Brb because I just woke up from a manic dream and will probably fall back asleep but anyway come on guys, say it with me, “if I don’t live in South Korea/am not South Korean then I have no say on how the South Korean government should treat enlistment when it comes to my faves because it is not my place as a fan to tell an entire government what to do”

I make too much money to still be broke.

The first step to recovery is realizing you have a problem in the first place.

I make a US$66,000 salary, which is pretty decent for where I live. I saved $7,000 to move to a new state, rent a one-bedroom apartment and live alone for the first time. (I’ve always relied on living with other people to help pay the rent, but during this “anything goes” COVID situation in the US I realized it’d be better for my mental health to finally move out on my own.) 

When I moved into this apartment in May, I told myself that minimalism would help me stay on-budget. With that in mind, I splurged on the essential things that I knew would make me feel more at home and establish new routines — nice new cookware, a Fellow digital kettle, a Thuma bed frame that Instagram convinced me I needed...and because I was coming from San Francisco, where the cost of living is completely insane and nothing is reasonably priced, suddenly I could afford anything I wanted with no problem! I adopted a rescue cat, installed bookshelves, bought my first “smart home” thing (an Alexa Dot speaker) and some Philips Hue smart lights I could control with my voice. Fancy! Oh, wait...wasn’t I supposed to be “minimalist?”

Please note, my dear, probably nonexistent reader, that it doesn’t end there. As I began to fill out my apartment, every new addition inspired another. I have a smart home assistant now, so shouldn’t I have more than one Smart Thing to connect it to? I bought a smart TV. But my apartment is a bit small, so I should hang the TV on the wall to save space! I bought a TV mount. Oh, and my Redbubble side business will be easier to launch if I have a scanner...but here’s a scanner-printer combo that’s also Alexa-capable! Obviously that’s the more optimized choice. But now I need a place to put it...time to install more shelves! While I’m at it, I’m working full-time and going back to school next month, so I should put some effort into getting organized...time to hit up Container Store? All the while, I continued to voraciously consume the local pillow market. Bed pillows, throw pillows, floor pillows, body pillows...so many pillows! So much comfort!

This is my problem. That $7,000 ran out months ago. The phrase “I should look at my budget” only enters my brain the day before payday, and no other day. I paid for the essential furniture with my debit card using money I already had, but by the time I got to the “throw pillow” circle of hell, I was using “buy now pay later” services like Klarna and Affirm. On pillows. Pillows! I realized my TV was purchased through a lease-to-own business for twice its value over a week after it had been delivered to my home. 

For the amount of money that I earn, I shouldn’t even need to think about these sorts of services. Back when I was actually struggling I used my upbringing as an excuse for why I’m living paycheck to paycheck; my mom wasn’t great with money either, and she didn’t like her “little girl” going outside on her own, so I wasn’t allowed to get a job in my teens. She died when I was still in high school, and I was wholly unprepared to fend for myself or participate in the economy. I wallowed in a painful period of underemployment, couchsurfing, and struggling to put myself through college, but I “picked myself up by my bootstraps” as well as I could, eventually dropping out of college to take an internship that turned into a lucrative job. As soon as I was getting paid enough to furnish the comforts I never had as a child, I dove right into late-stage capitalism and never looked back.

At 30 years old, that look back is way overdue. I’m going back to school — which costs money. I have a (cat) son now and would love to adopt a dog soon, both of whom will costs lots of money to keep healthy and happy. I have a therapist, who is worth every penny, but good god does she cost money. I don’t buy things I don’t value, or keep things I don’t use; I can look around my apartment and tell you what everything cost me and why I have it. I spent so much of my energy in COVID making this place as perfect, as functional, as OpTiMiZeD as possible, and I regret nothing! 

That’s the problem. All of this stuff is necessary, sure, but the timing wasn’t. I needed a printer a month from now, so why did I overdraft my debit card to get it last week? Why did I agree to adopt the cat without at least some savings to back me up in case of an emergency? I mean, shit...what about my own health? I am lucky enough to have a health savings account...with nothing in it, because I keep withdrawing money. Why do I feel such an urgent need every payday to drive my account balance back to zero in the name of “optimization?” Spending all of my money on Friday makes it impossible for me to be in my friends’ lives the next Wednesday. What’s more, I need to save money for a computer this year, and I want to buy a car next year. If I logically understand why I should save my money, why can’t I do it? What is keeping me in this ongoing loop of “optimizing” my space when saving would help me optimize my life and overall happiness?

