There's gotta be more than this...

Explain to me again why we wake up in the mornings? For most of us its to get our asses to work and for the younger ones to college. At the end of the day, paper qualifications, working 9 - 5, overtiming so often that your punch card looks as if you never punched out; is all in pursuit of the worship of the new God of our Era :

M

O

N

E

Y

Come the weekends, we are rewarded for our dedicated worship or punished for lack of devotion to this new centuary's deity. Either we spend money like mad, or we spend the week lamenting the lack of monetary funds to do any spending.

'We do what we have to... to survive,' is what I've been told. Short of living on a deserted island and surviving on coconuts, one needs to participate in the rat race in order to find money to survive in society. So in short you have to do something you might not particularly like in order to make ends meet.
To quote from the song, Bitter Sweet Symphony, 'Its a bitter sweet symphony thats life, try to make ends meet then you die...'

Where do you draw the line? Where exactly do you say enough is enough. You spend your entire lives saving for your old age. You work yourself to the bone in hopes of a better car, house or social status. You forsake ideals, principles and morales in exchange for money.

Please don't say you do not. You've had to deal with clients you disagreed with? Thought they had a desparate need for the 'removal of stick up their arse' operation? Thought a visit to the Body Shop for a set of brains for them was desparately called for. Yet, you meet their requests and demands. Or politely declined. That is a compromise of your own beliefs in itself to say the least.

A pornstar sells her body for money.
A writer whores his ideas and writing for money.
Where is the difference? No where.

'Sex is infinately more personal than writing lah!' I hear some people saying. People who obviously do NOT write. Or have written nothing worth a grain of salt. Anyone who's written something close to heart would know exactly how personal writing can be. Not necessarilly good obviously, but as personal if not more personal than sex.

A quote from some one I won't name, 'I'm crying as I write now, here is the truth so blatant in writing that I can't help the tears as they stream down my cheeks.'

Please remind me again, o wise one, how playing 'hide the salami' is definately more personal than writing something from the heart.

I've had offers to publish my writing. Even offers to 'ghost write' for some one. This is where you do all the hard work... get the money, and some dork gets the credit and name for your writing. As of now, I've always turned down offers.

I'm not saying that ALL my writing is super personal. My poems obviously are. They're my little thought bubbles or emotion bubbles if you like. Be it happy or sad. Angry or wistful.

The stories I've written for children definately are. In fact they are infinately more personal to me. The simple fact that they are not completely mine is the reason for this. They're not things that just pop into my head. I built those stories with little angels. The stories come frlom the conversations and little secrets children have shared with me. To me there were pieces of their love, imagination and innocence in those stories. Which is what made them decent. It doesn't take talent to write something based on a world a child creates for you. It just takes a typist.

Here I am, contemplating selling these stories for the first time. Where do I draw the line this time? If at least I can be sure that the stories turn out the way the kids liked them... and how we built the stories together, some how it wouldn't be so bad. And yet I can't. It will probably be hacked and ripped into pieces for commercialisation. Whoring yourself is bad enough. Selling pieces of a child dream... thats unspeakable isn't it?

Do I need the money?

Yup. Thats the end of that decision process I guess.
God I feel cheap.
Or should I say : Money I feel cheap.