I struggle with the beliefs that “I don’t know how to function in this society” or “I don’t fit in with this society” because of how much I don’t “want to work.” I’ve been scraping by as a freelance writer, which allows me to stay home (thank God), but it’s still tough. I would love LOVE to make a living writing what I love to write. That’s the dream. I love slow and intentional living (struggled hard in “fast-paced” work environments) and that simply fact is an act of rebellion in this “hustle culture.” Thank you so much for writing this. I finally feel seen and not alone in this struggle 🙏❤️.
I believe that these other life work choices: coder, doctor, teacher, etc. may not be considered “art”, but when done by those who love to do these things, they are a form of art. Life itself is creative by its very nature and when humans get to play in whatever “work” lights them up, then this too can be art. For me it’s about being in our sovereignty, expressing our truest self on the world. Brush, hammer, scalpel, sauté pan, ones&zeroes…all tools of artists. LOVE the way you’re covering this crucial conversation Amie ❤️
This is the sort of thing I came here to say, except in my case it's my best friend from high school. She and I followed somewhat similar career paths in finance.
She loved all the accounting and other math oriented courses in college. I barely tolerated them, despite my excellent grades.
She ended up with a CPA and a vice president position in banking doing important trust work. I barely managed a dozen years as an attorney doing financial regulatory law before becoming a freelance journalist. (Writing is my superpower!)
Her ability to manipulate complex spreadsheets is only surpassed by my hub, a math-loving engineer. My income and expense spreadsheets always took forever to put together because I would put off doing them until the absolute last minute they were needed.
Can I do math? Absolutely!
Do I like doing math? Absolutely not! I'd rather be doing anything else, preferably something creative.
Thankfully, unlike the world at large, my BFF and I totally respect each other's myriad strengths and marvel in what each of us have done in our respective fields over the years.
Thank you and go you!! I recently had someone ask me if I had it to do all over again what would I do -- law school/career or something else?
Yep, you guessed it. Something else. If I had had a chance to think about it, I would have ditched law school and gotten a Masters in English or Rhetoric and Composition or for that matter Library Science (!!). I mean who doesn't want to work in a library?!?
I am currently reading this book, "Affluence without Abundance" which is an anthropological examination of that very idea examining the lives of the Ju'hoansi people, a hunter-gatherer society in what is now Namibia.
I'm not done with it, but here are a few tidbits:
- the Ju'hoansi do not like working. they will 'work' as little as possible to get what they need and then stop
- they cannot be bribed to work more, they will take the bribe and work less, because they got more for less
- they don't do excess, because it's wasteful and often requires... more work
- they laugh, incredulously, at people who view work as a moral measurement (I would laugh too, but it's just sad)
There was a tiny tiny little spark in me a couple of years ago, in the midst of somatic illness due to overwork, that said 'the solution is not working' and 'maybe you'll paint'.
Today, it's at least a few candles' worth, and I only say that because I am slightly awed (and frightened) of what I know is a huge fucking inferno raging inside of me that is absolutely NOT for work.
I don't PRODUCE art, I practice art. So that's the scary part. But, the fire is lit and it's not going anywhere. I look forward to continuing this conversation.
ETA: the idea of 'privilege' is a socially (read: work system) acceptable channel for the anger and dissatisfaction, etc., that boils up from people working bullshit jobs doing shit they don't want to do that no one fucking needs. It keeps us from channeling that rage into demanding a change, and instead bickering with our fellow human who IS ALSO angry as fuck at this.
You were born into this life, into this body, into this place, into this time, for a reason. Rejecting the victim-oppressor-rescuer triad would make us all a whole helluva a lot better off.
Yesterday I got a rejection from an ideal job, one that used my skills and talents and made space for my art. The job I do have, that I don’t like and didn’t want, is not panning out in an almost miraculous way. I’ll probably have to make some drastic and scary decisions. This couldn’t have been better timed. I am in tears. I know what I don’t want. I know what I don’t want to put up with
Amie, your phrase "veneration of employment" was a perfect image of this entire (fantastic) essay. You have a powerful voice. Thank you for helping us find our own.