I started this blog to chronicle my journey through compulsive shopping, retail therapy, and overspending in hopes that I can find other people who have started from the bottom of financial literacy, like me, and lived to tell the tale. Has anyone else been caught in this vicious cycle, or currently going through it? Say hey, if you have. Or feel free to lurk and watch my journey to financial stability from afar. Thanks for dropping by, either way. :)

10. Perché mi hai fatto una cosa del genere?

My thoughts on this episode were all over the place, I can’t even find main themes to put in this little intro, so, fuck it! Get ready for me getting angry at least a couple of times because of men, as I’m wont to do, and have a look at the results of the Bechdel test for the episode at the end!

in the previous episode, I forgot to call attention to Eva taking charge of the situation when Alice goes after Laura: that’s the boss!Eva from Silvia’s party in S2, the same person we haven’t seen in a month, since the day Edoardo showed up at her house early for his date with Silvia; and here we see a version of her again, she’s a girl with a purpose and since Marti doesn’t answer her she’s gonna hunt him down

but why is Marti online?

ok so the day Marti’s dad leaves him and his mom is May 24th or 25th; the first night of proper, restful sleep we’re sure Marti gets is November 1st; five months and change of insomnia, caring for his depressed mom and bottling things up in general 💔

Gio is in red! again!

the stilted conversation between Eva and Gio, the pauses, it hurts to watch

especially because on top of the general awkwardness of being not-quite-exes and not on the best of terms (it’s quite possible this is the first time they’ve talked since ep. 8); the fact that we know Eva knows makes things even more painful to watch

and God, but Gio is honestly so caring: even here, while they’re in this weird limbo between being people with a friend in common, mostly-exes and fighting, he still asks Eva how she’s feeling, how things are with her and empathizes with her

and after Eva asks Gio to say hi to Marti for her, there’s a minute where she’s mulling, she’s about to say something and I’m dead with wanting to know what: is it something about them? Is it a “I’m working on what you told me, you were right”? Is it about Marti interfering with them and Alice? Or, even more painful, does she want to say something, but can’t find anything to say to Gio???

the most painful goodbye, aborted tries for a hug, then an embarrassed kiss on the cheek and Gio turning his back on Eva to go to Marti

oh, God. Gio turns his back on Eva to go to Marti.

did the school only let them use one bathroom for shooting?? or was it LudoBesse’s favorite, the only one that had the Light™? This is not only the same bathroom where Eva dragged Laura last episode, but the one in which Marti and Nico will have their secret rendezvous in 5.4 Pausa and where Marti will tell i Contrabbandieri about Milan in 9.3 Namacissi

oh, good, Silvia is on speaking terms with Eva again!

and Eva cried because of Silvia’s words, for fuck’s sake, but here she tells her they were not a big deal and I’m half thankful because look at how bad poor Silvia feels, you see it in her face; but I’m also half mad cause that wasn’t okay

and here we go! Silvia dropping the mask and admitting that for as much as she tries to live her fantasy of being well liked and dating Edo like Valentina in RPDR All Stars, she can’t delude herself enough to actually believe it: her insecurity runs so deep it makes my chest hurt

“It always ends with everyone hating me. I’m used to it.” WHO TOLD HER THEY HATED HER AND SHE WAS GOING TO BE HATED Francesca Mirabella, I’m looking at you, it might not have been you but you probably had something to do with it, she’s your sister ffs, why don’t you try to help her and lift her up??

