I spent the vast majority of my working life as a professional economist. All day, every day, I worked with figures in spreadsheets that were in the millions, if not more. I talked with business owners rich in dollars, but poor in happiness and satisfaction. Interestingly, the entrepreneurs going bankrupt weren’t, on the whole, any less happy.
But I digress. One thing that happens to economists is they get a warped view of money. Maybe it happens to others dealing with large bankrolls, but I can only speak from my experience.
On one end of a spectrum are most economists. They value money a little too much for their own good. It becomes an end, as if having money somehow protects you from the vicissitudes of life. A security blanket made of paper and ink if you will. Money becomes more than a medium of exchange to get the goods and services you require. It becomes something to seek with all the skill and effort you can muster, damn the torpedos or the family. An idol in the Church of Molech.
On the other end of the spectrum, a few economists lose all respect for money. It becomes nothing more than a play token that, while necessary, is not important in their lives. It’s why the saying “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money” is such a quintessential economist quip.
This latter approach, toward which I lean, is born of a life-time of luck and privilege. Yes, I budget, tracking the comings and goings of money like a teller at the bank, but it seems so unreal. Like I could just as easily be counting stones or seashells—which, come to think of it, I would if born in another era and culture.
In short, I don’t worry about whether I’ll have enough to live out my life in comfort, even though as it stands I won’t. I trust that more will come my way, probably because it always has as long as I put in the work.
That is why I spend so much time, with no immediate hope of renumeration, at developing the craft of writing. In academics, you learn to invest early and often, hoping somewhere down the line the payoff will come. Most people around me don’t understand this approach. They require a short-term payback, not just as compensation for hours worked, but also as a validation of their effort.
Writers are a different breed, much like the small group of economists who look somewhat askance at money. Sure, they’d like to get paid for their art, but deep down, most know they won’t. At least not now. If enough books are written, then later. When the skills are honed, and the backlist large enough to think about marketing.
The ability to delay gratification doesn’t make a writing vocation more virtuous than any other. Most writers will pursue other forms of employment to make ends meet, thereby turning their art into an avocation. Maybe that is what it should be, right from the beginning.
It’s what I did, at least until I gained a big enough financial cushion and a wide enough range of experiences to think I might make a go at this thing called “writing for a living.”
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