Too little for too much


There is a lot of talk about low wages. People busting their asses working for a boss for a little over a thousand euros a month. An insult, really.
I tried it myself (for a short time, to be honest) to be a luxury servant, with degrees, livery, and various bullshit. I even earned enviable salaries, let's say at a level where an average Italian today would stop complaining.
Yet I always felt defrauded. 8 hours or more in the office, 5 or 6 days a week, barely a month of vacation a year. A horizon as distant as retirement day, meaning when the best part of life has been wasted between open spaces and company cafeterias and only enough energy remains to decide how to rest.
They were asking for what I held most precious: the freedom to manage my days. Every morning upon waking, I felt my stomach squeezed between the mallets of a vise as invisible as it was physically real: I couldn't make sense of the kind of life I was living. No raise, bonus, assignment, title, or role would have compensated me for what I was giving up.
Besides, in the companies where I worked, I was always treated well all things considered. I also met some great people, with some of whom I've stayed in touch. So it wasn't a matter of the wrong workplace. It was strictly a personal incompatibility of mine with that way of life.
The decision to quit everything, which seemed like madness—especially back when a permanent contract was practically ironclad by law—was the easiest one I could possibly make for myself.
I've always preferred being a permanent freelancer, without safety nets, sometimes broke, but carefree, serene. Even, why not, happy.
So far, with its ups and downs, I've managed to scrape by. Maybe one day it will be a catastrophe. I'll accept it precisely because up until the moment before, I will have done what I wanted. If one cannot live long, it's better at least to live well.
Summing it all up with an aphorism, I could say: "The price of my freedom is material poverty, because I said no every time I was offered money to give it up."

This post was machine-translated from Italian.


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