Eva tries, she tries hard, but there’s only so much she can do, in part because she doesn’t know how, in part because it’s pretty late, in part because Silvia is spiraling and she won’t listen to her anyways

and Eva and Gio are alone again, good job universe: keep shoving them together and they’ll have to start talking again, now that things have died down and they’re calmer

Gio is in Middle earth: reddish-brown t-shirt, blue shirt on top, not quite of red zone but slowly going back to a more normal blue

Eva really really doesn’t want to fail: I wish we’d seen a glimpse of her family again, if she’s apologized to her mom and has explained and not failing any subjects is a way to prove her good will; if it is a way to apologize, to make up for the near-suspension and try and break down the barrier between them so she can talk and explain and maybe even ask for advice

safe subjects, common ground between Gio and Eva: the exam, Marti, their next class (still interspersed with those awkward silences)

things can’t keep going like that, they’ve been walking on eggshells around one another, they’re bound to break one at some point

except they don’t get to because Canegallo does it for them

and again, allow me to repeat how much of an asshole I think he is: he was walking by them, sure, but he simply had to keep his mouth shut and ignore them for things not to go south, instead he purposefully stirs shit; had it been Gio by himself would he have said anything? I don’t think so, he’s just trying to show Eva he’s over her, but catch her attention at the same time and pay her back for the story getting out by putting her in a difficult position with Gio; and he literally does it just for shits and giggles, since he surely never gave enough fucks about Alice to be upset now that she’s broken up with him, so even “revenge” is just a facade for the desire to cause drama

Gio is channeling his inner Elia and Eva is immediately on high alert, even before he shoves Federico

and everything was going decently, if not well, then motherfucking Canegallo had to open his whore mouth and also throw Gio on the floor and look, look at the look Giovanni gives Eva when she tries to calm him down, just before walking away from her: that look is saying it again “How could you kiss him? How can you like him and people like him and go out with them and kiss any of them?” (hard same tbh, Eva, how?)

so things went to shit again

oh look, it’s Alice, again… it’s like Eva’s a flame and they’re all like moths, jeez

at least Alice has finally broken things off with Canegallo for real and I’d like to thank not only God but also Jesus

and she’s proudly announcing she’s the one who dumped his sorry ass and that’s the best part for me, such a far call from last episode’s “I can’t dump him”

I have so many problems with the “alcoholic feminist night” for single girls who are angry with men Alice’s planning and with Eva’s interpretation of it as a lesbian thing and with them agreeing that homosexuality might prove to be a solution like OH. MY. GOD

so few words, so many wrong messages. These girls, honestly. Eleonora, magically appear and slap some sense into them please

aaaaaand the actual “girls only” night begins with a shot where there are five guys or so…so much for coherence

at least the girls seem to be having fun

Eleonora’s “Okay” is soooo unconvincing, I mean, yeah, you’re outvoted,ok, but at least take the defeat with some attempt at grace; especially given that when they’re recording the video she abandons all pretenses of still holding a grudge and smiles, jokes and happily invites Silvia with all the others

so, not only there are those boys from the first shot at the party, but also Marti Elia and Peccio are there. Again: wasn’t this GIRLS ONLY PARTY?

unless they’re following the girls to find out where they’re meeting, watching from afar like lurkers and waiting for their chance to slip in when the girls get drunker. Wouldn’t put it past them

some casual, subtle racism from Marti and Elia

ok so Peccio’s actual surname is Pecci, we’re one step closer to figuring out his name, and then he’ll officially have one before Mrs Rametta who’s 1543 times more important in the economy of the series LUDOBESSE GIVE MARTI’S MOM A NAME YOU COWARD

Marti’s boob comment. I just. Honey, why? Why make it somewhat sexual, why make Eva’s happiness about her appearance, specifically to an element of her appearance that is heavily objectified and sexualized by men and at the same time imply that it is frivolous to care about one’s appearance? (I have strong feelings about breasts and men’s/society’s attention to them)

so Marti’s reaction is: incredulous half-smile, uncomfortable wiggle, face going sad/disappointed purportedly because Gio didn’t tell him, fake ass happy comments

“I was happy to do it, I care about you two” yeah, Marti, how about we go once more and you at least try to put some feeling and conviction in it?

and in the most powerful power move Eva just laid down all her cards at once, then grabbed the table and fucking flipped it YAAASSS QUEEN

“Cause, you know, my relationship starts going to shit from that moment” EHM. Eva. Are you only lying to Martino to make him feel guiltier or are you lying to yourself as well?

