Back in 1993 I was the 3th of my 6 years in Art School. I was a student leading a student life. Meaning that I had a rather optimistic and careless view on my future and did a lot of partying. I did jobs on the side for a signage company on a regular bases. I didn’t have a lot of money to spent but I would say that I was able to lead a rather careless life. If I really ran into financial problems my parents would help with the little assets they had and I could always drop by for dinner. So I had my own place, education, food, friends and off coarse my bike. I drove my bike everyday. I never made long term plans for the future. I always thought that the future would turn out fine if I just kept going. What I was doing was far from what so called ‘normal’ people where doing. I was painting abstract paintings, building objects, studied graphic design and typography and I was reading a lot. Most of my reading had nothing to do with Art or Graphic Design. It was on Philosophy, psychology, religion, and science. One subject that was always on my mind was ‘the truth’. As long as I can remember this question bugged the hell out of me. And off coarse I felt rather special.
I think I knew
I was 21 years old and somehow I knew that it was impossible to answer this ‘truth’ question definitively. If the answer had to come from ‘a brain’ we would all be fucked. No matter how intelligent the being might be the answer could not be trusted. From all I read the only conclusion I could draw was that it was all energy, vibration, frequency. Plus-minus, ying-yang, light-dark, rich-poor, warm-cold etc. Looking around the only thing I saw was extreme polarity. I found Quantum mechanics one of the most intriguing subjects at the time. I read a lot of that stuff and was fascinated. It made ‘sense’ because it didn’t make sense and that was as close to reality as it got for me. Strangely enough it also touched a lot of subjects that where very well and scientifically described in the Vedic scriptures I was reading. These where however more than 5000 years old and that raised another book of questions. Are we 5000 years behind? And if so, what the fuck happened during that time? These questions kept me pretty occupied with myself most of the time.
More Money?
Now if money wouldn’t have been a problem this ‘truth’ thing would probably have become my life’s work as an artist. Most of the things I made in school all related back to my central question ‘truth’. At that time I really thought I would become an artist. Living the ‘free’ life. No office cubicles, no nine to five. I felt superior to everything middle-class or had authority. I would become more or less famous and my art would tell the story. Money wouldn’t be a problem. However as time went by ‘reality’ started to burst my bubble. I was paying the rent and it went up every year. I was paying taxes and they went up every year. I did my groceries and they became more expensive every year. In the mean time it seemed like everybody got richer around me and everything got more expensive. It was very upsetting and I realized that I probably missed out an important part of this reality and that was economics.
Taking the short cut
I didn’t have any money and didn’t have a clue about how it worked. So one day this job offer comes in. It meant working with a Mac computer from 08:00 in the morning till 17:30 in the afternoon, inside an office, 5 days a week. The strange thing was that all my ambition and principles kind of went out the window the moment I heard what they where willing to pay me. It was ridiculous. It was more than three times the amount of money I got in at that time. Even my teachers in art school weren’t making that kind of money. So they told me to just go for it. And from one moment to the next I was a 23 year old middle class person in an office cubicle. I became ‘them’. I got my drivers licence. Refurbished my apartment. Paid of my debts. Went on holidays etc. Yes, I got used to money. It changed my view on life dramatically. After one year I started to become really depressed. I saw people having affairs on the work floor. Dipping responsibilities, going home early. More or less everybody around me was fucking the company so in fact we all fucked each other. It was disturbing and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it except leave. Which I didn’t do because of the money. I felt guilty and at the same time I justified my guild with having no choice. Then the whole plan changed as they planned to move my department from the east of holland to amsterdam in the west. There wasn’t one hair on my head thinking of moving to amsterdam. So I waited till they asked me what I wanted to do. I said that I would not join them and politely refused. The moment they asked me what my plans where I heard myself say I was going to start my own company. Strangely enough a good friend of mine cancelled his plans for a trip around the world and of we where to start our own design/advertising agency.
My banking experience
Now if you don’t have any money to start a business, what do you do? You work and save till you have enough to do so. You use your scarce time to find clients and you build a network right? No. We just made a plan. My friend who is a good writer made a hell of a story out of it. I made a nice book for the story to fit inn. That book was taken to a bank where a nice man with a nice suit looked into it. This man called us back and said that lending us about 150.000 Dutch guilders wouldn’t be a problem. So without any business experience and 150.000 in the bank these two young adults go into business? We didn’t have a clue but we got work inn and we did some rather nice projects. The other story is that after 3 years we where totally busted, our friendship was down the drain and we owed the bank a lot of money. It would have been better to get the money from the Russian around the corner. The Russian was a much better motivator to young adults.
My inner experience
After all this time I know that the one thing that fucked me up the most in doing business was a complete lack of self-honesty. The blind eye is a trap that traps a lot of self employed people. Identify yourself enough with what you do and think and it takes you over completely. I became a jabbering kind of advertising robot spewing out the lingo. After this ordeal I promised myself to never loan from banks ever again. Debt is the shackle that has chained reality. You and I are fucked within the system. Camouflaged with paper and computers and decentralized responsibility. You can’t touch them but they can touch you for sure. Who’s getting the best out of this deal? We are all participating in the biggest pyramid scheme ever and it’s called -economics- Yeah I know, you never see the truth when it’s standing right in front of you. Well this is where that truth finding mission ended for me. This game is the end game and it nears it’s saturation point. This is my wake up call to an equal money system. And now I must make some money, got to eat tomorrow.
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