What If Money Were No Object?

What if money were no object?

Now that’s a crazy question, isn’t it? Of course money is an object, at least in our society, because without money, we couldn’t live. Long gone are the days where bartering and trading and making your own or doing without were the norm. Although long gone, too, are the days when you only lived to age 32, at most, and you were as apt to be brought down by a pack of wolves as you were to be coughing up blood in the morning and dead by sunset.

Or at least most of the time. These days, wolves come in many forms, and strange diseases still lurk.

There was that analogy I wanted to use about how long gone are the days when you worked for14 hours in a sweatshop, making pennies a day, and getting injured from out-of-whack machinery. But those days are still with us, I think, even if they are, at worst, a remote possibility if you live in a first world country.

But back to my point, what if money were no object? What would you be doing?

I’ve asked myself this question a lot over the years, and of course my answer would be writing. That’s what I love to do, except when I don’t, and even then I still do. Writing allows me to express myself without interruption (which is selfish) and allows me the time to consider my words (which is amazing), and writing allows me to work with a medium that is patient and will wait for me. Because, as you know, sometimes you get a great idea and then you have to go make a cup of tea and think about it and get back to it. Because it’s all serious and stuff and you just might piss people off when you post it.

Today is not that day, however. Today, there is no pissing off of anyone.

Recently, while goofing around instead of writing, I came across this comic strip, which had some amazing things to say, and searched for two weeks (sometimes I’m not a very good searcher) to find the source. Which I have subsequently found and wanted to share, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, because I like what this guy is doing, which is taking well-known sayings and tidbits of speeches and ideas and turning them into these amazingly clean and crisp and readable comic strips. (He calls them cartoons, which I always think of as the moving kind that you find on TV.)

Secondly because the first comic of his that I came across has to do with money and of passion and how those two ideas don’t always coincide, which is something I think often, and despair of.

I’ll share the first few panels with you now and give you the link to his site to direct some traffic his way, to support him. And that’s because of the thirdly idea, which is that he’s doing what I’m doing, striking out on his own, and there’s nothing that misery loves more than company. Not that I’m miserable, and not that he is either, I think. Just that when you start out on a venture that’s scary and has an unknown finish line, it’s nice to know that you are not the only dreamer out there.

So, without further ado, I present Zen Pencils.

P.S. This is my favorite panel because it shows exactly how I felt working for my Stupid Dumb Fake Job!