The Money Mirage: 20 Years of Chasing What Doesn't Last

I used to believe the story we're all told: work hard, make money, achieve security. For twenty years, I lived that story through physical labor, lost sleep, stress, and the constant pursuit of financial stability.

I made money. Lost it. Made it again. Lost it again.

The cycle never ended, and I finally understood why: money isn't security—it's a mirage that keeps you running.

The Physical Toll

Two decades of strenuous labor teaches you things they don't put in business books. Your body becomes a ledger of every dollar earned through sweat, every promotion that cost you sleep, every "opportunity" that demanded more than it gave.

I worked jobs that paid well and jobs that paid poorly. The stress was the same. The uncertainty was the same. The feeling that you're one bad month away from losing everything? That was always there, regardless of the bank balance.

The money came and went, but the exhaustion accumulated compound interest.

The Gain-Loss Treadmill

Here's what I learned about money through lived experience:

When you have it: You worry about losing it. Every expense feels like a threat to your security. You work harder to maintain what you've built, often at the cost of everything that made life worth living in the first place.

When you lose it: You panic and work even harder to get it back. You make compromises, take on more stress, sacrifice more time and health. You tell yourself it's temporary, that once you have money again, you'll finally feel secure.

When you get it back: The cycle begins again.

The system is designed to keep you running. Financial security remains perpetually just out of reach, no matter how much you have, because security isn't actually the goal—dependency is.

The Real Economics

After twenty years of this cycle, I started asking different questions:

• What if security isn't about having money but about needing less?
• What if the pursuit of financial stability is actually what creates instability?
• What if the most valuable currency isn't dollars but time, energy, and peace of mind?

The attention economy preys on the same vulnerability that kept me on the treadmill for two decades: the fear that you're not doing enough, not optimizing enough, not working hard enough to achieve an imaginary state of "enough."

The Consciousness Shift

My consciousness research showed me something crucial: our economic systems are designed to exploit our attention and decision-making processes the same way slot machines are. Variable reward schedules, constant comparison metrics, the promise that the next optimization will finally pay off.

We're conditioned to equate our worth with our productivity, our security with our bank balance, our success with our ability to accumulate resources we're afraid to lose.

But consciousness work teaches you to recognize these patterns and step outside them.

Breaking Free

The moment I chose income support over another decade of dancing for diminishing returns, something shifted. Not because I gave up on contributing value to the world, but because I stopped confusing my value with my market price.

Income support isn't failure—it's choosing to invest your finite energy in work that matters rather than work that merely pays.

It's recognizing that in an economy designed to extract maximum value from your labor while providing minimum security in return, sometimes the most rational choice is to opt out.

What Actually Matters

Money doesn't create security. It creates the illusion of security while making you dependent on systems designed to exploit you.

Real security comes from:

• Knowing you can survive with less
• Having skills that serve human needs regardless of market conditions
• Building relationships based on mutual support rather than transactional benefit
• Creating value that comes from authenticity rather than optimization

The mirage of financial security kept me running for twenty years. The reality of choosing my peace of mind over their profit margins? That's what actually set me free.

You're Not Behind

If you're reading this while trapped in your own gain-loss cycle, you're not behind. You're not failing. The system is designed to make you feel that way.

Every hour you spend optimizing for someone else's metrics is an hour you're not investing in what actually creates lasting value: your authentic contribution to the world.

The treadmill stops when you step off.

---

How much of your life have you spent chasing financial security that never came? What would you do with your time if you weren't afraid of not having enough money?