MARTINOH GUARDAMI MARTINOH (I’ve been waiting ten episodes for this blessed moment of poetic cinema)

“C’mon Eva, you know fully well that I like you” and let me turn my question to you, Marti babe: are you only lying to get a believable alibi or are you lying to yourself as well?

and really, I want to know what’s in Marti’s head right now! He obviously had this excuse prepared so he either really thinks he really likes Eva and is completely unaware of his crush on Gio still, or he spent a long time trying to come up with a believable lie after he impulsively told Alice everything (I refuse to think he actually honestly premeditated it); or is he trying to convince himself he did it for Eva because he’s somewhat aware of his feeling for Gio but vehemently doesn’t want to accept them? As I type, I realize the third option is the most likely. Well, that throws me a bit, I’d always thought by this point Marti knew, I mean, the cabin

so that reframes the whole summer. It was the summer of acceptance for Marti. He makes peace with being gay, since he’s not fighting it still when he meets Nico, he accepts he likes Gio but nothing will ever come out of it, since in 1.2 Svegli he’s aware of his feelings, he accepts his dad won’t be coming back and he’s gonna have to care for his mom. What a summer.

and of course he did hurt when Eva came to him about Gio, of course he did, poor baby

Marti himself brings up the cabin, but really, even trying, in that conversation I can’t hear a lick of interest for Eva, and she probably didn’t either; how deeply in denial are you Marti?

Eva’s incredulity is heartbreaking, all her rage just goes right out of her

oooh, I hope I’m right about Marti not knowing his own feelings yet. Cause if Marti knows he’s into Gio and thinks of telling Eva he’s into here only as an excuse, it makes me so fucking angry? I just realized how fucking manipulative a move it is, not only because he tries to play into her feeling, but also just because it’s just such a sheerly ballsy move, one that yanks off the earth right under Eva’s feet and it is designed specifically so she’s gonna be shocked into letting go of her rightful anger and that’s such a fucking asshole move, I can’t even. Fuck.

so yeah, better convince myself Marti really believe he was into Eva at that point, even if it tilts my whole worldview for this show sideways

but Eva is so powerful walking away like that, despite the shock, despite asking for help to get down from the van, she radiates badassery and anger. And I thank God for that. If she’d been meek because she’s confused, if she hadn’t demanded to be helped like that it would have been so dismissive of her I would have probably cried actual tears

that poor girl, the friend-of-Alice’s whose party this was supposed to be. She doesn’t know these girls at all and now one of their friends got there blackout drunk and collapsed and her birthday celebration risks being shut down because they need to get medical help and that’s gonna bring a lot of questions about underage drinking, plus she’s worried, just out of basic decency and empathy, I mean, she might have alcohol poisoning or go into ethylic coma or die

and so we get to the parallel to catwalk in ep. 4 when the girls were going to Edoardo’s/Chicco Rodi’s (never quite figured that one out, I guess we’ll see next season)

but really, is that the best way to carry Silvia they could think of? Sana only holding her hand, while Eva (second shortest) carries the heaviest part of Silvia’s body her middle, by herself?

thank God for the Eleonora Savas and the Sana Allaguis of the world, ready to take charge of bad situations they’re in, to call for help even if others won’t admit to needing it and to get their hands dirty; honestly, boos to the Federicas of the world cause who cares about being grounded when there’s someone who’s fucking unconscious?

poor Sana, being looked at like she’s an alien just because she actually has hair like any normal human being (jk, it actually is a super sweet moment of girls bonding and supporting and lifting each other up)

yes to cuddly puppy piles in beds

aaaaand there goes the cliffhanger

I’d be super curious to know if for people who’d never seen any Skam before, Silvia being pregnant was actually believable? There was the unprotected sex, the mood swings, the puking... I felt it was pretty believable in Skam og when I watched it, but of course I having seen the og I’ve been spoiled how this ends, so I can’t gauge how convincing Skam Italia was (I feel like it wasn’t as convincing tbh but it might just be me knowing the truth, so) 🤷‍♀️

