This week’s dialogue for my 2018 writing challenge is The Nihilist and the Strangler. This creative conversation explores the fundamental meaning or lack thereof of life and the ever after.

Nihilism sort of brings up the absurdity of working for money, an abstract and transitory thing, when you’re going to die someday, having worked a good majority of your own finite existence here on earth for $$$ instead of actually living a meaningful life.

Well, I’ve been living, just without free weekends, for almost three years now. I feel like I played the system. I wasn’t free, really; I just found a way to make time and money work for me. But the system is harder to escape for the working class artist like myself than it is for those who run the system at the top. This is especially true when you have crippling student loans like my wife and I do. Other things compounded and caught up to us (things like a new A/C and new tires for the car) and here we are with me picking up a second job just to keep us afloat.

I don’t plan to hold two jobs permanently. At least not two non-writing-related jobs. And like I said in my last post, I’ll be using my precious free time wisely to finish my novel. Like any millennial worth their salt, I value the quality of life. So two dead end jobs aren’t a permanent solution. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to work to get to where I want to be. And work hard I will at the hotel, at the gas station, and at my writing.