As I grew up, and I'm not really sure how this happened or why, the type of people I looked up to, the type of people that I wanted to be like when I grew up, were never your standard successful types. I don't know if it was nature (my father worked and supported us without any visible struggle, and my mother was a housewife---so that's probably not it) or nurture (I doubt this one very much) or some other outside force (the devil's rock'n'roll perhaps) but I always looked at people living successfully outside the norm as who I wanted to be. Of course, most of these people were artists---actors, musicians, making their dime performing for others.

I'm not much of an artist. I ain't ever been. Sure, I can write these words and churn out a thousand or so of them in fifteen minutes at the drop of a pin of so desired, but who's going to pay me to talk about myself endlessly anyway? There's got to be another way.

That other way is to redefine the meaning of success. If I looked at the people I thought were cool growing up, they all have one thing in common: they don't wear business attire, ever; they ain't really got a boss, even when they do; they don't seem to be stressed about much of anything, especially not work; and they're seemingly happy enough with their lot in life. Perhaps success, I came to think, isn't a matter of how much money you have and how much shit you can buy, but how easy you can make your life on yourself. The less work you can do to survive, the happier you should be.

Isn't that people work hard for anyway? Eventually you have a bunch of money and you don't have to work a lot? I'm not really sure: I look at the people I know or have known who are better off than me and I see them constantly working. It's a never ending uphill battle. They're like sharks: if they stop for one second they drown under their self-imposed weight to keep making money and to keep the people they make the money from happy. That doesn't look like much fun.

And ties, who the hell wants to wear a tie?

My brother in law, once a year or so, offers me a job at the company he works for. It's usually about 50k a year, working helpdesk somewhere, and I can't help but tell him no way, without hesitation. He might give me a hard time, or really, he might talk shit: "So what do you do at your job?" he asks.

"Oh, I dunno, this and that, whatever people tell me to do."

"So you're a bitch, then?"

"Uh, I guess?" and I can't help but think, and not say, because I am pretty non-confrontational unless I can catch someone off-guard: What, you ain't got a boss? You don't just do what someone else tells you what to do every day? I'm a bitch, but you ain't, and you're the one who lets your job tell you what you can and can't wear? At least I don't tie a noose around my neck every day before I get on a pussy excuse for a Harley you don't even know how to work on so that I can feel a little manly through all the emasculation that my domineering wife and my job heaps on me day after day. You want to call me a bitch, well, take a good goddamn look at yourself.

That won't ever be me, or at least I hope not. If I can't wear jeans to a job every day, I don't want it. If I can't speak my mind to the people I work with without the fear of my entire life falling apart because I lost my precious job---and this is a hard one to manage 'less you're lucky, and I'm working on that one---then that isn't really a life I want to live. Are you really free when you live every day with the specter of the man hovering above you, guiding your every move?

When I first heard this song performed by Andrew Jackson Jihad a month or so ago, it really struck a cord: while I won't be, or at least just don't see it at this point in my life, a pool hustler meeting up with an old high school buddy of mine who's a hooker, there's something intensely alluring about the way Snider romanticizes the off-the-beaten-path lifestyle both of the people in this song lead. They might not be much, meeting up in a hotel, sometime past their glory days, but they're slightly proud of the fact that they've never been the "bitch" to the normal working man, if only because that is what they wanted in life.

I don't much want to be the characters in this song---I like technology far too much to really ever end up totally penniless---but I appreciate their sentiment. All I got to do is look at the "normal" and "successful" people I've known in my life and see how hectic, harried, miserable, and boring their lives are deep down, and it makes me feel pretty good about myself. I might not be an American nomad (or a high school graduate), but in my heart I have a clear definition of what it is to be "free", and as long as I can hold onto a little bit of that, I think I'll be happy.