During my last year in college, I thought I would live very frugally as a writer, not work at part time jobs for years. But after I graduated, I went straight to Topeka, Kansas, where I have many relatives and spent eight months under the influence of conservative and verbally abusive relatives with very crass beliefs. They seemed to believe the economy is the most important thing in the world and have made it obvious that they believe that it’s more important than peace and nonviolence and life itself. They also apparently believe that the purpose of living is to work at meaningless jobs and make money.

One of the first things one of my aunts said to me after my arrival in Topeka was, “I’m going to take the civil service exam. Come with me.” I had never even heard of a civil service exam and don’t remember whether or how she explained what it was, that it’s a very long application for working in office jobs for the federal government. That sounded completely uninteresting to me, especially compared to focusing on my writing career and attempting to get published (which I was doing at the time, trying to get stories and poems published in magazines). But it didn’t occur to me to argue or make any comment, let alone point out to this deranged and vicious Republican aunt that I’m a radical and should if anything overthrow the ungovernable government, not work for it.

When my mother visited me in St. Louis to help load my car for my move to Kansas, she said, “You have now joined the unemployed.” I felt confused by this comment. Sure, I had just graduated from college, but since I am first and foremost a fiction writer it would make more sense to call me “ungainfully self-employed” than to call me “unemployed.” The latter implies that I’m not working, and yet writing is work. Once I was in Topeka, aunts and uncles continually barraged me with messages of the importance of job hunting and working for someone other than myself, and the importance of making money. Oddly, I fell for it. I had been from a very early age brainwashed into having unquestioning loyalty to my mother’s side of the family, and I rather think that is how they succeeded in convincing me that I should have thankless and meaningless jobs that I hate.

Ever since I graduated from college, my mother and aunts have continually expressed a bizarre belief that writing isn’t work and that I should have a thankless and meaningless job that uses little or no artistic creativity and that I hate to the core. I thought that my mother was supportive at least of my visual art when I was a kid, but as soon as I graduated from college, she was completely dismissive of my artistic endeavors, particularly my writing. She even sneeringly commented on how she didn’t think I should bother writing and said, “I wish you’d get married.”

In other words, in one conversation, she was completely dismissive and contemptuous of my writing career, my purpose in life, and suggested that instead I marry some power-tripping male and be financially dependent on him. She could not have been any more offensive. I felt so attacked, rejected, and alienated, so not respected or accepted, so expected to be some worthless humanoid I would never have any inclination to be. She was so completely and utterly dismissive of who I am and what I am and absolutely everything about me. I was shocked and disillusioned with her because of her insane attitude.

She had already, while I was still in college, ridiculed and insulted me for being a vegetarian and a feminist, which left me deeply confused, hurt, and shocked because she had so thoroughly brainwashed me into believing that she was the good parent, and yet here she was showing me that she completely was not on my side. It was a huge and devastating shock and I could not at the time articulate it, least of all express this to her. If she been remotely supportive, I would not have afterwards, throughout my twenties, felt as much resentment toward her. At the same time that I felt resentment toward my parents throughout that decade, for having neglected and verbally abused me instead of cherished me, I simultaneously felt ashamed and guilty for having the audacity to resent them, simply because they had spent so much money on me. I had at least partially been fooled into their firm belief, an attitude that both sides of the family has, that material things and money make up for psychological starvation. As my relatives have thoroughly proved in spite of themselves, this is a huge Lie with no basis whatsoever in reality.

My mother and aunts seem to think the romance and mystery novels that they read come out of thin air; it apparently doesn’t occur to them that people called authors write those books and that it takes a lot of effort to write even a short story, let alone an entire book. They’re not the only ones who have expressed a similar lack of comprehension about the work that goes into writing; others have made dismissive comments about short stories, about their being “too short,” despite the little detail that a great deal of work goes into even a story that’s only twenty pages long, let alone a full-length novel. I want people to admire, appreciate, and value my writing, not dismiss it and trivialize it.

