burn on compromise

I broke a lot of personal rules recently. In the spirit of getting over my ego I'd accepted two jobs that, at first glance (and second and third.), totally went against values I hold. I wasn't killing kittens, but I was doing work that was superficial, false, and/or exploitive. For pennies to boot. Both times I've got burned by the client, who turned out to be superficial, false, and definitely exploitive (who would've called it?). I've decided starving is better than doing shlock work for beans.

There's a balance between taking an uncompromising position and selling you (and your work.) short. I'm over feeling guilty about turning my nose up at certain jobs, because of some deep working class shame around working and not working. Or that I have the leeway to pick and choose what I want to do. At the end of the day who do I want to be? How do I want to feel about my work? When I look back on these years do I want to feel like I made a serious go at making the work I want, or do I want to regret that I spent the whole of my time drawing trams in bikinis or some douche's sports cars. This is a no-brainer, I think. Some folks have to take what they can get, but I don't have to.

When I was biking through Big Sur in California I felt like I really owned by life, that I was really stretching my potential to it's limits and I'd like to experience that here, in my daily working life.

Maybe I'll start writing poetry. Got ya!

Lesson learned. I hope this informs someone else.

Anyway on a happier note, I got the chance to feel like a teenager again when my friends, Kate and I got caught by seven Winn-Dixie employs rummaging through their compactor. We had to sprint with boxes and bags of veggies, eggs, bread, moon-pies, and a breastmillker through the parking lot and do the skedaddle out of there.