Honest Living

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if everyone made an honest living. What if all jobs were in some way a benefit to mankind and what if companies didn’t charge too much for products or services. What if everything was reasonable? What if there were no monopolies? I know I’m asking too much. But what if everyone just did enough to have what they needed?

I look at people and their lifestyles and wonder how they keep it all together. These thoughts have stuck with me having rented a spare room temporarily with a family. Both parents are thirty-something health professionals and they have two children, 4 and 3.

I wouldn’t normally stay with a family but for 5 weeks it was convenient.

I watch them. The family. Not in a creepy way but the way someone watches things when lazily microwaving a potato for dinner. I look at the alarm (6AM) when the kids are tearing up the house in the morning. And I watch him (the father) fall asleep on the couch at 8:30PM with an un-drunk cup of tea in front of the television.

Is this the future? I think.

This cannot be the future.

It is this fear of this sort of thing becoming my life that has prompted thoughts about living modestly and making honest gains.

Why do we work so hard? What makes us work so hard? Do we have to work so hard?


These are my answers;

Capitalism. The rich have power. They rich have luxury. The rich have people under them making them money. Why not be rich?

Yep. That’s about it.

But I wonder how many of us working class get there? I mean truly get there. And what is the cost?

I’m not coming from a “let’s move the country and start a commune” point of view (although I do fantasize about it from time to time). Business and industry is important part of society. But what if people worked less? I’m not saying work less hard. I’m saying: still work hard, simply work less. What if we job shared? The tasks would all get done. The cogs of society would keep turning. We’d all have more time for recreation. We wouldn’t always be microwaving potatoes for dinner and we’d all have better quality of life, health and well-being. There would also be a lot less unemployment.
It’s a wonderful thought: A three day work week and a four day weekend.

I know, I know, this is sounding a bit like communism. But isn’t the idea of communism quite beautiful until human nature kicks in and the balance of the scales are corrupted by laziness and greed? There will be people that want something for nothing and there will be people that want everything at the expense of others. We can’t eradicate human nature and therein lies the problem. 

I walked across Spain on an ancient pilgrimage trail several years ago with my friend Matt. We stayed in refuges, most really cheap, some requiring only donation. It is a popular trail. Some do it for religious purposes although many do it to ‘reconnect’ with the simple way of life and ‘escape’ the trappings of their general realm of existence. Each day basically consisted of fellowship, walking, eating, drinking, sleeping and enjoying the scenery. The only problem was some people saw it as a race. They wanted to get to the next refuge before everyone else. They would get up at 5AM, turn the lights on in the dormitory, create noise by packing all their belongings and disrupt everyone’s sleep just so they could trudge on ahead. Maybe they were scared of not having a place to sleep. Maybe they just felt the need to arrive at the next destination first.

I revisited Northern Spain again earlier this year and re-walked some of the trail. A Hollywood movie had been made about the walk since and I was surprised at how much busier it had become. It was actually too busy. People were now getting up at 4AM and by lunchtime there were lines outside the refuges waiting for them to open. The prices for refuges had also been put up. Many people even cheated by taking a bus.

Maybe that is just like working life. People have this desire to have more than others or get there faster so they pursue these things rather than focus on meeting their own needs and enjoying the journey.

It is after all the journey that is important, not the destination.

I don’t know where the world is going. We have technology that is supposed to make things easier for us but it ends up making us more busy. We put our kids in a daycare or kindergarten so both parents can work and then this industry of child minding blossoms and pushes up the prices of time spent with our children. Suddenly we want a night out without our kids and then we realize that it’s going to cost us $100 for the babysitter because the going rate is $20/hour. Such is the case with the family I am staying with.

Maybe I’ve travelled too much and maybe I’ve fallen a little too out of touch but I just don’t get what it is everyone is aspiring towards.

On the Gold Coast everyone looks at and wants this;

Gold Coast Highrise and coastal real estate

But I’m looking in the opposite direction. I’m looking at this;

Gold Coast Hinterland

In ten years I wouldn't be surprised if people no longer walk across Spain but instead opt to drive.
There will be pilgrim taxes imposed for accommodation. The concept of 'pilgrimage' will be lost.


