I’ve spent the better part of my adult life engaged in a confusing tango with capitalism. As a twentysomething college girl living la vie boheme in an infested downtown Kenosha apartment smoking joints out a wintry window, I only needed to care enough about my $225 portion of rent, my drinking money, and whatever other paltry bills I was dealing with at the time.
As a waitress, cash was easy to come by — a little short? Pick up a shift or two. Accidentally blew the rent money on rounds at the bar? Pay late, it’ll be fine. They weren’t about to evict me when entire stairs were missing in the hallway and my neighbors had bedbugs and some of the other tenants were literal criminals (ask me about what allegedly happened in the basement laundry room of that building. Actually, don’t).
Peak boho era. Vegas trip, 2007ish?
Life was simple then. I’m sure I’m exaggerating. I’m sure I had stressors that felt very real and very grown up and very serious. But money didn’t matter much to me. I assumed one day I’d have more of it, probably when the novel made it big, but since I didn’t need much money to do the things I enjoyed, there was little reason to seek out a more traditional job. The rat race looked ridiculous to me, a waste of time and effort. Life was for living.
It wasn’t until I stumbled into a remote position as a tech writer at age 26 that I started thinking I could reconcile my lifelong Boho Amanda with a new character, Business Amanda. This new job send me a corporate laptop, and flew me out to Austin to work onsite, and promised upward mobility. Not to mention the CEO and founder was a woman, which was wild to me.
The consideration that I could shift from the kind of person who was disgusted by capitalism to one who participated in it came when I realized how many more things I could do with my new salary. Being broke was fine when the grownup world was new and exciting, but after almost a decade of that, I needed bigger kicks, which come with a bigger price tag.
How cool would it be to own my own house? To buy my own car? Was it possible that I could still be artistic and liberal and a bit countercultural while also responsible with money? That I could even enjoy aspects of the so-called rat race (races are fun, after all, if you like running) while also caring deeply about fostering genuine human connections through art, music, writing?
I wore this outfit exactly once: for this work trip.
So I tried. I found a new sense of power in seeing myself as a lady in a suit. After all, in my direct experience, ladies were more likely to wear aprons than suits. Much like my waitress job forced this introvert to make small talk with a hundred people a day until it felt natural, this big-girl job drew out a new side of me I didn’t know existed — the one who could translate complex jargon into everyday language and participate meaningfully in business meetings. Maybe most importantly, the type who could be respected by other people who wore suits, rather than looked down upon, as I generally assumed I was, for having a little tattoo on my wrist.
I got fired from that job. The truth: I couldn’t get the work done. I had been too afraid to say “no” to anybody at that organization, and the work piled up, and I got overwhelmed and instead of asking for help I just kept trying to struggle through by myself until several things fell apart at once.
This is what actually happened, but in my heart, I believed this was proof that I wasn’t put-together enough to really be in the corporate club. That I should’ve stayed in my lane.
I couldn’t view my situation sympathetically. So the identity pendulum swung the other way. I got angry about it and said, well, if I can’t make enough money to buy a house and do the big kid things, I’m going to see how little I can live on instead. I’m going to make a game of living on next-to-nothing. I’m going to defeat capitalism by refusing to participate in it!
A lofty ambition. I did live in and out of a car for about two years, which really only makes you angry at the stigma toward unhoused people, and angry at the world generally. And you still need to make money to survive.
A home office in a car. Poaching wifi from the Colorado Springs climbing gym.
Living in the wild with my daughter. She took that picture of me, which I still think is one of my favorite pictures.
There’s a term that I really can’t stand: the “personal brand.” This term couldn’t have possibly existed before the internet, and I care so little for it that I refuse to look it up in order to provide you an accurate history. But the personal brand is the way you depict yourself, usually online, to employers if you’re an employee, or to clients and colleagues and vendors if you’re a business owner. I hate it because it’s not real. People are not brands. Making yourself into a brand makes you one-dimensional and gives you no room to grow.
I’ve tortured myself over creating a personal brand. I “get” it, it’s human nature to want to fit people into boxes. That’s Bob, he’s construction worker. That’s Voldemort, he’s super strong but deeply troubled. You don’t want your surgeon to also do your taxes. Most companies don’t want to hire a person who’s pretty good at 10 things — they’re rather you be really good at one thing.
Ambiguity is uncomfortable. Flighty, fickle, flip-floppity, we have all sorts of words for people who change their mind or change their course and they’re all negative. Even “jack of all trades, master of none” focuses on a deficit. Why on earth would somebody want to be decent at lots of things rather than great at one thing? Pick something and excel at it, goddammit! Why are you still searching? Searching is for children.
But often, we don’t even allow children to search! We tell kids not to give up, we tell them to stick with that sport or that activity. We tell them to find their passion. We praise savants and prodigies. “I don’t know, she just took to crochet at such a young age. She was two and already mass-producing extraordinary doilies that put grandma’s life’s work to shame. Sent grandma straight into a depressive tailspin. Too bad grandma could never really nail her personal brand. Probably wouldn’t be in the loony bin if she had.”
At eighteen: pick a major. What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Now, commit thousands of dollars to that one thing. Let’s hope you chose wisely, here’s your student loan statement, that’ll be $149,903, lol!
That’s fucking insane, right?
And then when you factor in the psychology of sunk costs, it’s tremendously easy to get locked into One Thing even if that thing really isn’t your thing. The sunk cost fallacy, if you’re not familiar, is the reluctance to let go of a plan because you’ve invested heavily in it, even when it’s obvious that letting it go would be more beneficial to you. It can be big, like the doctor who spent a fortune on medical school only to realize he would much rather be a teacher. Or it can be small, like spending money on a video game that’s no fun but forcing yourself to play it because you paid for it.
But when you combine a culture of capitalism in which we’re encouraged to be specific cogs in a really big machine, along with the social pressure to “stick with” and master one thing, it’s no wonder we get more than a little uncomfortable when people try new things, especially later in life. Or we admire it from afar while believing we could never do the same.
I don’t hate capitalism. For me, someone who likes a challenge, and is competitive, and who connects with the romantic side of American entrepreneurship, capitalism means potential. As a woman, it’s freedom from the glass ceiling because you own the skyscraper. In theory.
But it’s bigger than me, and I recognize that, too. Just because I have benefited from capitalism doesn’t exempt it from criticism; that would be tremendously insensitive. Which is probably why it feels shitty to admit I don’t hate it.
But many things, even seemingly opposing things, can be true at the same time. When we view ourselves and others in dichotomies we devolve. When we see ourselves and others in our glorious complexity we expand. So what’s my personal brand? What’s yours? I feel like this is an opportune time to quote Alanis Morisette: “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother…”
For real, though. If I can run a business but live in a car, struggle to take care of a dog but raise children just fine, tattoo myself but pass out when I’m getting blood drawn, climb rocks but be afraid to have a difficult conversation, bake fancy pies but fail at boiling water, write and make art but enjoy math and spreadsheets and Sudoku, play Rollercoaster Tycoon and go roller skating (not simultaneously), devour romcoms but can’t stand a romance novel — then you, and anybody, can be anything and everything all at once.