Even though my husband has offered to financially support me so I can focus on my writing throughout our marriage, I didn't feel comfortable giving up paid work until after I had children and became a stay-at-home mom. That was a somewhat more culturally "justifiable" reason not to work, although many people still think of your work as worthless because it doesn't bring in the dollars. Now that my youngest is in part-time preschool, I am taking advantage of that time to focus on my art for the first time in my life. This work occasionally brings in income, but most of the time it's just time and talent investment toward a future when I hope it will be financially sustainable. I tell people that I "work" while my son is at preschool, which is absolutely true. But because I'm rarely paid for it, it feels like a lie. Thank you for your work in continuing to de-stigmataize this. (And yes, Devon Price's book provides a lot of good food for thought.)
Lacey, it is not a lie. It’s so hard to write while being the primary caregiver for your children. You are doing the work! Money is not what makes work “real”. Some people collect pay for jobs they don’t even try to do well. Are they better workers than you because someone is paying them to sit at a desk? No!
I cried reading you. I don't want a job, I am fucking poor because for the last 5 years I refuse to comply to this sick world (like I would rather die than comply). And I feel shame a lot for not having a job. But I know I am doing the right thing. I believe in a different world. I know we can dream and built it. Thank you for talking about it. I sure needed to read that. <3
ya know... not everyone can make art. EVERYONE can put groceries in a bag. Tons of people say.. "oh i can't even draw a stick figure" if i had a dollar for every person who told me that... I'd be rich! hah So what about it world... if artists are special type people - make sure we are compensated like that.
I will add my voice to the chorus of gratitude for this message at this time. I've written bits and pieces of this over the years myself. In my journal, in fragments of essay ideas, but I have not gotten further than that. Almost two years ago, I was offered a job, and I took it. I needed health insurance. I needed a steady paycheck. It was a brief exit from artist life and would help me get on my feet. Almost two years later, I am still here, and because I stopped writing online, stopped courting the muse, and stopped making and sharing my work, I cannot leave this job right now. There are so many people in my life who do not understand how this creates inside of me a series of small and steady deaths of passion and purpose. Who look at me askance and try to be supportive but can barely mask their skepticism. What I am saying sounds undeniably melodramatic to most humans who have accepted " we grow, we work, we die " as the normal and obvious course of things. I am so deeply grateful that these essays have created a community of this choir of agreement and understanding. More grateful than I can express. It's helping to keep the fire lit inside of me that reminds me that this soul-sucking corporate period of my life is a chapter, not the whole book, and that it is possible to find my way back to a life of passion and purpose.
This article, these words, they feel like the most healing I’ve ever read in my entire life. Your previous article ”I don’t want to work" and now this one.. I almost want to print them to be able to have them physically at home
As someone who can't work right now and has been investing in creating and learning to stop feeling ashamed about wanting a life that sparkles, I really needed to read this. Thank you for being a champion for us "rebel creatives" who want more from this life than making money for others in a sad gray office.
By conventional standards, I used to have a good work ethic. It wasn't laziness that made me quit work, it was the godawful dogshit I had to put up with at work itself as a creative type with then-undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. Even when I was a stellar performer in my early-twenties IT job and, in my boss' words, 'I have never had a customer complain about you once', there was still always some abstract behavioural mould I didn't fit but sure as hell had to be forced into.
Then I tried blue-collar, hoping I'd just be able to show up and do some basic things without the stress of micro-management, and that started off great but eventually drove me insane dealing with the obnoxiousness of the general public. I'm not joking when I say it's a miracle that I didn't kill someone and kill myself afterwards, because I came very close on a number of occasions.