The family I have been renting a room off live on the Gold Coast but they never really get to go to the beach.

On the Gold Coast there are already public buses branded with images of women with large breasts advertising for 'medical holidays' in Asia. I hear nurses at work talking about them along with botox and nip-tucks. Meanwhile the 'hard' men are wearing sleeve tattoos and they drive around in fancy cars purchased on finance.

It's all smoke and mirrors.


Watch what you place your value in.

Watch what it costs you.

Choose wisely.

Live honestly.

Sink or Swim: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Does Not Want to Die Alone

The following is a continuation of the blog entitled: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Hates His Job.
In this edition, Fish is in Uganda (after leaving the refugee camp in Kenya). His life is going to plan and he has found a lifestyle that he can fund without need of work. He is happy in his accomplishment, but one day the stars and universe force a change in his ideology...

Sink or Swim: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Does Not Want to Die Alone

Fish walks down the dusty beat up streets of Kampala watching life occur around him. It is a day like any other of the past 3 months he has been in Uganda. Street sellers lay their knock-off Nike on the pavement, women courier objects on their heads, children peddle unwanted souvenirs to tourists, and yet again, a man has hopped off the bus with a live chicken.


One thing is different however.


He has an overwhelming emptiness in his soul. He is restless, his life in torment.


Fish does not know where these feeling had come from and curses their sudden manifestation. He had enjoyed life and was happy the preceding days and months, but all of a sudden he found himself struck with a bipolar tick. It triggered a change in his thinking and ripped apart any sense of inner peace. He could no longer function properly, his mind hijacked by thieves, his body gravitating toward self pity. He was all of a sudden vulnerable, insecure and unsure.


He tries to determine the trigger, the thing that set off the physical, spiritual, and emotional storm. One thing he was sure of: It happened today. He thinks back upon the events of the morning; getting up; taking coffee at a corner stall in his neighbourhood; walking into town. He thinks about things he had seen along the way; kids playing football in the dirt; women carting various objects on their heads; a taxi driver speeding around a corner and nearly taking out an elderly man; joyous newlyweds celebrating outside a church; knock off goods peddled to tourists.


There was nothing unusual about the day or its events. It was like any other except for the fact that Fish's soul had been slowly ripped out from inside of him and placed into a washing machine of knives. He leans against a wall and slides his body down until it reaches the pavement. People rush past briskly, life on the main streets of Kampala to different clocks. He watches the mesmerizing patterns made from the light in between spaces of passing legs. Fish starts to feel an empathy for this space and a longing to devour it or give it use. He looks up at the sun, so bright yet hazy in the sky and watches it's rays illuminate the Ugandan flag that sits atop a building across the street.


'What the hell is wrong with me?' asks Fish.


It is then when a man stands by the exit of the building he is leaning against. In one hand is a rolled up newspaper and Fish takes note of the date which is showing. The man looks down at Fish and acts surprised when he realizes he is white.


"You okay Mizungu?" he asks.


"I'm fine" replies Fish lying.


The man walks off.


Suddenly everything is clear.


Fish curses himself for not realizing sooner. No wonder he felt the universal pull of tides, no wonder he felt the shattering of a thousand hearts and subsequent remodeling into one. It was the centre of the Piscean month, his birthday.


Inside of Fish are two scales, each one equally balanced; hopes and fears, strengths, weaknesses and insecurities. He feels them start to spin clockwise about the fulcrum on which they are balanced, at first slowly, then with increasing speed until everything was a rotational blur, orbital, with centripetal force. Fish knows that there is nothing he can do about it. A life force coursed through every artery, infecting every cell. Today, more than any other day he feels a directional pull on his soul. It is a forced reflection on previous years, a reconciliation of choice and destiny, a realignment and setting straight. Today Fish feels the essence of his soul. He is agitated and knows that he should not be in Uganda. 


Fish rises to his feet and finds himself amidst a pedestrian sea. He desires to be strong but finds himself being insanely needy. He feels various aspects of his body walk off in various directions but he himself goes nowhere. His head is full of conflict; scattered thoughts, lies and ideologies. He is unsure what they mean and what to believe and in questioning their original source, scrutiny becomes the undertow in which they are all drawn. There is only one thing Fish can trust and that is the feeling inside. Everything else was an externally pinned vector to a broken compass. Feeling pulled in so many directions, Fish's instincts are to run.


