Introduction/What about the money thing?

I travel a lot. This fact is indisputable. Now, I find myself in search of employment in the United Kingdom. It's a taxing challenge; sending out resumes, handling kind hearted rejection from employers, writing pithy notes to friends on Facebook about the experience. As a resident in Europe, assuredly among many from foreign lands, I'm adjusting to a culture that I only understand through literature, history, and a smattering of first hand experience. What guides me through the madness?

Men like Henry Miller and Jack London have always helped me in my ongoing existential dilemmas- but now their wisdom is stale and myopic, and any pretense of behaving like a turn of the century adventurer seems anachronistic at worst and laughable at best.

Henry Miller

Jack London:


But that's the world that I choose to live in. I'd rather live a life of endless financial uncertainty, transient career prospects and short-lived romantic escapades than assert a false character of myself to newcomers.
 I have great, understanding friends who put me up.  I tramp along. I CouchSurf. Doing these things makes me feel alive, particularly when I feel that my life is heading truly south. Amazingly, these folks know how to turn any frown upside down.

Back at home in New Jersey, my old friends, with whom I have histories dating back to preschool twenty plus years ago, do their best to carry on despite the realities of a down and out 21st century job landscape.  Some of my friends have landed off-Broadway roles in the City (New York), some hold degrees in Astrophysics, and some are pursuing their dreams in Hollywood Land. By anyone's standards, we seize opportunities and make the best of our privileges. We are jokers and kidders, but never forget the decades of hard work which lets us laugh so hard.

With that said, a desire to work towards new privileges is what brought me here. Despite having grown up in the Northern U.S. with all of the luxuries money could buy, I felt unsatisfied. Bizarrely, I was in the position to leave, and thankfully, I took the opportunity. I took on EU/Polish citizenship and left. Now, for better or worse, I take on the challenges of having made that decision. Doing so leaves me prone to fuck things up constantly, but just the same, I never regret the lessons learned along the way. Trotting down that path has lead to me changing my arrogant vocabulary a bit. I haven't suffered enormous pain. I worked some shitty jobs, but who hasn't? The best kind of money to receive is the money you've made yourself.

As all of the world's people knows, money talks, and bullshit walks. Sorry to be so brash, but ain't it the truth? For me, making money is a long process of seduction - wooing your way into conference rooms, asserting your character, tastefully flaunting your stated abilities, and sealing the sensual deal with gusto so the balance in your bank account appears. Whoa, that's a lot of alliteration, but you'll literally know why BS and walking are correlated after pathetically staggering down streets like a traumatized victim of aggravated financial assault 'cause you couldn't work your magic. But I digress...

There are plenty of moments each day when I just want to scream "Fuck this shit, I'm heading home!". For EU citizens from the East all too often, that's how it ends up. For me, it's the same, just make sure to add a thematic backdrop of the Trail of Tears to the American case. People from all over the world head to Britain to make their way in life. Perhaps unbeknownst to them is the crushing reality of A: Not being British and all the problems coupled with having few connections, B: Initially earning crap wages and C: the exchange rate differentials. You might have slaved back at home; that's not to say that you won't slave here. Just the same, I'd rather be a wage slave in Western Europe than anywhere else.

I love you, Britain. Please return my phone calls.