I used to drive a VW Golf TDI. It was my first car and I bought it with my own money. It was reasonably new at the time and I was super proud of it. Of course, it was by no means a baller type vehicle, but it wasn’t bad for a student. It was nippy and shockingly economical, which allowed me to go to uni in a neighbouring town without having to move there.
Cut to almost a decade later. I had earned my undergraduate degree, just finished my post-grad and I was still driving that same old Golf diesel. It had seen much better days. Six years of commuting had put half a million kilometers on the clock. Also, a stupid (sightly drunken) error had seen me putting petrol inside it instead of diesel, which basically gave it a permanent kick in the balls. The turbo was knackered, it would creep embarrassingly slowly up hills, at which point I’d get overtaken by Nissan Micras and it sounded like a cement mixer full of gravel.
You know, in many ways that car is a perfect metaphor for the time and money I invested in a largely useless education in the humanities. The state it was in by the time I was done closely resembled my spending power and standing in the social hierarchy after opting to spend the best part of a decade learning how to play with words. A decade that coincidentally ended with the worst financial crisis in living memory and crushed the hopes of a generation.
Guys it was fucking mortifying to drive that car. Complete strangers would comment on the racket it made. It turned heads everywhere I went and would wake up the entire neighbourhood when returning home late. You can imagine the effect this had on a neurotic introvert such as myself, who has made it his business from a young age to gingerly creep around on tippie-toes at all times, lest he should alert anyone to his presence. Everywhere I went, people heard me coming. Home, to add some more colour to this story, was my little brother’s old childhood single bed in what was effectively the storeroom of my mother’s apartment. I was unemployed, like so many people who graduated at the time, I was in debt, I was depressed and my prospects were grim.
About a year later I managed to land a job. I can only imagine the comments that old Golf received from all the suited and booted young hotshots, who’d rock up in their gleaming convertible Mercs and BMW SUVs. About two years later it finally died on me. With the help of my mother and a very good friend, I was able to replace it with a second hand, slightly newer, non-cement-mixer-type vehicle. A 2008 Ford Focus 1.6 diesel.
The completely unremarkable event that inspired this post occurred a few weeks after getting that car. I had gone to visit a friend for the evening and ended up staying until the early hours of the morning. We said our goodbyes and I headed downstairs to make my way home. So much of what we do becomes habit through repetition, so in the wee hours of that morning, part of me started up my newish Ford Focus, while another, more fundamental part, was still inside my embarrassing, beaten up, old, last legs, Golf TDI. I experienced the disparity between these two states as something of a revelation that morning. Aided, undoubtedly, by the various conversation-enhancing herbs that had been consumed throughout the evening.
Unfortunately, six years of academic gymnastics and mental masturbation have proven insufficient for me to adequately describe that drive home to you. Suffice it to say, as I started it and pulled away, I thought I was in a broken shitbox, but it felt like a luxury saloon. A car that’s even less of a baller type vehicle than my old one. A car that sells for less than the equivalent VW. A car that still came with drum rear brakes and wind-up rear windows (in 2008!). A mere facelift that Ford threw out there to give their same old tired model a few extra years of life. A proper recession car.
My mind marveled at how all of our standards are founded upon nothing more than what we’re accustomed to. And yet we act as if they refer to some kind of objective situation. I drove home that morning trying to enjoy how amazing my new car felt to drive, how smooth and fast and quiet, trying to stretch the moment out as much as possible while knowing that the feeling wouldn’t last. In a way mourning the fact that it wouldn’t last. Knowing that within a few months it would become the new norm and I’d start noticing all the things that were wrong with it, or that other people’s cars did better. Its novelty would fade and I would want more. What an ungrateful perspective to default to, and yet you have to wonder whether we would have achieved anything as a species if we were just automatically happy with our lot.
Try pointing out the people waiting at bus stops to the younger me as he rattled past them in that glorified tractor. It wouldn’t console me. I wouldn’t want to compare myself to those without what I had. The only comparisons I’d be interested in would be to those whose cars had working turbos and engines that purred rather than coughed phlegm. With that covered, I’d probably have wanted a better, faster, flashier model. And it doesn’t matter how big the change in situation is or in what domain, the same basic ingratitude and lust for more is always there once you get used to where you are. Levelling up in your career? Bigger house? More YouTube subscribers? Where you are now will always be the reference point, not where you’ve come from.
This revelation recently repeated itself when I took a look at my balances and realised I’d far exceeded what I used to say I’d need in order to be able to do what I think I’m supposed to be doing with my life. And yet instead of seeing this and taking action, I found myself glued to TradingView, eyeing up the next big round number and calculating what economic bracket that would put me in. It’s pathetic. It’s sad. It’s tragic. Even those of us who got into this stuff because of its transformative potential, have slowly morphed into money-grubbing speculators. Like boiling frogs, unable to register the change as it takes place.
How many of you have made more than you could have ever dreamt of, just because you were in the right place at the right time and happened to pick up some intangible internet money? How many of you have now grown so accustomed to those gains that where you came from isn’t even on your radar any longer, let alone your rear view? So you squint at the charts every chance you get, anticipating the moon shot that never comes because no one has been thoughtful enough to quantify just how far the moon actually is so that we might be able to recognise it when we get there. How many of you berate yourselves for not getting in earlier, and compare yourselves unfavourably to the crypto millionaires that you were this close to becoming? Or to your friends who may have done better. Or to the various dubious pundits and oracles you follow in that echo chamber of the internet, who continue to perpetuate the same memes, those same old chestnuts about what this is and where we’re going and what to do and why.
On the one hand, our constant dissatisfaction and yearning for more is what separates us from the rest of creation. On the other, though, it’s a tremendous blind spot that’s always leading us astray. I’m sure many of you have come across that heart breaking Reddit post by the guy whose brother killed himself because he cashed out his bitcoins too soon. It’s not the reason for this article, but it definitely catalysed my will to sit down and write this.
Take a look around you, please. There’s definitely something in your immediate vicinity crying out for your attention. Something that has nothing to do with the price of bitcoin, or gold or eggs. Address that. Today. And when you’re done find something else that needs your time and address that too. And don’t worry too much about what the price is doing. Take some steps to improve your life and the lives of those around you. Practice taking small profits here and there and learn to feel okay with it, no-matter where the price jumps next. This is probably the worst crypto investment advice you’re ever likely to receive, but it might be more conducive to mental health than what you’re currently doing. There are more important things in life. This crypto revolution was supposed to be about taking power back from the few and giving it to the many. It was never about isolating ourselves from our fellow humans and chewing our lips all day as we watch our net worth grow. And yes, I still proudly drive my little recession type vehicle and will continue to do so until it gives out, or until someone else needs it more than I do.
Thanks for wading through this wall of text. I know how precious a resource your attention is these days.