Part of the reason I decided to quit working was the financial empowerment to do so.
But another reason, just as important, was the realization that most of what I was doing contributed to only imaginary, artificially created outcomes.
This is certainly not unique to my situation. It's what the unexamined, unenlightened life is all about, especially in consumerist America – the pursuit of pointless 'goals,' meaningless 'achievements,' and often silly 'responsibilities.'
Certainly there are goals, achievements and responsibilities that are important. But ninety-nine percent of the things we value as important or necessary are in fact neither. They're just stuff we made up, or that someone else made up for us. We'd do just fine without them. We have created around ourselves a hopelessly complex, tangled and contradictory reality in which all of our attention and stamina are required just to tread water, let alone get anywhere.
And when we have 'achieved,' we have usually just surrounded ourselves with another layer of material and psychological detritus, heaped upon the numerous layers that already obscure our view of the real world.
Other items of interest today: paid off a bank card and cancelled my match.com and Yahoo! Personals account, both long unread (in fact, I was stunned to discover I was still paying for match.com, when I thought I had cancelled it two years ago!).
These are in preparation for my transition from the workforce to the sitaroundtheRedCupforce.
There was a time when I considered match.com and Yahoo! Personals important. I even paid for the 'Premier' dating service on Yahoo!, which warned me in advance that most of the women whose profiles it was sending me would not actually be able to get along with me.
Yes. I was paying money to have Yahoo! email me, once a week, photos and thumbnail profiles of women who would not especially like me.
As if those were hard to find.
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