Self… Hate, Confidence, Doubt
A Book in 30 Days — Day 9
…
It was my sense of self.. my desire for agency, that later lead to one of my most ambitious ideas.
I had a yearning for some way to tell my worth.. or at least to build my worth.
The traditional ways of jobs and crafts are and have been steadily draining away; whether to automation or globalization or economy… but that is not the problem. Even those ideas of identity were contingent upon a lack of personal ownership. It was more a trade… a sacrifice of freedom and self-dependence for the illusion of security and belonging.
The jobs so many identified as were and are just rubber stamps and serial codes.
The traditional models of self worth were like being assigned a model number by some impersonal overseer.
For me, the only worthy jobs were those with purpose... either one of greater purpose or one of self defined purpose.
Any other job, no matter the paycheck, was a prison cell; shackles enslaving us to the whims and bottom lines of corporations and governments.
We need a better system! I need a better system.
I need an economy that doesn’t prey on the poor or incentivize greed.
I need a job market that isn't arbitrarily picky and inherently stagnant.
I need higher education (and public ed, any ed) that won't try to profit off of students (that can't pay) and instead base their success on the student's’ success.
I need a system that brings all of these together to create a self-sustaining, scalable, and mutually beneficial relationship between economic infrastructure and individual freedom.
I need a system that doesn't just pay lip service to the Freedom to the Pursuit of Happiness, and instead empowers us to find our skills, define our purpose, and work not (just) for achievements, but for fulfillment.
I need a real system.
How?? How sway? You aint got all the answers…
No, but I have a few ideas:…
Back in highschool I was always interested in doing more school activities: sports, fbla, anime, etc… but I also wanted to do my own clubs such as robotics via Lego Mindstorm and reading club…
Not only did these require a teacher to sponsor, but also money…
I always wanted to be like those kids everyone talks about who made a million bucks doing stocks or building some amazing thing in the garage or starting some other business thing like that…
But I could never figure it out…
Even after my 7th grade math teacher showed us where the stocks were on the newspaper and how to do calculations to determine if something may be a good investment…
Even after my 8th - 10th grade band directors gave us fundraising opportunities selling cookie dough and candy and random stuff…
Even after I became a Questbridge Finalist and got to visit Columbia and Princeton in person (the first in my family), even after maintaining a 3.825 unweighted/4.098 weighted GPA with Varsity Wrestling, Chess Club, and Marching Band (in 9th and 10th)...
I could never figure out how to get started… specially with 0 dollars.
I could never figure out how to sell more than a few piddlings… specially with fam just as broke as us.
I could never figure out how to get enough financial aid to go to college, or even to pay the damn retainer/admissions fee…
Each of the dozens of occasions like these absolutely destroyed my self-confidence. Every Time I failed so abjectly and abhorrently, I thought myself utterly worthless.
Yet each time, my Ambition came back stronger…
To be continued…
Thanks for reading!
