Observations and Opinions That May or May Not Be About WWOOFing.

Yesterday I moved a piano from one end of Wollombi to Lesley’s house at the other end with Nico. I was under the impression that this job was part of my WWOOFing obligation (for bed and board), so it was nice to get $50 from Nico once the piano was safely delivered with no hassle what-so-ever. Then it hit me. I miss getting paid. That little fizzle you get when you know that your work has some value that can be transferred to other things, like train tickets or iced coffees. For the last few weeks I have enjoyed not worrying about my out goings because I had none (apart from credit card stuff, but that’s 10,000 miles away), but I had forgotten that money is a bit of a drug, people are addicted to it and always want more. Even the millionaires on Dragons Den want more and they already have shit loads, the people on Dragons Den that invested £100,000 in their business of plastic crap designs had £100,000 at some point and decided they still wanted more.

I was reminded of a paragraph from my current read, Moby Dick, which I got free from Gutenberg.org (awesome website if you like public domain books) that links in quite well with my observation...

“The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money is the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!”

A nice quote, I think you’ll agree, there are other good quotes, but not really about money, like...

“But the only thing to be considered here, is this – what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! We whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!”

But I digress. In conclusion, working for bed and board is a great way to duck out of being a slave to the wage, but when close to moving onto the next thing one needs funds. And so the want to earn money returns and one relapses back into the capital gain addiction.

As a 26 year old male, I am often asked about my aspirations. Granted, I am not asked about them as much as I was as a child, it seems the older one gets the less people ask about your future because it is decidedly shorter than the future of a child, so children actually have more time to achieve their goals and it is worth them thinking about it. But as I am 26, I am often asked about children, my opinion of them, do I want any of my own one day, I couldn’t eat a whole one, ha ha, blah blah blah...

The answer is ultimately the same, but the reasons differ depending on who is asking the question. I do not want children now, or in the near future. For me there are many reasons to dislike the idea of having children; money, the way they all look the same to me until about 1 year in, the emotionally draining need for attention, money, how even though they have legs that are barely strong enough to enable them to walk they decide they want to awkwardly run everywhere and then they cannot stop their faces hitting the ground when they fall because their arms are still too short, money, they wake up and the first thing they do is cry for attention (at 5am), how you have to go to social gatherings with other parents for their kid’s party even though their kid is only 2 years old and doesn’t know or care who you are but your wife is friends with the kid’s mum so it would be rude not to so you say you’ll go for a bit but then you have to bring a gift for the 2 year old but what do you buy a two year old who cares just get a toy with small parts and hope you won’t be asked to come to its third birthday party, money, the constant tears and tantrums. Of course there are good points too... but... well... you can... um... they can... I’ll come back to that one.

Terrible, that after a few weeks of being in the presence of a three year old, I still cannot see a reason why a child can be anything other than a financial and emotional burden. Actually that part about the ‘social’ aspects of having a kid was told to me by a mum I was driving to a kid’s birthday party a few days ago, she is only 29 but has a 4.5 year old boy and she honestly said that if she knew about all these things a mother has to do, she would have thought twice about having a baby... Good thing the kid didn’t hear that, but at least he was planned, imagine how she’d be if he was an accident! Odd that she told this to me, although I’m not the judgemental type and to see a 29 year old with that many grey hairs makes me feel fortunate I’m not in the same boat.

 So I don’t want anything to do with kids, but then I am a man. Women on the other hand have a womb (really?!) and in the words of Stewart Lee, ‘Having a womb and not using it is like having a tea cosy and not trying it on as a hat’.