A while back, somebody asked me if I ‘wouldn’t rather have a nice new truck’. <\/p>\n
I answered. In real time and then again here, a bit sharply both times, defensively, as it were, on behalf of my ancient pickup. <\/p>\n
But I have a fresh answer. <\/p>\n
It is: yeahhh … sorta<\/em>. <\/p>\n It would be great to go back to the days of a vehicle so nice and new that all I ever have to do to it is stick assiduously to the maintenance schedule and otherwise just jump in and go, without thinking (at least for the first 100K miles. And I think it would almost certainly be a Tundra.)<\/p>\n But. <\/p>\n I am absolutely<\/em> unwilling to go back to doing what I was doing, in order to be able to afford such unthinking luxury, which consisted mainly of enslaving myself to some pile of bosses, and their<\/em> schedule for my days.<\/p>\n So … my critics near and dear are right in a sense. I don’t deserve<\/strong> a nice new truck–I am completely unwilling to make the sort of devil’s bargains that would make me that kind of deserving. <\/p>\n Here’s what I’d do if I was.<\/p>\n Very first thing, wipe all traces of consumer debt, about 20K worth. Second thing, wipe out what’s left on my mortgage, another 50. Third thing: stoop so low as to kill the last ten thousand of student loan debt that Joe promised to pay off and never will. Not because I think I owe it–I don’t–I worked it off just the way they also promised I could. But just to never have to think about it again. <\/p>\n Then I’d be even, and I could start thinking instead about ‘what to buy’, and a new truck would not be near the top of that list. <\/p>\n A habitation for the land in Silver. Maybe 70 thousands worth of doublewide at minimum. <\/p>\n A brand-new cargo trailer, ten or twelve maybe (I already have all the stuff to make it habitable as well, and possess an old trailer besides, which even still would need a lot of work). <\/p>\n A brand-new engine for my lovely old Lariat, and a transmission to match. A few enhancements to the suspension; a transfer case … I don’t know how much that would all come to in today’s dollars. But that would bring me most of the advantages I would care about in a new truck, while maintaining the old-school cool, complete with a copper plate. <\/p>\n Would 200 thousand, or a quarter of a million dollars I didn’t earn thus make my life perfect?<\/p>\n It would, technically. <\/p>\n Would it make me free? <\/p>\n That is exactly the kind of great question I insist on having the time to ponder. <\/p>\n Instead of giving that very time away to a Massa, no matter how nice or kind or undemanding a Massa it might be, and no matter how many dollars self-enslavement brought in. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n This is the theory part:<\/p>\n My Work is what I rather pretentiously proclaim to be my art. <\/p>\n But my job<\/em>, I reckon, is to get as close to the kind of perfection described above as I can, on a budget of maybe half that much money at best. Even that would likely mean selling off this house, which is not quite a devil’s bargain, but maybe a kind of gambling at a casino owned by a lesser demon. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Today, I stand in the place where I live. <\/p>\n Tomorrow, I turn eighteen again. <\/p>\n I’m looking forward to a life well lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A while back, somebody asked me if I ‘wouldn’t rather have a nice new truck’. I answered. In real time and then again here, a bit sharply both times, defensively, as it were, on behalf of my ancient pickup. But I have a fresh answer. It is: yeahhh … sorta. It would be great to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6724"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6729,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions\/6729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}