And so he forces himself through Kampala's crowded dusty streets. He doesn't know where he is going but knows that he must get there fast. He sidesteps souvenir peddlers, leaps over knock-off Nike products and squeezes in-between cages of soon to be executed animals; his cadence forever in debt to desire for movement. In the external act of doing something, he ignores the pain inside. He runs past the church he passed earlier, the bride and groom now dancing, through the soccer game, around corners in a rat warren of alleyways. Eventually he arrives back at his fifth floor shanty town apartment and collapses on his back exhausted inside the front door, breathing like a dog.
Above him the ceiling turns fuzzy and darkens with stars appearing -two opposing fish- before reverting back to their normal appearance. He can't remember the last time he felt his lungs and body burning so badly, his head so light. Panting for oxygen, Fish decides he enjoys the pain as it destroys any connection to the emotional psychobabble in his system. At the point of near complete exhaustion he feels more alive and focussed than ever. His head is clear and his thoughts pure. He starts to see visions; the good Lord bruised and broken on a cross; children running through a field; a woman in a flowing dress. He finds himself overcome with a desire to live and love. It spurns a necessity for connection and work.


He realizes how misled he had been in his desire to alienate himself from the world, to want to live in a refugee camp and amongst locals that didn't speak his language. In doing so he forwent love, a family and meaningful social connection.


'What am I doing?' thinks Fish. 


With breath returning he gathers his things and shoves them in his back pack.


'Damn my Piscean sign' he thinks.


Once again he is on the move. He has the notion of either sinking or swimming as he closes the door behind him. The precariousness in doing so makes him feel more in love than ever.


He dreams of home but does not know where that is.

The glyph for Pisces represents two fish swimming in opposite directions. The notion of savior, martyr and redeemer all belong to the motif of Pisces. There are no boundaries and no superiority amongst people. Pisces is concerned with universal truth, wholeness and unity. Famous for their escapist tendencies, they tend to slip away from the harsher realities of life. As a rule, they tend to drift through life and can be vague and dreamy. Pisceans are known for their instincts and flood of emotional and imaginative in-pouring and out-pouring. The twelfth sign is attuned to the deep undercurrents of the collective psyche. Bound up in chaos and blurred reality, the fishes need to protect themselves from exploitation. Alcoholism and drug addiction express their powerful longing to go back home. In true chameleon fashion, Pisces is as changeable as the sea and often flow with the current. The individual born under Pisces is often ultra sensitive, compassionate and kind. On the surface they represent a delicate vulnerability and fragility. Often they have an otherworldly quality and truly empathetic nature. Pisces completes the phase of the four social signs, and dissolves all boundaries that existed. Piscean sensitivity can descend into self-pity and they turn to drink, day-dreaming and fantasy. The body is often experienced as a prison, and they regularly fall into illness and depression, instability and delusions. Art, music, poetry and the imagination express the ‘hidden’ watery depths and the treasure lost and buried at the bottom of the sea. It helps to heal some of that ‘homesick’ feeling that they are often afflicted with.

A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Hates His Job

Meet Fish.

Fish works in a pencil sharpening factory. It’s a small factory and his job is to sharpen pencils, by hand. When Fish started work at the Factory he wondered why machines didn’t do the work for him. 

“We can’t afford that sort of Technology” said his line manager. “We are a small Factory.”

Fair enough thought Fish. 

When Fish started his job he was young and stupid. He was laughing that someone would pay him money for doing such a mundane and brainless task. At the end of his first day he was bragging to all of his friends. The money that he would receive! The simplicity!

But that was five years ago.

In the last two years Fish has only worked eight months. He can no longer stand the sight of pencils. He has also come to hate written language and art necessitated by pencils. Grudgingly, his employer let him take time off because if he didn’t he would lose him for good. Fish had become the most senior pencil sharpener in the factory and was so fast that he sharpened pencils three times faster than his peers.

Initially Fish experimented with time off, not really knowing what to do with himself he slept in, ate breakfast at lunch, and lunch at dinner. He had plans to hang out with friends but they were all working during the day. Fish was alone.

