I was very averse to money when I was younger. I quickly learned that people didn’t want to help me unless I could give them something, and I didn’t have the currency of social trade. I wasn’t clever, or funny, or good looking, and wasn’t able bodied so even that bottom line was unavailable to me. The bottom line being money.

What I share with you now is something I gathered for myself, despite all odds and even social resistance, even physical punishment. Why did I do that, you think?

I did something similar. What moved you?

The old cliche of “waking up.” It’s a great metaphor for what it is but it has a different meaning for everyone. For me it was play. I could use what I had in no other way. Play was the last thing I could have for myself. Something people couldn’t take from me or keep me from doing.

Yes, play. I have it on video evidence. It came out in play this week at an open mic event in my home town in front of old school friends. I’m pleased to hear it, and proud to number you among my friends.

People can take your work from you. Is there any exception to this?

CEOs get their position stripped from them. Leaders can be impeached. Scientists can have their funding all stripped and their professional standing with it despite their state of qualification. Are they any jobs that can’t be taken from us? Is their any social meaning that can’t be taken from you?

If you own your own business, you can lose it, but really only by your own mistakes. Actually, you can lose it by simply being socially marginalized. You may be quite skilled, but you’re Mexican so you live on a starvation income.

Well, marketing is half the battle. People often don’t realize that. Marketing is defined by fear based social order, governed by it.

If you can incorporate play into the important things you do, you can have a happy successful life.

There’s that difference between earning money and making it. I often see this insistence that we’re entering an entrepreneurial age as a nice way of saying, “It’s every man for himself!” Yes, that’s just another way of saying the apocalypse is coming, just later. You are still right though, work can become play.

Well, no one should be forced to be an entrepreneur. I often feel it’s a shame there are not many good jobs in Second Life.

As long as society stands like it does, people will be forced to do everything. They are even now so forced.

So let’s look at those rare bridge moments. When and how does work become play, or play become personally sustaining?

When you can do what you love and get people to pay you money for it.

When we’ve managed to share it enough.

My wife and I aren’t making much money for the things we do. This doesn’t worry us fortunately, but in the end it’s social recognition that makes all the difference. Is this not so?

That’s true. One social “like” on the web page means more then ad revenue. Yes, businesses now are huge on getting “liked” on Facebook. Everyone wants you to do it, and their methods are often almost coercive.

Yes, many businesses have a feeling of desperation.

Do you need recognition from literally everyone though?

No. You just need to find your niche.

I saw a documentary on Bill Hicks last night. In his lifetime he was largely ignored in America, but saw huge fame in the UK.

Martin Luther King had social recognition, needed it, from at first a small community, but it grew larger. Recognition doesn’t always mean affinity. They don’t actually have to like it. He got his support because there was an issue that a great many people did not like, and he was speaking to it. But another group did like it, and they shot him. Interesting, no?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~