His worst year began when the money dried up. It took 35 years for the money to dry up, but it did. He was staring down the barrel of Bank Account Zero. His D/E ratio had crept up to 3.6. If he were a stock, hedge funds would short him, and Reddit would not come to his rescue. He had nothing Stonks bros wanted, not even a nostalgic charm.

Bank Account Zero, $10K in credit card debt, and $2,500 in unpaid “Tax Responsibility.” “Tax Responsibility” — what a fucking phrase. Another word combo like “Cost of Living,” “Patient Responsibility,” or “Alone Together.” Combos not meant to dwell on. Any dwelling would only parse out their hypocritical terror.

On top of all that, he’d just gotten caught by a red-light camera. They mailed him the $350 fine with his photo in the corner. He was wearing cheap aviators and a grimace. He had to go to traffic school. Traffic school cost $120.

His worst year began in 2023, a year when he’d stopped identifying with years at all. 2020 was the last year, or maybe 2016. Since then, he’d entered a perpetual temporal, an accelerated, all-at-once PoMo Neo-Lib Late-Cap Techno-Feudal era of nonmeaning, a downward spiral of systemic detachment. In 2020, he’d left his eco-conscious food company, the one that had once been his passion but had transmogrified slowly, over half a decade, into his bane. In 2020, he punted his life off the conveyor belt of linear growth, off the continuous process improvement of dollar cost averages, Roth IRA, and reliable salary — off of the amoral engines of death upon which they rolled — and into the void beneath. By the end of his worst year, he was still falling, but he’d learned to fall with more grace, more surrender, and less expectations.

His worst year began when he abandoned his jargon-laden Operations Manager résumé — the one he’d hoped would land him another, more modest role with a salary north of $50K — and drafted one repainting his years as co-owner of that eco-conscious food company — years of passion and learning and striving and mission-oriented dreaming — into mere kitchen production. He roasted the meaningful projects of his life into charcoal briquettes — raw fuel to burn for warmth. He’d flown to Chicago and explored the possibilities of robotic packing machines, built 50 yards of production line, and helped design a heat-sealable flow-wrap from compostable cellulose. He’d traveled to hill farms in Ecuador, where farmer toured him through agroforestry food forest, growing the world’s rarest, most delicious plants while leaving ample space for the trees the birds need to nest. He’d seen things he could barely believe. Tears in the rain. Coal in the furnace. If he’d burn all of that, what wouldn’t he burn?

Production Manager / Baker (2011-2021)

• Responsible for managing the production of confectionery items. I worked with both small, handmade batches and large-scale production machinery.

Ten years. Twenty words.

He'd had jobs since he was 12. He’d hung flyers to mow lawns and babysit like it was 1955. When he was 14, he got a gig working three evenings a week for a company that launched hot air balloons — $35 under the table, plus tips. They let a 14-year-old set up hot air balloons! Once, the basket was too heavy for him to lift onto the trailer. His older, stronger co-worker had to do it, which meant he’d to drive the van. His first time driving anything was backing up a van-and-trailer rig toward a man deadlifting a hot air balloon basket. The gas pedal was touchy, and he shot the trailer into that basket like a guillotine blade. The man had to jump in the basket to save his shins. The man shouted at him, and he shouted back, “I’ve never driven anything before! I’m 14!”

He worked there a year, and the fuckers never even took him up in a balloon.

He’d worked at paint-your-own-ceramic studios, at car washes, on food trucks, selling vegan pies at farmers markets, and delivering auto parts by bicycle. He’d worked through high school, through college, through everything, because that is what men told him men do, and what women told him men do, and because he liked having a reason to be out of his head — because he was bored or depressed or anxious and needed the distraction of work. He’d worked hard and had been told by many that he had “hustle,” “drive,” and “a good work ethic.”

His worst year began when he had to work to survive. Working his whole life had not prepared him to work to survive. How lovely it had been, he realized, to work even the most menial jobs when the stakes were low. When there was $10K, $30K, hell, $60K in the war chest. With $60K in the bank, he worked six days a week at farmers markets and on food trucks and felt serene. Everything was a choice then. Investing that war chest into a eco-conscious company was a choice. Quitting that company and barely working for a year was a choice.

His worst year did not begin when he lost the easy choice. Choice isnstill there—the choice to stop, to quit, to relinquish comfort after comfort until he lived on nothing. That choice is visceral and terrifying, the choice between drinking the stagnant water or dying of dehydration, the choice to pay the tow yard fee or just abandon the car, the choice to nark on your accomplice or do the ten-year sentence. The choices that mock the freedom of choice. The choices that challenge one to plumb dark depths of the true meaning of freedom, integrity, or courage. The choices that interrogate a soul until it is shivering. The choices that seem malevolent in their intent to make you scream, “I have no choice!” and give up that last inch of control over his life.

His worst year began when he got a back-of-house job at a failing Asian fusion restaurant.

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ʕ – ᴥ – ʔ

Till next time, be well.

— Sean Jewell