The Money Contradiction

There’s a version of life I think many of us secretly long for.

A slower one. A simpler one. A world where everything is handmade, nothing is rushed, and the whole village helps raise the kids.

Sometimes I wish my to-do list consisted of churning, winnowing, and cobbling, not emailing, optimizing, and refining my new AI marketing content workflow (or whatever the hell it’s called.)

I wish life were small-scale enough that you could pay for groceries with beeswax candles, or settle your utility bill with a wheel of cheese and a firm handshake.

And yet… that’s not the world we live in. We don’t live in a small village in the Yucatán in the year 941.

We live in a world where I forgot to cancel before the free trial ended for Paramount+ and now I feel like a failure. A world where I need an app to stop me from using other apps. A world where it costs half your mortgage to put your kids in daycare just so they can bring home a new form of plague every other week.

And every time I turn on the news, I feel like I should start burying gold in the backyard and training our alpacas to defend the property from post-apocalyptic marauder gangs. Then I remember that they are deeply self-centered and would absolutely join the marauders.

The Money Contradiction

I like money. I like having it. I like spending it on things that make life better for my family. And at the same time, there’s a very real part of me that wishes I could do every session for free and pay my bills with the smiles I bring to people’s faces.

I would love to live in a world where Verizon accepts joy as currency.

But I recently got a letter from Verizon, and apparently the photographs of people smiling I mailed them are not an acceptable form of payment. (They were very clear about this.)

So here I am: a photographer who longs for a neocolonial utopia, living in a modern economy where I have to charge money because the people I pay money to insist on… money.

It’s a conflict. But it’s also reality.

Feeling the same money contradictions in your life? Let’s chat about how we can make your photography experience truly worthwhile (without the need for barter or beeswax candles.) Reach out to book a session or simply share your thoughts!