We make sacrifices based on our priorities. I stopped working for most of three years to take care of parents. We're still paying for it, but I would not have done differently for anything. I'm so glad you can be there for your family when they need you.
My limited experience (so far) has already cemented in my heart that caregivers are heroes and shereos. I'm glad you were able to be there for your parents too.
Whenever I was tempted to feel sorry for myself, I remembered the millions (yep) of others who did/do it for longer and under much more difficult circumstances than I did. It really is eye-opening to know that so many do it quietly and with little help. I've left Facebook but I could not have done it without the cumulative knowledge and experience of one of the groups I found there.
Yes, the tradeoff - it's always about the tradeoff, but I think too we were sold a capitalist lie about how the tradeoff for working like mules for a soulless business, living half-lives of misery, was "worth it" because then one day eventually, maybe, we'd get to retire! What a sham. Took me a long time to break out of that mindset, as you know. An ongoing process...
The very tiny percentage of one generation who got retirement pensions and appeared, at least on the surface, to come out on the better side of the trade-off kept many of us deluded by that possibility for decades too long. On going process, for sure, and I'm still dealing with the fallout of my commitment to that delusion.
Agree 💯. Capitalist culture is toxic in so many ways, and revolves around keeping most of us miserable so we’ll buy products and services that promise to make us happy, provide a temporary escape from reality, or at least make us look good on the outside as we slowly die inside. And even as I reject that culture I have to live in it, and right now I don’t earn enough to pay the rent from writing and other work I enjoy that actually helps people. But I’m not willing to get a soul-destroying job again, no matter how much it pays or how good the benefits are.
We make sacrifices based on our priorities. I stopped working for most of three years to take care of parents. We're still paying for it, but I would not have done differently for anything. I'm so glad you can be there for your family when they need you.
My limited experience (so far) has already cemented in my heart that caregivers are heroes and shereos. I'm glad you were able to be there for your parents too.
Whenever I was tempted to feel sorry for myself, I remembered the millions (yep) of others who did/do it for longer and under much more difficult circumstances than I did. It really is eye-opening to know that so many do it quietly and with little help. I've left Facebook but I could not have done it without the cumulative knowledge and experience of one of the groups I found there.
Yes, the tradeoff - it's always about the tradeoff, but I think too we were sold a capitalist lie about how the tradeoff for working like mules for a soulless business, living half-lives of misery, was "worth it" because then one day eventually, maybe, we'd get to retire! What a sham. Took me a long time to break out of that mindset, as you know. An ongoing process...
The very tiny percentage of one generation who got retirement pensions and appeared, at least on the surface, to come out on the better side of the trade-off kept many of us deluded by that possibility for decades too long. On going process, for sure, and I'm still dealing with the fallout of my commitment to that delusion.
Agree 💯. Capitalist culture is toxic in so many ways, and revolves around keeping most of us miserable so we’ll buy products and services that promise to make us happy, provide a temporary escape from reality, or at least make us look good on the outside as we slowly die inside. And even as I reject that culture I have to live in it, and right now I don’t earn enough to pay the rent from writing and other work I enjoy that actually helps people. But I’m not willing to get a soul-destroying job again, no matter how much it pays or how good the benefits are.
... "other work I enjoy that actually helps people"... I HEAR you! And am right in step with your thinking.