Socien's Blog

Once again I reach the end of the month. It is the end that cannot be given an ever-happily after. So it demands a new month, a sequel that whenever I am still alive the theatre of life does not hesitate but to give me another. But this is not a time to relax and eat my popcorn. I am the multi-role character upstage. I am Balzac’s Gobseck, I have a journey of a cruel capitalist to walk. I am Professor Langdon, I have mysteries to unlock. I am a poor Twist in Dickens’ story. I go through a lot.

I might say, in short, the script has not been written in my favour. This is the nature of life. It puts you in and out of trouble, takes you to mountain peaks with burdens some of whose origins are as ancient as ancestors who have been erased out of your family lineage—whose bones have been integrated into the components of the top-soil and souls lost in the winds of civilisation.

Back to the present a method of saving coins in the purse, I might call it “scorched earth policy”, is a new tactic I have been sailing my front stage to riches with. It entails that I reduce my metabolism, merely by avoiding any unnecessary waste of calories, preferring to only walk when necessary. I wake up a bit late at 10:00hrs, try to write an article in two hours, or turn on my Windows tablet and read one book from the pirate site (I said earlier that I would buy all the books I have read from pirate sites and I can’t justify this theft but without it, there is no way I can read anything I am poor). At 12:00hrs, I have something cooking. Plain rice maybe or anything cheap.

The day will forgive me, and try to run with me with the given fuel in my tank. At sunset, I bring sanity to my utensils. I punish the cockroaches immigrating from other rooms in the house. You might say asylum seekers are not welcome here in a bachelor’s territory.

Sunset is over. I pull out one of my final tricks. I go and fetch some water to drink at a tap connected to a pump underground. This is a total of $20 in savings by the end of the month. I can’t buy water from a supermarket.

I prepare myself a good vegan meal (I am not vegan but it’s cheaper to be and morally right for me; so I try hard). They say eat like a king in the morning a princess in the noon and a servant by the night. But I defy them all. My territory comes with my legislation. Midnight oil by obligation must be burned down to its last soupçon. In other words, I stay awake with the stars. I surf on the Milkway, penning the thoughts simmering from the secretory mind. I plaster the paper with quantities of ink that only twenty men would not dare to spill.

When the mind hits blank, I find something to read. The appetising philosophies of Hegel, Kant and so forth are part of my mental diet. I pass through Marx as a hater and a wannabe capitalist, but I am tempted to read some lines in his Das Kapital. I appreciate the litres of ink he had to waste that became a series of suicides he brought to his family. Then I stumbled across the core on which he thought his theory would function. “Consciousness!!!!” He expected it to be the ultimate cause of the turning of the capitalist table in a bloody revolution. We might argue for years, using the cases of Russia/Soviet Union and others, on whether this happened or not. I close Marx’s case, ladies and gentlemen since I have many things to do, without fear as I am one operating under the benefits of bachelorhood. I answer to none.

Without consciousness, there is no human progress and success

You can’t become successful if the current detail on the things through which you intend to derive your success through are missing in your knowledge system. Now, I want you to know this kids, knowing of something does not translate to being conscious of it. Knowing is a subtle understanding, for example, of the fact that I am poor. Knowing that I don’t have a job or that my monthly income is barely enough. When I give some little detail in figures on my earnings I might have simply multiplied my monthly salary by the number of months I might need to put into my scope. This detail is by coincidence if not by accident.

Consciousness now involves proper tracking of my expenses, writing down my expenditures down to the tiny shekel. Detail that does not come by accident is easier to store in my knowledge system when I have consciousness rather than rely on plainly knowing about it. For example, if I am not formally employed and getting my pay in fragments haphazardly there is no way I can come up with a total figure of my earnings by year-end without having written them down. Consciousness, if it is to be achieved, one has to labour for it.

The ‘labour for consciousness’ has nothing to do with the ‘intellect for consciousness’. I give here, two examples. Me and my and my sister. She has a degree in accounting. I did history. Via an expense tracking app, I have the details of my earnings. She doesn’t have hers. Her answer is, “I don’t have a job, yet”. I am also—not exactly in my belief because I never want a job—jobless. But I know that working as an assistant carpenter in 2020, I earned $373,7 (figures in USD). I have a detail of my expenses and I use cheaper smartphones than hers. Just having those details can work my imagination in a way that can put me a step further.

Consciousness in your financial life and landscape puts you closer to financial success. Out there we have people who have skills that are relevant in their lives but they don’t want to put them into use. There is someone out there who doesn’t know how to write. There is someone who knows how to write but just try to manage a life or a small business without a pen and paper.

One who values consciousness does not rely solely on the ability of his mind to remember. He documents stuff so that his mind can use the unaltered details in the future. Having a perfect memory is not a solution to the lack of consciousness. Our irrational minds alter memories each second.

Subject Me Personal Diary, 30Aug24