After a total nervous breakdown in which I actually was going to kill myself, I was put onto disability and there I've remained ever since. Poverty sucks, mostly because everything is incredibly expensive and I have to pick between saving and spending, but thankfully I have affluent parents with whom I have a good relationship, so all my basic needs are taken care of. For many years I languished in apathy and depression, smoking copious amounts of weed and playing with camgirls, because what the fuck else was there to do that was better than hedonistic pleasure?
I've since cleaned up my act by eating nothing but clean food and doing elite fitness training for the last five years, quitting drugs for the past two years, and having written and published my debut fantasy novel, as well as having written its immediate sequel and a third of its third sequel. I dare any normie so proud of their 9-5 to find the willpower, motivation and self-direction to write a 215,000 word book every day for six months straight, then a 249,000 word sequel for the next seven months straight, doing nothing but eating clean food and training, with no social life or vices to cope - AND have it turn out as something that exceeds all expectations.
I am not lazy, I am a monument of self-discipline, because I did it for *me* and *my* art. I don't give a fuck about anything else, I don't give a fuck about your stupid bullshit make-work fake economy, I'm not going to waste my precious life and unique gifts on being a cog in some rich cunt's serf-matrix. Birds don't have to justify why they can fly while other creatures crawl, they just do it because that's what they're built for. It's not my problem most people are braindead NPCs who can only function in a brutal, dehumanising hierarchy run by a group of the laziest, most hypocritical profiteers the world has ever seen.
I'm a writer, and if the world can't throw me enough crumbs to get by for creating something it desperately needs more of, then fuck your world and your economy, I hope it's nuked into oblivion.
I stepped off the conventional train decades ago, and routinely choose experiences over security, life force over material goods, freedom over constraints. The result has been a life path full of deep dives into science and art and wilderness and spirituality, and, yes, my own share of struggles. Only in recent years have I come to fully understand just how far out of the norm my way of being is. Of course, the question of privilege arises: I have the ability (and the work ethic!) to choose differently. Still, if my choice is to leverage all my fancy credentials, do All The Things, check all the boxes, line a fat bank account OR create this crazy adventurous path I’m on, why not choose the life that makes me shine? Is it not better to show up fully embodied in life force and offer my gifts from there?
Art found me 24 years ago. I’ve written books, I teach classes, owned a gallery and have sold and given away a lot of art. My husband, a middle school math teacher, has made a lot more money than I have. I worked in the corporate sector for four years when our kids were in college 7 years ago. I could not get out fast enough. He took a big cut of his public school salary and we moved to Portugal 2.5 years ago. We both continue to teach and I share on multiple platforms. On our beach walk this morning I said I love how my life has slowed down even more here. We follow our hearts. It works.
Really needing this at the moment, thank you for articulating this so beautifully. Can already tell how incredibly healing your continued perspectives on this are going to be both personally and collectively, can’t wait for you to dive further in. Truly powerful and resonant 🧡
"...you can see beyond what has been offered to us, and you are daring to ask for more. This conversation you are having with me is the most adult conversation in the world. You are revolutionary. Rebellious. Needed. Precious." ~Amie McNee.
Amie, thank you for sharing YOU! And your art! It is a privilege to know you through awritingroom.com. I first saw you speak at the Santa Fe retreat - an experience that set so many of us free to become the writers we are! You lit a bright light in us there that continues to shine! I witness it in every Silent Writing, and other, sessions. So so grateful for you!
I struggle with the beliefs that “I don’t know how to function in this society” or “I don’t fit in with this society” because of how much I don’t “want to work.” I’ve been scraping by as a freelance writer, which allows me to stay home (thank God), but it’s still tough. I would love LOVE to make a living writing what I love to write. That’s the dream. I love slow and intentional living (struggled hard in “fast-paced” work environments) and that simply fact is an act of rebellion in this “hustle culture.” Thank you so much for writing this. I finally feel seen and not alone in this struggle 🙏❤️.
My daughter loves her job in coding, she is happy and fulfilled.
