What a Way to Make a Living

I have a confession to make.

I work for money. Sometimes I work to just make money. Not because I believe in something, not because it will challenge me or is artistic or make the world better. I participate in the exchange of services for money, and if that includes a cash tip at the end of the evening, I like it. I’ll be working tonight, New Year’s Eve, for some very nice, wealthy people, catering a party for friends and family. There is no cultural currency involved in this. They are appreciative and pay well.¹ I prefer to work on New Year’s Eve than be out in the world.

A cab across he Williamsburg Bridge last New Year’s Eve, after working the same party.

It’s so gauche, working for money. And yet, I think a lot of us do it. For all of my wingeing about the rich, I too like money. I also like to work. I like to get paid for the work I do. I will bring my work ethic, an attention to detail and give it my all, in a very annoying overachiever manner that somehow applies to your party and not to my life. I like the work—cooking, working with food, making something delicious, trying to always make it better. It suits me more than an office life, and I am including doing the dishes in this statement.

A lot of people found my writing during the height of the pandemic, while I was working at a food pantry. I burned brightly, my rage clear and succinct. I went in two days after the 2016 election to discuss a job training program with the director and left after six years in September 2022 full of grief and burn-out with a defenseless immune system. Hence the confession, that here I am now, just another person who works for money.

Since then, I’ve returned to freelancing, a different word for hustling, pretending to work on my own terms. Anyone who works for themselves knows this is an illusion, a mirage. This past year has been the most financially lucrative for me, ever, certainly a strange sensation, a lot of it spent on an engaging, challenging project where my opinion was valued. A rarity. I have felt grateful, deeply fucking sincerely grateful for this sense of security.

Still, I harbor these juvenile notions about work, being obsessed, caring so much that nothing else matters, everything else falls away, all the romantic stuff we know is bullshit. That toxic seed, working for money is lame, is embedded inside of me somewhere, somehow planted by people, nay, visionaries, who magically never did anything for money yet reap its benefits. I thought I was over that, had excavated it. Still it lingers. Calling something lame is a judgement, a somewhat juvenile one, while feeling grateful is wholly different, a sensation that crept up on me, telling me something I didn’t know I needed.²

There’s a calm I feel right now, staring at the edge of 2025. The world certainly doesn’t encourage it, but I feel focused with what I need right now, to be quiet, hibernate, get a little tunnel vision. I so often feel like I’m on the verge of something, getting there, where ever there is. I think it would help if I could name the destination.

Maybe I’m not the right personality type or born under the right moon, sun, sky or bloodsugarsexmagick to know what success looks like, maybe the problem is I don’t use the word success. It’s lame. Or that I’ve wasted myself with the people who told me to put it all out there for them, something they’d never reciprocate. This isn’t about them, it’s about me.

Here is a list of the most read essays from Attitude Adjustment Facility this year. Who am I to say no to an end-of-year list? Lord knows the constant pontifications are exhausting, let’s just hit the highlights of this mortal coil a bit, shall we?

Thank you for reading. Thank you for being here. 2025. It’s gonna be something.

1. If you ever hire people to cater, or just hire people for anything, being appreciative and paying well are the best things you can be.

2. Fuck, is this maturity?