It’s been more than a year since I’ve quit my full time job. Ever since that day I haven’t been able to access motivation to give a s**t to having a career or achieving anything. Honestly, I barely had it in me when I had a full time job. As I’m coming closer and closer to being in a financially dire spot, I still can’t muster the will to give a s**t.

Bearing witness to the Palestinian genocide has moved what I knew in theory into my body in a necessary and jarring way. I’m so thankful and so fucked. Everyday I’m penjulating between gratefulness and the trauma of being under this empire. This genocide is painful to witness and torturous - to grieve the daily cost of revolution. I’ve been writing here since the Spring, and I keep on thinking that maybe I’ll be more regulated the next month. More than a year later…it hasn’t happened yet. And I’m coming into more acceptance that I might not be ok in this lifetime as long as the empire is still thriving.

I can feel this tension of agency in my body. My hand is forced - I have to trade my labor to afford a roof over my head and food in my mouth. And thank goodness I don’t have kids. I haven’t found a way to do my soul work in a financially sustainable way and every time I try, marketing myself drains me. I know that this is by design. If I did my soul work freely, the empire will be weaker. My hand is forced in keeping my head above water while I’m drowning in grief.

All whilst, I have agency to invest in relationships that align with my soul when I have energy (which is so sadly scarce.) I have agency to learn and read (when I have energy.) I have agency to question status quo (when I have energy and support.) I have agency to identify what I’ve absorbed from colonial culture and choose to practice liberating myself from it (when I have energy.) I have agency to consume less (which is most of the time forced by having next to nothing.) I have agency to organize with fellow freedom fighters (when I have energy.) I’m so tired.

Under empire, agency is only afforded to those who benefit from white supremacy and capitalism. The billionaires and their minions are so afraid of their mortality, that they strip the agency from as many people as possible. The less agency people have over their bodies, thoughts, actions, future, and world view, the more they can manipulate and mutilate humans for profit and power. Part of their systemic organizing is recruiting people who fall for the seduction of the mirage of power and “abundance.” This looks like Asian Americans who bend to upholding anti Blackness as to maintain the model minority myth. It looks like kids of immigrants climbing the corporate ladder and becoming landlords thinking capitalism will bring honor to their family. It looks like poor white people rallying for deportation of migrants as if the rich white people will have their back. The misdirection of threat is violent and intentional by design.

We are coming up to the holiday season, and what a season of the illusion of choice. Folks are told to work hard to make money that exploits everyone below their ladder rung (while being exploited) so that they can buy things for their families that are a made through more exploitation - and every step it’s all taxed so that our government can send it to isreal and military bases to commit genocides and destabilize Black and brown countries. All that can only happen when the amekkkican dream has saturated every pore promising that if you abide by rules of capitalism, you will be free. You will go on amazing vacations around the world, be educated, own properties, have cars, be able to buy anything you want, and be able to pass down generational wealth.

Being able to buy anything you want if you work 40-60 hrs a week isn’t freedom. Being able to ignore the lives killed and the blood shed for stuff and land isn’t freedom. The empire has fed us the illusion of choice by seducing us with questions like: What do you want to buy today? and Where do you want to travel to? and What properties do you want to own? and What restaurants do you want to eat at? and What movie do you want to watch? and What new tech do you want to invest in? and What do you want to do this weekend? and Who do you want to feel superior to?

It’s not real choice when our basic needs cannot be met without participating in the economy of exploitation.

“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” - we say this all the time. But wow…just sit with it for a second.

I’ve been floundering in my depression and anxiety. It’s like I can see myself from the outside and can see all the pieces that cause the freeze/dip/dissociation. I’m like a floating trauma response. The moments of feeling tethered to the ground and to my real self are scarce. There is a sense of giving into the lack of agency, which scares me. Being unable to tap into that feeling that what I do actually counts and has purpose is terrifying.

“But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiograph

But here I am now, tethered to reality. Upholding and honoring dignified choice is what matters. Choice that is free from the struggle to survive. Choice to build and create. Choice to heal in community. Choice to ask and receive. Choice to see value as it actually is.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

A future where everyone can have agency over their bodies, decisions, and dreams. Sounds so utopian, but what is the pursuit of liberation? We have to fight for what must be. It’s so simple, but we are conditioned by empire to imagine in the confines of their profit. Liberatory imagination is breaking out of the mirage and resist for the dignity of one another.

How to support me (thank you in advance):

Currently, I’m in between jobs and would appreciate any support you can afford.

* Be a paid subscriber. All my posts are accessible for everyone, and it would mean so much to me on my path of figuring out how to sustain myself under capitalism.

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(ID: self portrait of me - east asian femme with short bangs, bleached brows, hair behind me, in my studio apartment on a sunnier day with a smug expression coping with depression.)

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