This morning I woke up and suddenly it hit me: I’ll need money soon.
This is something I know and something I’ve planned for, and yet I didn’t feel the fear until today. As a student in college I’ve had my safety net, and excuse to keep taking those rent checks from the Padres. And I won’t be able to take them soon enough.
When the stress kicks in, the tofu-is-1.75-and-can-I-really-afford-it stress, the I-should-be-charging-money-for-this-favor stress, the open-your-email-account-fifty-times-and-never-open-any stress. The stress is paralyzing, and it makes me forget why I do any of this at all.
So I spent a morning trying to sell old clothes (a generous $4 was offered) and researching how to get grants ($15000 for three months of work) and figuring out how much money to charge someone for making a WordPress (I landed on $300 and was basically hyperventilating even asking for that). And suddenly I stumbled upon a chick I knew, a chick I traveled with in India.
Let’s call this lady Beth, and she was sitting outside in the sunlight eating an orange. And when I saw the sunlight on her face only then did I remember it was a beautiful day. I would have passed right by her on my way to a dark coffee shop, had she not called out my name.
“Hey lady, how you doing?” I said.
“I’m wonderful,” said Beth, in her mystic, definitely-taken-acid-before tone. “How are you?”
“Oh you know, fourth year syndrome. I just got really stressed about money. And how I’m gonna… get it.”
“Oh no! Would you like an orange?” she said.
“Yes!” I said, taking it. I had been too stressed even to eat the fruit I felt too guilty for buying in the first place.
“And what are you thinking about doing?” she asked.
“Web development, and freelance journalism.”
“Have you ever considered film production?” she said.
“…Hmmm, I have but so many people, so much money…”
“Well you should. You just need an idea and to pursue it. I don’t tell everyone that.”
“So why me?”
“You’re an artist,” she said simply, smiling, though maybe it was just a squint into the sunlight. “Don’t let that flame flicker out.”
Now if I’d written that in a story I’d cross it out due to shmaltz, but in that moment on my campus quad, I realized it was just what I needed to hear. For a moment I entered her bubble, sitting in the sunlight in her quiet bubble, and I felt what lies behind the buzzing emails, the dinging plans, the cold code and the numbers that seem to cage me in. The silence where I feel safe and free, and where the worlds I build behind my eyes lay dusty with distraction.
“Thank you Beth, you’re such a spirit guide!” and I hugged her and said goodbye.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I’m not trying to take anything from anyone, but am trying to make something in this world. Thank God there are reminders like this one every day.
Shmaltz concluded.
this is real this is fiction 