It was very obvious to me while I dwelled in Kansas that my relatives didn’t think writing requires any time or effort, and it was also very obvious to me that they absolutely did not believe that my writing was work. They might have had a different attitude if I had been regularly letting them read pages and pages of my work, but I would have to be crazy to do that, even if I hadn’t been writing about them and basing characters on them. Even with fantasy fiction that had nothing to do with them, I knew they wouldn’t appreciate it and would make only negative comments.

Since writing is solitary work, relatives invading my house in Topeka didn’t see me while I was writing. Since writing doesn’t have as much material form as other work has (I work on a keyboard and saved my manuscripts on the hard drive, floppy disks, and later flash drives) they couldn’t see physical evidence of my writing all over the house. What they saw when they invaded my house was how much or how little domestic work I had done: how messy the house was, how neglected the yard was or wasn’t, and what house painting I had done or what curtains I had made and hung up. They accused me of being lazy, which was totally unjustified given how much work I was doing, whether or not I was at my full time office job. But they would have accused me of being lazy no matter what I did, since they considered me beneath their contempt and unworthy of any respect.

When one of my stories was published online and I e-mailed the link to many people, one aunt made a sneering remark about the story, “Weird.” She said it in a slowed-down, creepy sort of way, showing that she totally didn’t get it and didn’t appreciate it, and I just gave her a puzzled look. She made no expansion on that one word and gave no explanation for why she thought it was weird.  That was the last time I shared any of my writing with her. 

As if my paying job wasn’t boring and meaningless enough, and didn’t take away my writing time enough, relatives expected me to devote my free time to boring and meaningless work that didn’t even pay. When relatives expressed their belief that I should be doing boring domestic work all the time and showed no regard for my writing, they were as usual being extremely cruel and contemptuous. I desperately needed respect and acceptance, and they were constantly showering me with the extreme polar opposite.

Meanwhile, nobody was around to give me any respect or acceptance. What I didn’t realize is that I am responsible for my own needs and should ideally be supplying myself with self-respect and self-acceptance. But from an early age I had been conditioned to believe that I am essentially bad and undeserving of respect or acceptance.

I don’t seriously believe that I’ll make huge amounts of money and become a millionaire by writing, but that’s no excuse to suppress my writing (which is like committing suicide, really) in spite of the beliefs of my unsupportive relatives. My dad has read some of my writing, thanks to the Internet, and he’s made very encouraging comments; he considers me a highly talented writer and has described my writing as literary unlike the newspaper writing he’s accustomed to thanks to his career.

And yet my dad’s emphasis is on my potential to make money as a writer, as if that were the whole point of writing. I mentioned my completed young adult fantasy novel, and he suggested hopefully that I’d become the next J. K. Rowling and that I’d become a millionaire as a writer, which triggered fear in me because I felt pressured and suspected that he’d consider me a failure if I didn’t become as rich and famous as J. K. Rowling. I told him that J. K. Rowling is an anomaly and most writers, including fantasy writers, don’t make a lot of money. Then he dismissively said, “Yeah, you’re right, you’d better get a full time job.” I felt hurt, rejected, misunderstood, and cut off when he said that.

So what if writing won’t make me wealthy: it is a deep and meaningful career for me, unlike working for a power-tripping manager while small-minded and immature coworkers harass me and I feel artistically frustrated at work; that sums up all the paying jobs I’ve had so far. Writing is rewarding in much more profound and meaningful ways than financial. When I am writing or otherwise creating art, I am doing what I should be doing. I am Living. There is no point in “living” if you’re working full time at a job that you hate; that is a meaningless existence!

When I told a friend about how not only my mother’s side of the family but even my dad pressure me to be employed one way or another, not caring whether or not I happen to like the job, she pointed out that a lot of people are sucked into working at jobs they hate because they get lots of money from the job. They sacrifice their lives for the sake of material comfort, material wealth. She pointed out that when she had a job that paid a lot more but that she hated, she spent more money on things she didn’t need. That’s the same as the shopping-as-therapy that I practiced when I worked at my office job in Topeka; I’d drive to the progressive town of Lawrence for daytrips and shopped downtown, in an attempt to compensate for having such hateful and alienating surroundings. It makes so much more sense to live frugally doing things that I like and that have meaning.