Not everybody wants to write, or paint on canvas.
Some doctors love the work they do.
I use to teach German as a second language - and loved that.
The point is to do what you love doing. What ever that is for you.
Love your post. 🙏
Meaning is found EVERYWHERE. I speak to artists mostly so I get biased
I believe that these other life work choices: coder, doctor, teacher, etc. may not be considered “art”, but when done by those who love to do these things, they are a form of art. Life itself is creative by its very nature and when humans get to play in whatever “work” lights them up, then this too can be art. For me it’s about being in our sovereignty, expressing our truest self on the world. Brush, hammer, scalpel, sauté pan, ones&zeroes…all tools of artists. LOVE the way you’re covering this crucial conversation Amie ❤️
I was more pointing to the man leaving the not so stellar remark.
I agree with you, the creative people have a much harder time to fit in. I embrace my creativity now, took a long time to teach this point. 🙏
I don't find it hard to fit in per se, I think we find it hard to pay for stuff. :-)
This is the sort of thing I came here to say, except in my case it's my best friend from high school. She and I followed somewhat similar career paths in finance.
She loved all the accounting and other math oriented courses in college. I barely tolerated them, despite my excellent grades.
She ended up with a CPA and a vice president position in banking doing important trust work. I barely managed a dozen years as an attorney doing financial regulatory law before becoming a freelance journalist. (Writing is my superpower!)
Her ability to manipulate complex spreadsheets is only surpassed by my hub, a math-loving engineer. My income and expense spreadsheets always took forever to put together because I would put off doing them until the absolute last minute they were needed.
Can I do math? Absolutely!
Do I like doing math? Absolutely not! I'd rather be doing anything else, preferably something creative.
Thankfully, unlike the world at large, my BFF and I totally respect each other's myriad strengths and marvel in what each of us have done in our respective fields over the years.
I'm preparing to leave the law after practicing for 7 years. It's so encouraging to see an example of life on the other side!
Thank you and go you!! I recently had someone ask me if I had it to do all over again what would I do -- law school/career or something else?
Yep, you guessed it. Something else. If I had had a chance to think about it, I would have ditched law school and gotten a Masters in English or Rhetoric and Composition or for that matter Library Science (!!). I mean who doesn't want to work in a library?!?
Right!! Being a librarian is also an alternate reality dream of mine 🥹
Unfortunately not everyone can land their dream job, and society often judges the people who don’t harshly as being lazy and/or “not good enough”
I am currently reading this book, "Affluence without Abundance" which is an anthropological examination of that very idea examining the lives of the Ju'hoansi people, a hunter-gatherer society in what is now Namibia.
I'm not done with it, but here are a few tidbits:
- the Ju'hoansi do not like working. they will 'work' as little as possible to get what they need and then stop
- they cannot be bribed to work more, they will take the bribe and work less, because they got more for less
- they don't do excess, because it's wasteful and often requires... more work
- they laugh, incredulously, at people who view work as a moral measurement (I would laugh too, but it's just sad)
There was a tiny tiny little spark in me a couple of years ago, in the midst of somatic illness due to overwork, that said 'the solution is not working' and 'maybe you'll paint'.
Today, it's at least a few candles' worth, and I only say that because I am slightly awed (and frightened) of what I know is a huge fucking inferno raging inside of me that is absolutely NOT for work.
I don't PRODUCE art, I practice art. So that's the scary part. But, the fire is lit and it's not going anywhere. I look forward to continuing this conversation.
ETA: the idea of 'privilege' is a socially (read: work system) acceptable channel for the anger and dissatisfaction, etc., that boils up from people working bullshit jobs doing shit they don't want to do that no one fucking needs. It keeps us from channeling that rage into demanding a change, and instead bickering with our fellow human who IS ALSO angry as fuck at this.
You were born into this life, into this body, into this place, into this time, for a reason. Rejecting the victim-oppressor-rescuer triad would make us all a whole helluva a lot better off.
