Filthy Lucre
I think most of my strategies have been devised more to sidestep myself* than anything else. With my particular upbringing and inherited qualities my level of commitment is high, if in fact I take on a project, so I usually try not to take anything on. I hate to be told what to do and often don't like to work on anyone else's project. Sometimes I do find it very interesting to follow what another person wants, though, as I'd never learn about that particular aesthetic otherwise.
When I took SL clothing commisions on, way back when, I hardly ever let the person give me any downpayment. Why? Clearly, it was because I think money has something to do with control and I don't want to be controlled. I know I'm a chronic undercharger, in keeping with many artists. SJ (who has spent her working life thus far in galleries, private collections, and museums) once said she was going to be a consultant to artists. Her plan was to line them all up, then go down the line poking each one and saying, "Raise your prices, raise your prices, raise your prices."
I do see people in SL becoming what to me seems an awful, awful thing, which is consumed** with the desire to make money. However, that's my conclusion based on my own set of bizarre feelings and beliefs, and is not nessearily fact. Everything in life is like a looking glass, it seems. That part interests me a great deal.
I really hate having to think about money at all. I should probably figure out that money doesn't equal control, though - that would be a good step. Money can be a temptation, but I don't really think I'm much likely to give in to it anyway. I would guess I don't really need to think about it, but it's very interesting at this point to try to unravel my subconcious thoughts.
I'm not very good at money. Indeed, having done my duty and thought about it a bit I can probably ignore it again. Circumstances conspire to alter that, but is that really true, or am I merely amusing myself by peering in the looking glass?
*Which may be true of many of us.
**"Consumed" for me equals corrupted: i.e. choosing to do X not Y because X leads to more money, though Y might be chosen if money were equal.
Labels: Cogitation
posted by 
- 3:25 PM
- 3:25 PM
Comments:
Tis the Getting of it, not the Thing itself, that consumes the Soul, I think. For some, riches are an emancipation from drudgery and bondage and debt; for others they are but another prison. Beauty is no different. I have met ladies who curse the unwanted attention their beauty attracts, and others who bewail the solitude their plainesse guarantees. One can build a Newgate from any stone, be it gold or rubble, if one's heart desires to be enchain'd.
A gift given, a payment paid, a minute spent, a picture painted: each is an act of generosity or commerce, the conjoining of free wills sharing a mutual inclination. To bend such stuff into bindings and chains is the work of barristers, clerks and jailers, not of artists of imagination and luminosity!
A gift given, a payment paid, a minute spent, a picture painted: each is an act of generosity or commerce, the conjoining of free wills sharing a mutual inclination. To bend such stuff into bindings and chains is the work of barristers, clerks and jailers, not of artists of imagination and luminosity!
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