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How I learned to live (with thanks to the Bondi Hipsters)
By Mark Attwood | Life Is Easy
I’ve never worked for a corporation.
Actually I lied. I spent 4 years in the RAF. The most corporate of corporations. Learning to kill people efficiently in the name of some German Queen with a million pound hat.
Then I spent a few months working in canary Wharf in 1991 working for the Daily Torygraph.
That’s about it.
Getting on the tube every morning was a bit like this:
Despite me being a marketer and going on about making money, it’s not for the sake of money. I spent most of my twenties railing against the machine. I wrote poetry, I did stand up comedy, I managed bands (badly), I wrote and directed plays. I made zero money and had the time of my life.
At 30, I decided to make money. Not because I wanted anything materialistic (I was quite happy in my Moss Side terraced hovel), but because I wanted to have adventures. I wanted to travel more. I wanted to have a family.
Being skint didn’t really help, so I decided to start a business.
It was not my first business. I’d already started and sold a magazine for the courier industry. I’d already had two theatre companies (although I call them businesses in the very loosest of terms. “Hobbies with banks accounts” would be more appropriate).
This was the first business I set up with the sole aim of making moolah. It was a promotional marketing business. It made a lot of money, most of which I wasted on fast cars, champagne, loose women and other nocturnal pleasures. The business lives on without me.
I learned quickly that money could easily take you over if you had no purpose. At that time, my only purpose was to make money, which wasn’t serving me, so I had to find a new purpose.
It came in the form of a marriage and five children.
Because of these I slaved away at making my new venture a success. It was a meteoric rise for a kid from a council house. Millions of pounds just flowed easily towards me. Only problem was it was more than we knew what to do with. Then 2008 came. The crash. The biggest robbery in the history of the world. The beginning of the age of austerity where millionaire satanic peadophiles really moved up a gear in their heist of the people, or “useless eaters” as they lovingly refer to us.
It was the time when I learned all about the gangsters that run the world. Not just the ones that threaten to kidnap your children (I had that), but the other ones. The really bad guys. The snakes in suits. The bankers. The politicians. The inland revenue. The corporations.
These people are little more than common thieves. They own everything, including you and me. When you get a birth certificate, that’s you being incorporated. That’s you as a legal fiction. That’s your name being CAPITALISED in formal letters. That’s you on a path to being educated to be in constant fear of red ink (financial demands in the post) and yellow paint (no parking zones).
That’s you getting a mortgage (which means “death grip” in French). That’s you working your nuts off for some mystical and imaginary retirement sometime in the future. That’s you delaying all the dreams you had as a child until the kids have grown up or the mortgage is paid off, until you’re too old and stupid and infirm to do anything about those dreams any more.
The monetary system is a system of slavery. The corporate system is a system of slavery. You are not a slave unless you choose to be.
Yes I teach people how to make more money, but only because I can’t personally change the system we are currently in. But I can hack about with it, and getting more money is stage one in your plan to be free of the system. To operate on it’s borders rather than in it’s guts.
If you work for a corporation my advice is get out. Now. While your soul still has a chance. If you own a business, my advice is automate it and outsource as much as you can. If you work for a small business, get some terms from your boss that serve your happiness. Work from home, work remotely, be involved and responsible for the success of the business, don’t just get compensated for your time. Make a difference.
Travel. Have more sex. Eat more raw organic food. Dance. Sing. Learn a language. Learn an instrument. Laugh. Tell bad jokes. Fucking swear. Stand up for truth. Pass through fear. Study quantum physics. Stop reading newspapers. Stop watching the “programmes” on TV (it’s called programming for a reason). Go on a retreat. Jump out of a plane. Tell your family you love them. Give something to someone that needs something anonymously. Stop waiting for anything.
Live.
P.S. thankyou to the Facebook friend who introduced me to the Bondi Hipsters. You know who you are.
