Sometimes you run across a book or an article at just the right time, and it's the missing piece you needed to hear but couldn't articulate yourself.

On Being Useless

If I'd read this at other points in my life it would not resonate. It would sound like a fabulous luxury, too out of reach to entertain, because bills are a constant and to pay bills one must have money and to have money one must make oneself useful to someone, and this cycle is inescapable and absolute and locked in since one makes the decision to move out on their own. So practically speaking, considering uselessness isn't useful at all. Maybe we daydream about it, maybe we get a "wanderlust" tattoo on vacation, but that's about as far as it goes, because rent is coming due and we like having pizza delivered. Or we have kids to consider. Money makes the world go round.

There are two things I took away from the article:

1) The tree had to get over its own vanity and fear of death to allow this new "useless" purpose. "Its branches are “too twisted and gnarled to be used for beams or pillars”, while its trunk is “too splotched and split to be used for a coffin”." This tree is ugly. This tree has been injured. This tree could have been cut down just for being ugly and in the way, or maybe the storms could have damaged it beyond recovery. The tree took that chance. I have been to the bristlecone pine forest in CA once. Those trees are worthless as lumber, too, very gnarled and twisted. If a person wants a tall straight cultivated tree to look nice and give shade, bristlecones are not it. They are "ugly". But they grew to fit their environment. Now a whole park is set aside for them. The useless tree had to give up on being beautiful and whole and allow itself to be twisted, not knowing if it would live through the process.

2) The tree is useful, just not in a way that translates into money. The tree "is worshiped in the village". The tree has transcended the normal tree utility (wood, fruit) and become something quite different and rare that can't be defined by tangible resources. The tree has spiritual utility, not material utility. Is the price to get true spiritual utility to abandon material utility?

As an artist, for instance, you can make a piece of art with a specific audience in mind, knowing that someone will buy it and you'll make profit. A drawing can be a commodity. Fanart, perfect example. Or generic stuff, like fairies or unicorns. Whether or not you like drawing unicorns is beside the point. You can draw the unicorn, and you know it will sell. OR. You can draw what you want, how you want it, knowing it won't reach a wide audience, or possibly any audience at all. Is your purpose to make art, or to make money? Do you have the luxury of not making money, of not making "useful" art? But only by abandoning utility art (superficial beauty) will you be free to pursue deeper meaning in your art (spiritual beauty). And maybe that spiritual beauty will end up having way more true utility in the long run than superficial beauty ever could. But you have to take the risk of being dismissed as ugly and worthless, you must accept that the storm will batter and twist you, and the outcome may be painful or ignominious. How many people reach for that spiritual beauty, and how many succeed?

Is being "useless" only for people who have the monetary reserves to coast by while they pursue their own art? See, if I'd read this while I was single and supporting myself, this is what I would jump to. Very nice, but if only rich people can afford to be "useless" and develop themselves, what good is it? Good job rubbing it in my face, article. I would have been irritated, which is basically the same reaction I have to minimalism. Very nice ... for rich people. (Maybe someday I will go on a rant about all the things I hate about minimalism, and what garbage it is for poor creatives.)

It's not that poor people don't have the same access to "uselessness" as rich people. It's that the cost of pursuing "uselessness" becomes the standards of convenience, comfort and safety we have taken for granted in modern life. It's air conditioning, or buying things off amazon, or the vehicle we own (plus license, registration, gas, insurance), or health insurance. We pay a deep cost for being integrated in society and gaining access to creature comforts. So it feels like we're locked in with no choices, because who wants to live without air conditioning, a private flush toilet and pizza delivery? Does that even count as living? I am sure most people would not consider being homeless a valid life path. Homelessness is a terrible thing that happens to people who make bad life choices and fall behind, and is a personal failure to be avoided at all cost. Isn't it??

If a rich person can afford to maintain a standard of comfort while being "useless", are they even doing it right? Maybe downsizing from a large house to a studio apartment would seem like a major sacrifice. Maybe taking the bus and living like a poor person would seem like a real intense experience. But they'd never have the anxiety of wondering how they were going to pay rent or buy food. The cost of a bus pass wouldn't sock them in the gut like someone on minimum wage. They'd still be "safe", no real risk. They'd just be slumming. And most likely, they'd have a plan for profiting from their experiment when it was over, like the "Eat, Pray, Love" lady. They'd put the art they made in a gallery to sell, or write a book, or market themselves as a spiritual guru or a life coach, and it would get attention because it came from a rich person. People who "can't afford" to be useless but are searching for meaning would pay to learn from their experience.

So I guess the bible is right: it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven.

I guess I sound like I am advocating for being a hobo, which is also the height of hypocrisy considering spouse is paying our bills, and the only reason I have the immense luxury of writing this entry right now is because I don't have to drag myself to work. Also, I don't have kids. Kids change the whole game. Am I going to take my tent and go live in the woods behind the apartment complex? No.

What's the practical application of "uselessness" in my life? Because there must be a practical application, or it doesn't matter. Change is how we pay the cost for real lessons. If it were easy everyone would do it.

I don't know yet. I do know that I am very very lucky to have what I've got, and maybe that includes what I haven't got as well. Without true risk there can't be true growth, right? Paradoxically, security is a cockblock, so one should be glad for instability. I am ridiculously, fabulously wealthy, just not in doolars.

I don't know what this means for me. But I think I am going to deliberately restrict some of my convenience/comfort access, like air conditioning and internet browsing. I've been doing intermittent fasting, but I could be sticking to it better, or maybe fasting a little longer. I don't enjoy being hungry but I'm certainly in no danger of starving. I suppose this is partially about how discomfort draws attention back to the body and the moment. If I feel slightly too hot or slightly hungry, that breaks my attention. The challenge would be to acknowledge the discomfort, accept it and not rush to remedy it. I mean, shit, why do I get stuck browsing the internet as a default? Because it's comfortable sitting on the couch in a room that is of the perfect temperature with no lack of snacks or drinks, with whatever music or movie I want, with a stream of instant news, factoids and cat pictures to trick my brain into thinking it is being productive. Why would I do anything else? It's a comfortable groove. Maybe the slight discomfort is something positive and necessary to prompt real deviation from the routine. Discomfort for discomfort's sake.

I have more thoughts on this but I gotta wrap it up for now.

Today is EXCITING because it has been two weeks from my second vaccine dose! I can explore again! Or at least, I can once I get past this event on Saturday. I have the little convention so I am busy making stuff, and of course things are taking way more time than I planned, normal scramble, such is life, etc, etc. It's been tedious, and I'm frustrated with certain photoshop limitations I'm running into (I use a very very old version, but adobe products are just kinda messed up in how they operate and I'm not sure the new version would be magically better). I wanted to get this curved text design to wrap perfectly and it took FOREVER because there's no calculation you can make to figure out the exact settings. It's all wimbly wombly artist BS relative to the text point size, which means I end up printing out like 10 different versions and wasting paper and time. "Oh this will be easy." HA. Halfway through I realized I should have used illustrator but I was too invested by that point. Basically a giant waste of productivity for no good reason.

The answer is to switch over to using gimp like I've been meaning to, but that will have to wait until I get past this event. The bummer is that accomplishing anything has felt like 5 times more work than it needs to be and I am seriously struggling for positive momentum. I need to ramp up and work very hard these next few days to try to compensate, but I know I've lost too much time. Womp womp.