Bechdel test: this episode passes the test, because of the conversation around Silvia at Alice’s party. I think this might actually be the only conversation that happens fully on screen and is entirely devoid of any mention of any male character. In the conversation that have made other episodes pass the Bechdel test, there’s usually either some subtext, or a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention, or it’s a conversation that happens while we fade into a scene so we only hear the very last part of it, or the conversation veers into boy territory after a few lines. This is a welcome change.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1.  If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

The Invisible Hand Will Sink These Markets

Image: Nan Fry

By Brian Nelson, CFA

Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is often thought to be a blessing by the capitalists of the world. The free-market economy will find the right answer, they may say. Self-interest and greed will inevitably push humankind to new horizons and achieve levels of greatness no person before thought possible. What fools we are to believe.

Irrational behavior around shares of GameStop (GME) continued Friday, February 26, with the company trading in a huge range of $86.00-$142.90 on the session. We re-released our 16-page report on the stock and peg a fair value estimate of just $4 per share, with the high end of the fair value estimate range of $7. A Bank of America analyst reiterated a $10 price target. GameStop shares closed at ~$102.

There’s clearly no reasonable basis for owning GameStop’s stock at current price levels, in our view, and there certainly was no reasonable basis when the stock was trading as high as $483 per share earlier this year. An equity capital raise by management would result in a fair value estimate increase (perhaps a material one depending on how many new shares the market can stomach), but the takeaway is the same:

These markets are nuts. The iceberg is coming, and we’re still going full steam ahead.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) noted February 26 that “as part of its continuing effort to respond to potential attempts to exploit investors during the recent market volatility,” it had suspended trading in 15 more stocks—all “because of questionable trading and social media activity.” We applaud the SEC for its swift action, though much more is needed, and it may be too little too late.

Unlike the dot-com bubble roughly two decades ago, the fervor of the price-agnostic trading frenzy of 2021 has an aura of permanence to it. This “craziness” is here to stay. Where during the dot-com bubble, sell-side analysts were in a race to set the highest price target, regardless of their underlying opinion of the firm, there was a solution to the problem. Get rid of the bad apples. But today, we have a fraction of the sell-side analysts we used to; they’ve been out of a job for some time now.

Fired – in favor of underperforming statistical quant work or the fantasies of artificial intelligence and machine learning. More than 60% of trading in the marketplace is now driven by indexing, algorithms and quant traders chasing momentum or following trends--or moving stocks higher or lower based on simple P/B or P/E ratios. The quants know statistics, but of finance they know little.

Moreover, there are trillions in indexed products, and their overseers believe we still operate in an environment like that of even a few decades ago—when sell-side analysts were pulling seven-figure salaries because the invisible hand rewarded price discovery. We are not operating in such an environment. The price setters have almost all left. Shown the door, even.

The best finance schools aren’t teaching how to responsibly evaluate the fundamentals of a company and haven’t been doing so for decades. Heck, they think they’ve “solved the market” with backtests and “made up” factors. They are teaching coding or indoctrinating students to believe that any share price is as good as the next (GameStop at $450, for example – what a deal! – yes, sarcasm), or that the market simply knows best. Maybe years ago, the market was once a decent price-setting mechanism, but today, it is most certainly not.

GameStop is just one of at least a few dozen rather large stocks whose share prices make no sense--and I’m not talking about Tesla (TSLA). There's actually some reasonable basis to Tesla’s valuation. It’s not just the two dozen or so companies that the SEC suspended trading today either. This nonsense is everywhere. Do we really believe that a $7 trillion asset manager like Vanguard, or the trillions in indexed products today that pay little attention to intrinsic value are not also distorting market prices?

Pretty straightforward, no? But some of the brightest minds on the Street today may say in disbelief: “Full Steam Ahead!” Of course, some of them are just stubborn. They’ve been singing the same tune for decades, finding different ways to say the same thing over and over again, and they can’t change it now. They’d be wrong, and their egos couldn’t take it for one second. The invisible hand is yet still working overtime.

