I interviewed a graffiti artist for work a while back.
He draws pictures of robots obsessively. I asked him why and he said, “That’s a dumb question.”
He was rough around the edges with a scruffy beard and wearing cut-off jean shorts. His teeth were brown. He didn’t want his picture taken. But I admired the hell out of him.
Because he said he didn’t need money.
“You don’t need money,” he said.
He didn’t have a day job, didn’t need one. He said he was living cheap, sleeping on people’s couches. It wasn’t hard, he said.
This isn’t news. I know this. If you want to be a writer, you need to know this too. It should be your mantra:
Live cheap.
Live cheap.
Live cheap.
I really should purchase a new computer, but I keep putting it off because buying anything over $100 makes me break out into hives.
And I wonder, how does the graffiti artist get a computer? How does he pay for his art supplies? Thank God I’m a writer and all I need is a pen and paper. And a computer, really, if I want to be honest.
But then I know another story about a fellow artist who called up all his friends when he needed money and asked them to give it to him. As a fellowship, a gift, a non-repayable loan.
It even worked, once or twice, I think.
But I could never go there. I do believe, at the end of the day, it’s no one’s responsibility to provide for me but my own. I chose this dream, no one else did.
But that still means I don’t have a computer.
I think I can fix that this weekend, without paying out huge cash money. I just have to get tricky. More later.
