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When Will We Ever Learn?

I've been searching for capitalism's "opt out" button, to no avail. Can someone show me where it's located?

Quick request: Can I get you to share this—or any other Trying! piece—with someone who might like it? Subscriber sign-ups have slowed down a smidge, and I’d really like to keep the momentum going. Social shares are great, as is forwarding this email or the URL—mattgrossistrying.com—to folks who might be interested. It’s your call. But I really could use your support! Thanks!

At lunch yesterday in Litchfield County, Connecticut—a surprisingly good little spot called The Owl, where we ate short-rib sliders, shredded charred Brussels sprouts with pecans, and a fine pepperoni pizza—my friend A. announced he’d been studying Italian, over Zoom, since last spring.

Vogliamo ‘retire’ a Como,” he explained. He hadn’t learned how to say “retire” yet: andare in pensione, Google tells me, although I hope there’s a better slang version out there.

This—his learning Italian—shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. A. is a well-traveled guy who’s made regular trips to Italy in recent years, including to Lake Como, so why shouldn’t he study the language more formally? (Actually, I was just as surprised to find out he’d studied Japanese in college: He and I had once spent about three weeks traveling in Japan, and he’d given no hint he knew the language any better than me.) He’s just one of my many middle-aged friends who’s still engaged in formal learning: M. was taking French classes and is now in a fiction workshop; L., who already has both a Ph.D. and an M.A., is now getting an M.F.A.; my brother and his family are studying Japanese. This isn’t all that unusual.

Or maybe I was just jealous. I’m not half-bad at learning in my day-to-day life: scraps of language here, a software system there, a whole lot of recipes and cooking techniques, and a zillion other bits and pieces that add up to what occasionally feels like a decent amount of knowledge.

But it’s not enough. I always feel like I’m just scratching the surface, and I’d love to plunge into the depths. I want to learn languages, certainly—to perfect my French, to improve my Italian, to finally, properly study the basics of both Spanish and Vietnamese so I don’t sound like an imbecile. (Or at least so I can sound like an imbecile because of the things I say, not how I say them.) I would love to find a way to finish my math degree: All I had to do back in college was take one more upper-level class in math, and another in science, and I’d have the degree; but I gave up, stupidly, and have regretted it ever since.

I’d even like to learn to play the piano. Who knows, these fingers might be good at something besides typing.

And I know what you’re going to say: Matt, sign up for a damn class already and stop complaining!

But I’m not done complaining! Because the problem is not willpower—I can be a decisive motherfucker when I want—it’s time. Or the lack of it. I’m already writing an essay a day, and running and rock climbing, and cooking for my family, and reading books and watching the most excellent television shows and movies, and trying to see all my friends in person, and taking care of household chores. Also, there are crossword puzzles. On top of that, I even have a full-time job. There’s just not enough time in the day1.

The job is really the most frustrating part—not the job itself, per se, but the absolute necessity of having one. This is the world we live in: You have to work. If you don’t, you don’t eat, you don’t have a place to live2, you can’t really survive. You have no place here, in both the immediate, concrete sense and the more abstract one. Because who doesn’t work, or want to work? To be a modern middle-class person in America is to want to contribute, in whatever way, to the world of work. You spend your youth wondering (or being asked) what you’re going to be when you grow up, and then you grow up and you have to be that something, or some something. If you’re lucky, you pick a career you enjoy and are not terrible at; if you’re less lucky, you start out in one realm, then change industries before you get too old. Either way, you’re expected to embrace the idea that work itself should be fulfilling. It doesn’t have to be the primary vector of meaning in your life, but it’s supposed to be stimulating, you’re supposed to want to feel necessary, and it’s all supposed to add up to a relevant contribution to the world in which we live.

I have felt like that… at times. I have written articles that I felt brought something new into the world. I have helped publications figure out what they’re supposed to do, and how to do it, especially if they don’t want to spend a cent doing it.

But lately, the Sisyphean pointlessness of this has weighed on me. I may be good at what I do, but couldn’t someone else be just as good? Does what I’m doing need doing at all? Are my job, my company, my industry just a thick slab of bullshit in the bullshit-laden world of capitalism?

And why do I have to keep participating in this? What is the world getting out of keeping me—and perhaps you—locked in this system? Why can’t I step aside, let someone else take my place, and go off to study irregular Italian verbs and complex analysis? Vorrei andare in pensione—subito, per piacere!

Seriously, I wish there were a mid-career retirement option. I would opt out in an instant, and let someone else take my place, and go off to learn things and do the humble little activities that bring me joy. I am not an extravagant person. I am not concerned with luxury. (I was the Frugal Traveler, you know!) I am not pursuing riches, although if you wanted to become a paid subscriber, it would make me very happy. I just want enough for a decent place to live and enough to take care of my family, and not to get sick in a way that kills me and bankrupts them.

Once, back in the 1980s and ‘90s, it seemed like that was possible. Slackers thrived in places like Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, and even in parts of New York City. When I was finishing college (with a creative-writing degree but without one in math), I figured I’d spend the rest of my life working in coffee shops, living a modest life, and writing novels no one read. And that would have been enough for me. That I wound up on a different path is mostly luck, but as I walked it, I remained aware of the other one leading off in a different direction.

Maybe twenty years ago, I noticed, that other path hit a dead end. Today you can’t be a slacker3 unless you want to forever be skating on the edge of penury. The explanation, of course: Capitalism—which is to say the rich—needs everyone to work, and to pursue the wild fantasy of wealth, because if there were another option, people would take it, and the rich, who rely on our labor for their obscene riches, would become less rich. (They might even have to work!) Anyone who does opt out must be punished with poverty, as a warning to the others. Alternatives like universal basic income must be derided as somehow unfair, a gift to the undeserving. Work, even and especially bullshit work, is the only way. And crypto. Something something crypto, right?

This is all true, and it’s all incredibly tired and boring, and yet it’s all true. The system we live in—and ha ha work in—is a prison, and we are both the inmates and the jailers. We could find a way out, seek fulfillment beyond the high walls and the razor wire, but it would take all of us to make it work, and the pigs who own the prison and pay us to live there won’t like it. And I don’t even know what the world outside might look like, or how to make it a reality. Maybe there’s a class I can take that’ll show me, show us all, another way. Maybe it’s on Zoom, and at a convenient hour? 🪨🪨🪨

Make Your Nominations for the Trying! Awards

I need your nominations—for the most valiant attempts and most abysmal failures—for the 2025 edition of the Trying! Awards. Who will win the Golden Sisyphus?

Notes
  1. If, however, I were willing to wait about 847 million years, the slowing of the Earth’s rotation would mean we’d have 28 hours in a day, which might make all my pursuits possible.

  2. Of course, even work doesn’t guarantee you a place to live.

  3. Or is there somewhere in America I’m overlooking where you can have a part-time job, live cheaply, and pursue your other, realer interests?

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