, as talented, as endowed with the necessary chutzpah or are even as healthy as those of us who've made it big (try last entry's Buddy Zabala). Few of us even have the luxury of a love, who despite the incurred derision, takes you in her arms at night and puts up with your fringe behavior. This is not a life for the timid and the pretentious, and at times I am both.

For all that, I am for the most part happier, if nuttier, and more prone to "the thousand ills and mishaps the human body is heir to."

The Long Mea Culpa

Make your judgements--

A) I am a loser because I chose to make all those little bad calls that will grow by accretion into the Mark of Cain. There were lots of things I could've done to wind up in a different place, but I either wimped out or took for granted all that precious wasted time and opportunity. I didn't make due with my social security payments; ergo I don't deserve a pension check at the end of every month. I didn't have the discipline it takes to truly be grown-up in a world that relies on you to function as grown-ups.

B) I walked into this life eyes wide open.

C) I did a little of both.

You can hold me up as an example to your children of what choices not to make if you want to get ahead in the world. You'd probably be right to do so. I just wonder, though, if that's going to be enough to keep them in the neat, safe little cubicles you build for them. There's a reason why people are giving up desk jobs, and it has little to do with The Recession.

It hurts, when you snicker behind my back, when your eyes cut away from mein just that way. But I've come to the point where I almost no longer give a damn-- I'll be too busy trying to live up to the choices I've made.

Here's to hoping we all live our lives well, regardless of where in life we are.