Elon Musk tweets out a Clubhouse app and a completely different company with the ticker CMGR soars. The same situation happened to another company called Signal Advance (SIGL) over another one of Musk’s tweets. Yet another instance like this but without a Musk tweet occurred with confusion of ZOOM last year. There’s no fix to this, and these are just the distortions we see clear as day.

You can’t convince a die-hard index aficionado that’s hauling in $20 million a year on a book of business that he’s built based on the faulty efficient market hypothesis and underperforming modern portfolio theory to all of sudden care about the greater good of society. What did Upton Sinclair say: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Nobody cares that these markets are going straight to the bottom of the ocean like the Titanic, no more than uninformed nations can heed the warning of climate change before it's too late. We’re headed for disaster one way or another. The incentives have been in place for a long time. “Sell index funds. Look – random factors can explain these returns.” Most of what’s coming out of finance today is nonsense, padding the wrong pockets.

How many people celebrate when they get the fair value of a company, correct? Where’s that on the news? Pay a man twice as much to not do individual due diligence on stocks, and just mechanically rebalance assets every six months or so and not give a damn about the health of the marketplace, what do you expect? You don’t think Jack Bogle is hailed as a hero by advisors for saving individual investors money, do you? Jack hasn’t saved the prudent stock picker a plug nickel.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of active management used to result in the optimization of price discovery, where participants would do their very best work to buy and sell to “uncover” the best market price, creating a positive externality for all investors--even those quants and indexers that are now polluting the system. Today’s invisible hand is leading us off a cliff. Incentives are in place to continue to discourage price discovery, and to no surprise, we’re seeing just a glimpse of it.

Iceberg ahead, and very few see it. Sure, there are perma-bears that have been bearish for the past two decades that are right twice a day like a clock, but we’ve been bullish. The ship is damaged, the markets are going to sink, and it’s not the “little guy’s” fault. The distortions in the financial markets are clear when viewed through the lens of a $6 billion company GameStop, but they are no less evident than implicit distortions caused by a bunch of index funds piling into the same name at once.

We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes just for Long-Term Capital Management to blow up. We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes for EMH just to witness what’s happening in the markets with stocks like GameStop doing what they’re doing. We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes to provide excuses for why modern portfolio theory in the form of the 60/40 stock/bond portfolio has failed investors for the past 30 years relative to a monkey throwing darts at the WSJ pages.

Why are we handing out Nobel prizes -- and why doesn't Warren Buffett have one? You get the type of academic work you incentivize, and incentives are out of whack. I’ve said jokingly that finance for the past 60 years can easily be summed up by two developments: 1) Oh, you can’t do stock analysis? Well, here’s indexing. 2) Oh, you can’t beat the S&P 500? Well, here’s some quant jargon.

Indexing and quant jargon are doing far more damage than a few traders on social media. Believe you me. These markets are not well, and the invisible hand is guiding through a fog of misinformation to disaster. Markets have bounced right off the high end of our fair value estimate range on the S&P 500, and we’ve raised cash. The violins are playing on the Titanic. The “unsinkable” ship we call the price discovery mechanism of the markets can sink. Let us not be fools to think otherwise.

There will be an epilogue to Value Trap, and you and I both know that I don't want to write it. Let's keep playing the violin for now.

Tickerized for GME, CMGR, SIGL, TSLA, ZM, ZOOM

Temporarily Suspended Trading: Bebida Beverage Co. (BBDA); Blue Sphere Corporation (BLSP); Ehouse Global Inc. (EHOS); Eventure Interactive Inc. (EVTI); Eyes on the Go Inc. (AXCG); Green Energy Enterprises Inc. (GYOG); Helix Wind Corp. (HLXW); International Power Group Ltd. (IPWG); Marani Brands Inc. (MRIB); MediaTechnics Corp. (MEDT); Net Talk.com Inc. (NTLK); Patten Energy Solutions Group Inc. (PTTN); PTA Holdings Inc. (PTAH); Universal Apparel & Textile Company (DKGR); and Wisdom Homes of America Inc. (WOFA),  Bangi Inc. (BNGI); Sylios Corp. (UNGS); Marathon Group Corp. (PDPR); Affinity Beverage Group Inc. (ABVG); All Grade Mining Inc. (HYII); and SpectraScience Inc. (SCIE)

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Valuentum members have access to our 16-page stock reports, Valuentum Buying Index ratings, Dividend Cushion ratios, fair value estimates and ranges, dividend reports and more. Not a member? Subscribe today. The first 14 days are free.

