It’s been the same every year for who knows how long.

I wonder^1often what life would be like had I spent the second half of my twenties working “a real job” instead of obeying a nonexistent boss at all times, no wages, feeling doomed to clean up, forever, at all times, after a single mistake I made at twenty-four, fraught with love and divinity and resentment.

I don’t know how to work for a living. I don’t know how to “have money.” What little the government affords me^{2it’s not even that little! a little over 1k is not that little. with no rent to pay, it’s not that little. it can be tight but it is not that little} maybe wouldn’t be so little if I wasn’t spending it on stuff that, when it comes down to it, maybe isn’t actually necessary, maybe I would have some savings now, maybe I’d be able to spend my birthday in a hotel in a foreign city where nobody knows me and nobody cares.

I’m always afraid of coming out as a fraud to people I encounter. I am not who you may think of me as. Or! I am exactly the person you think of me as. I have never had a Real Adult salary. The one (point five) year that I worked for a living^{3supposedly. it was more like working for others’ living, just not my own}, I received less than half of what a person of slightly higher rank did.^{4fair? I had no actual responsibility and all that when it came down to it}

I wonder what it’s like to think of stuff outside of your immediate sphere of influence at home all day long and get paid money that isn’t gone by the sixth of the month because it all got gobbled by the credit card debt you acquire every time you spend money on something that requires a larger up-front lump sum and you just can’t deny yourself all of that stuff at all times, like giving your son a proper December birthday in a fun kids’ place, or a good pair of shoes that fits your specific pair of feet properly and doesn’t continuously re-traumatize your sesamoid bone after that one time you walked for too long in not-made-for-walking shoes, like every single time you make one mistake, you are made to pay, pay, pay, pay, and pay.

I wonder what people expect of me. Maybe I should ask them.

Last revised May 19, 2026.