Commerce, capitalism, and the economy, this is the driving force behind the stress in our lives. We must work to live, but we are told we should live to work. We should show devotion to a company, a corporation, and feel honored to work there. We shouldn’t ask for a raise. That means we are only in it for the money, not the joy of work. But we need the money to buy the products our jobs produce.
Even our free time has been coopted by commerce. It does not matter if you enjoy a hobby or craft. You must be good at it. You must be great. You must be so good that you can market your skill and sell it. You must also learn to blog and use social media to become an influencer selling your brand.
You must sell advertising space on your blog to bring in revenue. If you like making videos for YouTube, you need a Patreon and sponsors to pay your bills so you can devote yourself to what you enjoy.
Post(ish)-Covid, the goal seems to be to turn our side hustles, hobbies, and passions into our full-time job.
If we write poems or essays for a blog or magazine, we should write more. A lot more. And we shouldn’t make these available for everyone to find and read. Instead, they should go into a book that can be published and sold. It is the same with our art, patterns for knitting. A hobby quilter should have an Esty shop and sell their quilts for hundreds of dollars.
Our hobbies are supposed to be our me time. A time to sit quietly and reflect on the day. To focus on one task and let everything else fall away. Or they should be where we let loose, where paint flies from our brushes, and words pour out of our fingers onto the page.
We have put a price on everything; even our free time should not be free. Our time of peace should be filled with thoughts on how to market ourselves and our product.
The market price we place on our creation makes it impossible to trade and barter with each other. Two bottles of honey are not worth as much as a handmade quilt.
Even our spirituality has a price put on it. We must charge others to hear us talk, to let us teach them, to share a ritual or meditation. Everything has a price, even our health.
As long as we are in that mindset that says I must be paid for everything I do and thus must pay others for everything I enjoy, we cannot be happy.
We must always be thinking of how to improve our skills quickly and profit from them. We can never learn at a slow pace through trial and error. Our happiness in discovery and creativity is sacrificed for the expediency of churning out one marketable item after another.