Brian Nelson owns shares in SPY, SCHG, QQQ, and IWM. Some of the other securities written about in this article may be included in Valuentum's simulated newsletter portfolios. Contact Valuentum for more information about its editorial policies.

#personal

I think this is really the first weekend where I’ve felt free of everything in a long while.  This doesn’t mean that adult responsibilities aren’t out there.  There’s enough adult money to keep me behind closed doors for the foreseeable future.  If it were all about money, I’d be pretty depressed.  And sadly I’m starting to realize without all these numbers attached to my head floating in space I feel a little different.  It’s really tricky to talk about because it runs the risk of triggering people I care about.  And so all I can really tell you is that I’m far more accountable on paper these days than I was.  On the internet, people have known me for years as being a good boy.  When I sit down at the bank, I reflect this in my conversations.  I tell the banker I have reached my goal to be debt free.  And then the questions start to roll in.  Aren’t you married?  Do you have a mortgage?  Would you like to look into student loans for your children?  None of these really fit me.  I’ve actually never had kids.  Never been married.  Don’t own a home.  And yet I’ve done all these other things with money than don’t mean anything.  I travelled to Korea fourteen times.  Japan and China enough to have the bank statements to prove it.  I was watching one of the finance channels on cable when I overheard a pundit praising low interest rates.  He was referencing the 2008 crisis when the Fed jacked the rates up to unfathomable levels.  I had to pay off a wall of debt accrued from just trying to escape the trappings of my own life.  I both did and didn’t get very far.  But years later, here I am.  I did it.  I accomplished something nobody thought I ever would apparently.  And it means mostly nothing to a lot of people.  Because they haven’t figured out a way to take advantage of it.  America is like that sometimes.  It compares everything  relentlessly.  It is obsessed with an idea of success that is rooted in failure.  You often wonder if it was meant to be this way.  The country’s answer to crisis right now is to keep calm and keep on spending.  Everything is a loan.  Some loans are more advantageous to sectors of the economy.  Like autos, homes, and school.  Even computers and gaming systems.  I remember the first significant purchase that put me in debt.  A used laptop for my girlfriend at the time for her work.  Years later we paid off a car that I ended up having to forfeit.  And years later I don’t have much to show for anything that means much to most Americans.  I do have my freedom.  Something I thought that most Americans cherished.  If freedom is attached to debt, what happens when the people that hold it decide to pass the buck literally.  These are things that scare me more than getting verbally threatened on the street.  Being tricked into another debt trap.  Convinced I’m not winning because I haven’t bought a house near my mother and saddled myself down to a for profit job in this city or suburbs with the same exact salary as I made at a non profit.  Not that any of that was an option in the first place.