Yesterday I got a rejection from an ideal job, one that used my skills and talents and made space for my art. The job I do have, that I don’t like and didn’t want, is not panning out in an almost miraculous way. I’ll probably have to make some drastic and scary decisions. This couldn’t have been better timed. I am in tears. I know what I don’t want. I know what I don’t want to put up with
Amie, your phrase "veneration of employment" was a perfect image of this entire (fantastic) essay. You have a powerful voice. Thank you for helping us find our own.
Even though my husband has offered to financially support me so I can focus on my writing throughout our marriage, I didn't feel comfortable giving up paid work until after I had children and became a stay-at-home mom. That was a somewhat more culturally "justifiable" reason not to work, although many people still think of your work as worthless because it doesn't bring in the dollars. Now that my youngest is in part-time preschool, I am taking advantage of that time to focus on my art for the first time in my life. This work occasionally brings in income, but most of the time it's just time and talent investment toward a future when I hope it will be financially sustainable. I tell people that I "work" while my son is at preschool, which is absolutely true. But because I'm rarely paid for it, it feels like a lie. Thank you for your work in continuing to de-stigmataize this. (And yes, Devon Price's book provides a lot of good food for thought.)
Lacey, it is not a lie. It’s so hard to write while being the primary caregiver for your children. You are doing the work! Money is not what makes work “real”. Some people collect pay for jobs they don’t even try to do well. Are they better workers than you because someone is paying them to sit at a desk? No!
Thank you so much for this kind comment. I feel validated and seen.
I cried reading you. I don't want a job, I am fucking poor because for the last 5 years I refuse to comply to this sick world (like I would rather die than comply). And I feel shame a lot for not having a job. But I know I am doing the right thing. I believe in a different world. I know we can dream and built it. Thank you for talking about it. I sure needed to read that. <3
ya know... not everyone can make art. EVERYONE can put groceries in a bag. Tons of people say.. "oh i can't even draw a stick figure" if i had a dollar for every person who told me that... I'd be rich! hah So what about it world... if artists are special type people - make sure we are compensated like that.
So well said! <3
Preorder complete!
I will add my voice to the chorus of gratitude for this message at this time. I've written bits and pieces of this over the years myself. In my journal, in fragments of essay ideas, but I have not gotten further than that. Almost two years ago, I was offered a job, and I took it. I needed health insurance. I needed a steady paycheck. It was a brief exit from artist life and would help me get on my feet. Almost two years later, I am still here, and because I stopped writing online, stopped courting the muse, and stopped making and sharing my work, I cannot leave this job right now. There are so many people in my life who do not understand how this creates inside of me a series of small and steady deaths of passion and purpose. Who look at me askance and try to be supportive but can barely mask their skepticism. What I am saying sounds undeniably melodramatic to most humans who have accepted " we grow, we work, we die " as the normal and obvious course of things. I am so deeply grateful that these essays have created a community of this choir of agreement and understanding. More grateful than I can express. It's helping to keep the fire lit inside of me that reminds me that this soul-sucking corporate period of my life is a chapter, not the whole book, and that it is possible to find my way back to a life of passion and purpose.
This article, these words, they feel like the most healing I’ve ever read in my entire life. Your previous article ”I don’t want to work" and now this one.. I almost want to print them to be able to have them physically at home
As someone who can't work right now and has been investing in creating and learning to stop feeling ashamed about wanting a life that sparkles, I really needed to read this. Thank you for being a champion for us "rebel creatives" who want more from this life than making money for others in a sad gray office.
By conventional standards, I used to have a good work ethic. It wasn't laziness that made me quit work, it was the godawful dogshit I had to put up with at work itself as a creative type with then-undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. Even when I was a stellar performer in my early-twenties IT job and, in my boss' words, 'I have never had a customer complain about you once', there was still always some abstract behavioural mould I didn't fit but sure as hell had to be forced into.