Not working, Fish learnt that he still had to meet the costs of everyday living. He still had to pay his rent, the power and telephone bill, food, the list went on. Fish’s employer had only granted him unpaid leave.

Everything is so expensive Fish thought. I can’t go on like this.

So Fish decided to cut down on his spending. He started to realize that if he spent less money, he would not need to work as much. He started to loathe his apartment, his cell phone, his eating habits. They were all sending him to work! His lifestyle made him work!

So Fish left his apartment and stopped buying meat. He lived in his car and only bought vegetables and fruit that were in season. He bathed in streams, cooked with a portable gas stove and started to develop a passion for rice.

Fish calculated that if he lived like this, he would not need to go back to work for another 3.24 years.

Three months pass.

Fish’s hair is long and he has a beard. He wears recycled clothing and looks derelict and disheveled, wild, but surprisingly indie. He is sick of living in a car. When he meets girls and takes them back to his place they would leave disgusted before even inside.

“This is your house?!” they would say.

“Yeah” said Fish.

“That’s disgusting! You’re a freak!”

Fish craved luxury again but still he detested work. His friends and parents gave him pep talks. They tried to tell him that his job wasn’t that bad and that he was actually making positive difference in the world.

“Everyone needs sharp pencils” they said.

“There’s no point” replied Fish. “They’re just going to get blunt again.”

Fish applied for other jobs but no one wanted an experienced pencil sharpener regardless of his Bruce Lee-esque hand speed. They were mundane jobs anyway, thought Fish, demoralized. He started to wonder how he could live in luxury on his savings without spending more week to week. He wondered if it was possible to retire at age 26.

So Fish travelled to Asia.

Then India.

Then Africa.

He lived on islands.

In jungles.

Amongst Himalayan Yaks.

He kept traveling in search of the most cheap and sustainable living arrangement. Once found, Fish would never have to work again.

Eventually he found himself in a Kenyan village opposite a refugee camp. He shared a mud hut with a family of eight who affectionately termed him “Mizungu”. 

Each morning Fish would sit on the mound of dirt sipping tea strained through Zebra hide. He would watch the people in the refugee camp go about their daily business, lining up for food rations, children going to school, playing football, healthcare. It had everything! He did some investigation regarding the cost of living in a refugee camp.

He worked out that if he lived in the refugee camp he would not have to work for another 112.81 years.

Another three months pass and Fish has managed to starve himself to a suitable level granting him access to the refugee camp. He lives contentedly inside and considers the lifestyle and company new and exotic. The only thing he didn’t understand was all the complaining that went on inside. Everyone wanted jobs, big screen T.Vs, they wanted to leave the camp, travel overseas, to lands of ‘opportunity’, lands of the ‘free’.

Fish shakes his head. These people didn’t realize that they were living the dream. They didn’t know what it was like to work in a Pencil Factory.

And so Fish lives in the refugee camp. He watches people come and go. He sees the new tents get put up. His friends and family would write to him and plead him to come back but Fish wouldn’t want any part of it. Everything about home was expensive, and where there was expense there was need of sharpening pencils on his behalf, or some other equally monotonous and meaningless task. They had all become the same in his eyes and he detested them all. He had found a new home now. Life in the refugee camp was meagre but he was at his own liberty. He accepts it and embraces it.

One day a group of UN workers come with gifts for refugees in the camp and everyone lines up in excitement, Fish included. When Fish reaches the front of the line he is given the same gift as everyone else. It is a pencil and the lead is broken.

The children in the refugee camp are ecstatic. They run to walls of buildings making effort to inscribe but nothing happens. Adults try and do the same. Everyone has broken pencils, they all try to use them, none of them working, then turn to Fish - the only white man in the camp - for answers.

“Mizungu! Why dis not work?”

“It’s because it needs...” Fish does not complete the sentence.

He watches boys press with their pencils so hard on the walls that the paint from the pencil exterior starts to come off and stick to the wall.

“It working now!” they exclaim.

The remainder of the camp is dubious. They look at their broken questions and question their worth. Once again they have been given unwanted and technologically defunct gifts from the West in the form of aid. They wanted pens.

Fish goes back to his tent and gathers his things. He decides he must leave. He will head south to Uganda.