The trick about America is that it is always sociopathic.  Transgressive tactics that evolved from revolutionary art of the sixties and seventies has been coopted into entire advertising campaigns.  Like passing the soda to the riot police.  The real world has morphed into the many worlds of fifteen minutes of fame.  Everyone is a star.  Everyone can be seen.  Everybody is being sized up, compared and further speculated on.  Human capital essentially.  The same feelings I get when I rearrange my stock portfolio are at work with the corporations and developers shuffling the decks in a dying city.  They hunt human stock in the wild.  Wrap elaborate schemes and believable communities around them.  Like the nightmare world of J.G. Ballard.  A high rise prison you never leave with jobs, groceries, friends, lovers, and drama all attached to a bubbling IPO.  When can I put myself on the OTC trading market.  What is my price per share?  What am I really worth when I don’t really owe anybody except an eye roll and an “OK Boomer.”  It’s tricky.  The things I know about myself are not the things this city openly admits or acknowledges.  I’ve been left alone enough to know the last two months.  I also know that people have been watching.  Maybe seeing a different side of me.  A new self worth emerging.  And yet people always try to trick you into thinking you are worth less than you really are.  The same people walking around with huge bounties over their heads in silence.  I’ve felt that for years around my neck.  And I’m not sitting here throwing my hands up saying I will never work again.  It’s frustrating.  This entire time I have been working since I was let go.  And the results to me seem very different.  And yet everybody treats me the same if not worse.  This isn’t to say I understand the layers to it.  America is obfuscated that way when you really live it bare.  You can believe whatever for profit news outlet or twitter feed you want if it supports your narrative.  But does it really have any validity when it cannot look itself in the mirror.  I got here by doing that daily.  There were years when I was sadder.  More sorry for myself.  More frustrated by things I brought upon myself.  And yet I probably could have gotten out of this sooner if I just left a long time ago.  I was duped into thinking security in my job was important.  And it was.  Still is when you look at what my final payouts were with all the benefits melted down.  I don’t know if I can say personally it is worth it to me to stay here in America.  And yet my rent is about the only thing that has helped me achieved my final freedom aside from that money.  And in that I feel it’s a little less connected to the meat market of corporate gentrification that lurks outside of my neighborhood.  A place I feel safe enough to weather out the storm with enough financial runway to know when to fly.

As far as what I’m meant to do or where I’m meant to go, I’m not sure.  I often think there is a lot of panic right now in any decisions for any organization.  People let a lot of people go this summer for purely financial reasons on paper.  The pandemic was a good excuse.  The CARES act made some of it bearable.  The end result for me is complex.  Never being married or having children isn’t something I really exactly wanted.  Never being able to afford anything because I was duped into thinking art was more important wasn’t something that panned out for me either.  Right now, I think the best thing about me is that I’m open.  I’ve been transparent for years writing on the internet more because I valued the people I talked to.  And in the end, the epilogue of it all is that I don’t really feel I have much to prove anymore.  I would like to prove I could get the right job.  And I’m starting to feel the right jobs may be out there.  But I’m not sure I want to tie myself down too much until after my birthday.  This would be more scary if I believed all the politics in the matter.  But for all the shit the news talks and the people who run the country, my situation is pretty much the most alone I’ve felt ever.  And America just expects me to either succumb to the vulnerability or get the message however deep or obfuscated it may be.  And the good news is I do.  Loud and clear.  And my intuition just says some basic things.  Part out and budget your expenses by month.  Set that aside in liquidity.  And continue to be yourself.  If I’m not worth something by February.  Then I do need to take a different approach.  One that would be even more catastrophic for me mentally than anything.  I’d have to change everything and move forward by myself into the void.  Which in some ways I have already done.  Except everybody knows I’ve been sitting on the bench for a reason.  I would love to be a normal person.  Get married.  Have kids.  Share my life with somebody.  And I’m sure I can one day.  But the reality is that after all this time however young I feel I’ve been completely lied to and worse.  And the reality is that most Americans are too.  And they are not happy.  They have no more control or direction for their lives than I do.  They point at the things that they own that really just own them.  And they ignore the basic joys of life that are free.  And it shows.  On their faces.  In their eyes when they try to smile.  And in some ways, we like to think we all have the best poker face.  But it’s hard to deny the fact that when I laid my cards down on the table, there was a silence that speaks volumes.  I was prepared for that.  Do you go in another round?  Or do you leave the game entirely and take your money away from the table.  I took myself out of the bidding because I’m worth more than Chance.  And if it were all about money, I would have never felt worth anything to you all these years.  It’s about what we deserve.  And the work you put into reaching that isn’t something you compare with others.  Stay on your own path and follow your own light.  And just remember nothing is impossible if you face it head on.  The smallest steps to reverse the course in retrospect are always the biggest.   Sometimes just putting your name out there will suffice.  Sometimes saying no is the hardest part.  The fear of missing out on something with too many negative strings attached.   If I’m worth anything that’s worth my time, I’m sure I’ll hear about it.  Until then, there’s enough pink outside my doorstep to know I don’t have to worry excessively.   That’s always been worth my time.  And my net worth is actually worth something for once.  For a year at least.  <3 Tim