When I was in my twenties, I kept working at jobs I hated where coworkers, managers, and customers verbally attacked me on a regular basis. Simultaneously, I did some writing (though not enough) and didn’t often enough try to get published. I kept wishing I lived in an alternate reality in which I could make a living wage off my writing, be able to pay rent and utilities and groceries and everything from making money as a writer. I thought like that, but I didn’t do anything about it, didn’t try to make that a reality. It wasn’t unusual for me to work twelve hour days, and I didn’t get any writing done on days like that. I merely survived and had a meaningless life, since I had internalized the lies of my relatives and society. I was also completely oblivious to the fact that I was still traumatized by my childhood, and I was surrounded by people who found it completely unacceptable to admit that you’re still traumatized by your childhood or to admit that you have emotions and needs and that you’re entitled to have emotions and needs.

In my late twenties in St. Louis, I started to open up about being the primary scapegoat in school as a kid, and people were very dismissive and contemptuous, saying things like, “We all survived our childhoods, and they’re over,” and “So you were bullied in school, so were the rest of us,” and “That was a long time ago, Susan. You’re still holding a grudge. Get over it.” Thus when I tried to seek clarity and healing, I turned to the wrong people (I was surrounded by the wrong people) and became more traumatized instead of healing. It was a poor attempt, but I didn’t know any better at the time. I didn’t even start meditating until after I moved to Kansas.

Working full time in Topeka, I discovered that having one full time job with the same hours each week was better time management, and it therefore allowed me more time for writing. Since enemies surrounded me on an even more extreme scale than in St. Louis and included verbally abusive relatives toward whom I had from early childhood been brainwashed into having unquestioning loyalty, I was becoming more acutely aware of my trauma. It took an extreme and outrageous verbal attack on the part of my two most deranged aunts, both of whom were living in Topeka at the time, for me to finally take action, to take up meditation and no longer be in denial about relatives. Since I am no longer in denial about how I feel about relatives, what they’ve done to me, and what they’re really like, it is easier to see through such lies as the Protestant work ethic and worship of money that they have attempted to impose on me.

Unfortunately, my dad pressures me to go searching for a job, any job as long as it pays, no matter how much I hate it and no matter how much it doesn’t suit me. His attitude frightens and alienates me and is completely in conflict with the importance of my writing career and the importance of my NOT falling back into the trap of working at jobs I hate, just for the sake of money. After his comments, I feel very hurt and misunderstood, and I am aware that he’s ignoring that which is important, all because he thinks material comfort and financial wealth are the most important things in life.

Sometimes my father complains that when my brother is job hunting, he aims too high; he’s not willing to work at places like Target but rather has focused on white collar jobs. My brother currently has a job that he genuinely enjoys, working at a science museum; but my dad doesn’t care how much my brother enjoys his job and emphasizes how the job doesn’t pay well (it’s only about $500 a month) and how he’s still sending my brother money every month.

That is a very, very messed up set of priorities. You’d think with the current economy, it would occur to my parents that worshipping money makes no sense and is completely useless, but they still don’t get it. From a Buddhist standpoint, this economy, the biggest depression since the Great Depression, is a great opportunity to practice simplicity and mindfulness.

I would like to live in a world where I am not pressured to be someone I am not and have absolutely no inclination to become. I would like to live in a world where I simply create art, particularly my writing, and do not work at thankless and meaningless jobs just for the sake of making money. I would like to live in a world where no money-worshippers pressure me to join them in their religion of “capitalist consumerist materialism,” as the meditation teacher Robert Beatty calls it. I don’t have such meaningless and shallow values, and I don’t believe others should impose such meaningless and shallow values on me. We live in a toxic culture that completely devalues our emotions and needs and pressures us to have meaningless lives that are focused on mere survival. However, we can live in a culture that does value our emotions and needs and that allows us to reach our full potential.