Money Stories and Creative Worth
Before we begin, I invite you to pause and consider: What would be your dream job, if you could do any type of work? Please indulge me—pause, close your eyes, and notice the first thing(s) that come to mind. Now I want you to hold that answer in your mind and trust me that we'll get back to this later.
When I think of the ocean while sitting in my apartment on the corner of one of the busiest streets in my neighborhood in Berlin, tears come to my eyes. I'm filled with longing and recognize the hole that remains in my heart, the emptiness and separation that are soothed by the rocking of the waves and the feeling of the sun's heat on my skin. Is it just nature I long for, with its aliveness and nurturance? Or something deeper?
Thailand is sacred land. God and Goddess lie thick there, a dance between the gold-adorned temples and meditation halls and the jungle whose roots constantly find new earth and territory to reclaim. I first arrived in Thailand because I was searching for a soft landing from my own critical mind that drove me to perfectionism and never felt that what I had to give was enough. Thailand held me in its gentle embrace for almost 8 years and asked for nothing. This was the space I needed to find myself again.
Recently, during an afternoon walk, I expressed to my partner the feeling that I didn't know how to actualize my creative impulse or make it productive so it could be received by the world.
"What would you do right now if money was no issue now or in the future?" they asked.
I would learn new skills, knowledge, techniques; I would teach, serve, and hold space for others; I would continue to explore my own consciousness through meditation and other psychosomatic techniques; and I would make art.
"Would other people need to see it?" they asked.
"No," I said, "they wouldn't need to."
I became emotional as I said this, realizing that this feeling that my art needed to be out there in the world, received positively by others, was tied firmly to my stories around money and the sense of worthiness bound up in the idea of earning money from my skills and talents. In this stage of late capitalism, my art—like me—needed to prove it was something of value. With money taken out of the equation, I saw the truth that I would make art for the joy of the process. Not for anyone else, not needing to even be seen by another—just for me.
I invite you to consider what you would do with your time if money were no concern, if all your basic needs were met indefinitely. Really, I mean it. Stop and take a moment. Connect to yourself and notice, what comes up?
Returning to our first question, notice any tension or discrepancy between your answers—or perhaps their alignment. This dissonance, if you feel it, between what we think we should want professionally and what truly fulfills us reveals how deeply we've absorbed society's measures of success. For me, and I imagine for others, these expectations become inseparable from our relationship with money.
In the world of social media, our reasons for production are getting confused. We hold massively tempting devices in our hands or pockets most hours of the day, and I know how tempting they are. I spent the summer meditating three to four hours a day while living at a meditation center. Yet, despite whatever focus or discipline you might think I would have built up, I still have to drag myself away from my screen. The sites that connect me to friends and family in other countries have become increasingly stocked with content designed to lure me into endless scrolling.
Social media shows me the image of what I "should" be. As a painter, it shows me prolific artists constantly creating beautiful work and seemingly making their livelihood solely from their craft. It shows me people who create perfect narrative hooks, timelapses, reveals, and cuts with high-end devices, compressing hours of meticulous work into deceptively simple, bite-sized chunks—almost as though they could have been made by anyone. It gives us a constantly false ideal of what we should be capable of making, and it pushes us to think of art as something that should be productive, pieced and parceled into video clips for competition in attention economies.
The proliferation of platforms like Substack and the surge in video podcasts speak to a growing cultural impulse to transform our thoughts and creations into public-facing content. As I draft these words for my own Substack, I feel the tension of participating in the very ecosystem I'm critiquing.
Social media has created a system of consumption that hinges on the commodification of personal identity. This is a more insidious evolution than the previous era of impersonal corporate branding. Even mega musical artists now face demands for constant content creation; promotional lifestyle reels have replaced the traditional cycle of interviews and posters. You can't disconnect for long anymore, as there is no separation between the work and the individual creator. Now we are the product we sell to the world. Our looks, charisma, and life stories become the goods themselves, though mostly what we're trading is attention. More than ever, our money stories have become inextricably bound to our sense of identity: are we likable enough (getting enough likes <3) to accumulate the social capital necessary to secure our economic needs?
Some people may be more sheltered from this emerging collective money story, but as a self-employed, creative freelancer, I feel it acutely. Young children are now saying their dream job is to be a YouTube star or an influencer. It has become a new "American dream," one in which gaining views and other engagement metrics translate directly to perceived worth. Our value becomes wrapped up in our ability to be liked and therefore make money, echoing America's Puritan roots where material success was seen as a sign of divine favor. This belief in worthiness through prosperity continues to shape our culture, though its forms have evolved from religious doctrine to digital metrics.
After years in Thailand, my arrival in Berlin marked a return to the Western world. My time in Thailand wasn't just an escape from the performance metrics of New York or the perfectionism that drove me in earlier years. In Thailand, I discovered the "sabai sabai สบาย สบาย" way of being—a sense of ease and openness to life as it comes. It's embedded in everything there, even the language itself, with its simpler tenses and dropped pronouns reflecting a culture where constant self-assertion isn't necessary. Though Berlin offers a gentler pace than American cities, it still represents an intensification of rhythm compared to my life in Asia.
Though I'm stronger and more ready to face Western society without losing myself, I'm confronted by all the stories of money and self-worth that remain frozen within me. The ocean and its healing rhythms feel distant here. I sense there's work I need to do that was only accessible by leaving Thailand's warm embrace, by stepping back into a world where value and productivity are more tightly entwined.
How can I meet my needs in this new place? I consider how I can make the money I need to support myself without part of myself sinking back down to the depths, waiting for another soft landing and receptive space where nothing is asked from me.
I'm searching again, not for escape this time, but for balance. How can I find those rocking waves and rays of heat that once held me in Thailand and integrate them into my life here in Berlin? How can I trust in the perfection of life as I breathe into the sounds of city sirens, processing the stresses and uncertainties of my new freelance life? I don't have the answers, but I trust my longing to guide me home.
