Kajillionaire
money and its unrealities
Though it’s one of my favorite things to do, I understand why people rarely discuss money with one another.
It’s like sex. The poles of extremity are populated with those who are either deathly afraid or neurotically obsessed, and few make up the sensible middle. Our parents have a lot to do with how we see it, and to that end we tend to follow directly in their footsteps or chart a path opposed. Some people are so bad with it that it sends them to jail. I can’t think of a single person who isn’t fraught about it, who doesn’t squirm.
I am afraid to write about money and my relationship to it, but I seldom consider fear to be a good enough excuse for inaction. I’ve experimented with discussing it publicly over the years; I frequently share details about my income in order to bring awareness to parity in the music industry, and I occasionally give advice about freelance accounting. But my personal relationship with money is stickier, more vulnerable. It exposes the things I wanted, how I triangulated my desire through capital value. It involves sharing the ways I was greedy and stupid and confused. I have a personal desire to read more writing about money and the darkness that people’s relationship with it reveals. So, in the interest of that, here is my darkness.