The world is a bleak and falsely fanciful place.  It encourages the young follow their dreams, to work as hard as they can to strive for the they want to live, yet how cruel is it that all of these efforts are ultimately futile?  There is no hope outside of the shallow possibilities for success and existence, there are no options except a standardized way of education and employment. How can one dream when a dream is simply just that—an impossible image of one’s ideal existence.  I have screamed and bled and wept over the sheer simplicity and impossibility of what I want to pursue, and the utter lack of hope of it ever actually coming true makes me want to carve the very heart out of my chest and give up on every talent I have been bestowed.  How can the world tell me to value who I am and what I’ve been blessed with, when all of these very things are so completely fucking useless at the same time? I can’t make a fruitful and prosperous living writing poems, essays, and stories, I can’t afford the cost of living selling paintings in the streets, I can’t expense even the cheapest groceries sewing clothes and trinkets to the young.  There is no middle ground, one must either relinquish to the repugnant existence of consumerism, or live with nothing, traveling, and relying on the good will of strangers.  Am I greedy to want a somewhat middle ground, or am I ignorant, to hope that this will ever be possible?  I do not want the gaudy, comfortable perks of a societal money-based life, and I do not want the utter belonging-less detachment of a penniless traveling life—I want only to be happy with a way of life somewhere in between.  I want the things and people for which I truly value, and I want the little things that give me pleasure.  I want to be able to wear a dress and smile in the sun, and I want to paint in a field with the freedom of my art around me.  I do not, however, want to be burdened by the weight of the laws of sale, of barter, or of free will. I don’t want to think of the corruption of the artistic publishing industry, and I don’t want to fret over agents, and the like. I simply want to create beauty, and pass it on, in exchange for anything that might aid me in making a simpler way of life.  Happiness is the only thing for which we should fight.