Then I tried blue-collar, hoping I'd just be able to show up and do some basic things without the stress of micro-management, and that started off great but eventually drove me insane dealing with the obnoxiousness of the general public. I'm not joking when I say it's a miracle that I didn't kill someone and kill myself afterwards, because I came very close on a number of occasions.
After a total nervous breakdown in which I actually was going to kill myself, I was put onto disability and there I've remained ever since. Poverty sucks, mostly because everything is incredibly expensive and I have to pick between saving and spending, but thankfully I have affluent parents with whom I have a good relationship, so all my basic needs are taken care of. For many years I languished in apathy and depression, smoking copious amounts of weed and playing with camgirls, because what the fuck else was there to do that was better than hedonistic pleasure?
I've since cleaned up my act by eating nothing but clean food and doing elite fitness training for the last five years, quitting drugs for the past two years, and having written and published my debut fantasy novel, as well as having written its immediate sequel and a third of its third sequel. I dare any normie so proud of their 9-5 to find the willpower, motivation and self-direction to write a 215,000 word book every day for six months straight, then a 249,000 word sequel for the next seven months straight, doing nothing but eating clean food and training, with no social life or vices to cope - AND have it turn out as something that exceeds all expectations.
I am not lazy, I am a monument of self-discipline, because I did it for *me* and *my* art. I don't give a fuck about anything else, I don't give a fuck about your stupid bullshit make-work fake economy, I'm not going to waste my precious life and unique gifts on being a cog in some rich cunt's serf-matrix. Birds don't have to justify why they can fly while other creatures crawl, they just do it because that's what they're built for. It's not my problem most people are braindead NPCs who can only function in a brutal, dehumanising hierarchy run by a group of the laziest, most hypocritical profiteers the world has ever seen.
I'm a writer, and if the world can't throw me enough crumbs to get by for creating something it desperately needs more of, then fuck your world and your economy, I hope it's nuked into oblivion.
I stepped off the conventional train decades ago, and routinely choose experiences over security, life force over material goods, freedom over constraints. The result has been a life path full of deep dives into science and art and wilderness and spirituality, and, yes, my own share of struggles. Only in recent years have I come to fully understand just how far out of the norm my way of being is. Of course, the question of privilege arises: I have the ability (and the work ethic!) to choose differently. Still, if my choice is to leverage all my fancy credentials, do All The Things, check all the boxes, line a fat bank account OR create this crazy adventurous path I’m on, why not choose the life that makes me shine? Is it not better to show up fully embodied in life force and offer my gifts from there?
Art found me 24 years ago. I’ve written books, I teach classes, owned a gallery and have sold and given away a lot of art. My husband, a middle school math teacher, has made a lot more money than I have. I worked in the corporate sector for four years when our kids were in college 7 years ago. I could not get out fast enough. He took a big cut of his public school salary and we moved to Portugal 2.5 years ago. We both continue to teach and I share on multiple platforms. On our beach walk this morning I said I love how my life has slowed down even more here. We follow our hearts. It works.
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for the permission!
I just wrote about this, too, and also still have so much more to say on this topic.
https://ginpen.substack.com/p/i-am-qualified-for-nothing?r=l0exr
Really needing this at the moment, thank you for articulating this so beautifully. Can already tell how incredibly healing your continued perspectives on this are going to be both personally and collectively, can’t wait for you to dive further in. Truly powerful and resonant 🧡
"...you can see beyond what has been offered to us, and you are daring to ask for more. This conversation you are having with me is the most adult conversation in the world. You are revolutionary. Rebellious. Needed. Precious." ~Amie McNee.
Amie, thank you for sharing YOU! And your art! It is a privilege to know you through awritingroom.com. I first saw you speak at the Santa Fe retreat - an experience that set so many of us free to become the writers we are! You lit a bright light in us there that continues to shine! I witness it in every Silent Writing, and other, sessions. So so grateful for you!