The Liberation of Collapse

In an attempt to find the silver lining in reality, circa 2025, I’ve decided to just say some of the quiet shit out-loud and name the good that occurred through the lens of the “bad”. I’m re-reading a book about wabi-sabi and just flipped through the chapter on failure. To summarize in my own vernacular, owning your shit when failure hits is how to turn those lemonades into the sweet nectar of a limoncello, spiked with a dash of moonshine. Sweet, sour and bitter -- with a bite that you may or may not regret in the morning.

The ultimate lesson for 2025 for this yogi is that I’ve simply no fucks left to give. Like, none. To be clear, I didn’t have many to spare rolling into 2025. But now, late Q3 2025, they are all spent. Done. Finite. Adulting requires that you do harbor a few fucks for the things that are essential, but the key is defining “what’s essential”.

Everyone’s essential is different. I have no mouths to feed beyond my own and the 15 pound Chewbacca clone sitting by my side, and he’s not picky nor very ravenous most days. I have no major bills beyond my rent, electricity, wifi, cell and a plastic rectangle of regret from Capital One. And some IOUs to the Feds for periodic stints in academia. That’s it. And even though those bills are astronomical and growing by the hour because of "market forces", it's still all fairly simple.

I decided to do a little “adulting” 2.5 years ago. I got a big girl job with a stupidly large salary. When that shitshow ended, I got another one with even more money. I saved, I spent, I leaned into my bougie ass shadow self that never really got to experience adulthood with free flowing funds before. Not gonna lie, I liked it. But I knew it was a temporary state, so I passed on gratitude to the Universe every time I participated in economies I wanted to support; and even the ones I didn’t, but had to because…adulting.

What I found most interesting about this extended state of golden handcuffs, was how I also fell into the states of want that I read about but never understood. Those bracelets I wore came at a very steep price, I worked 70-80 hour weeks under immense pressure and found myself just consuming because I could. Because…I “earned it” and had no time to enjoy my life.

How fucked is that? I was cognizant of that mental state as it happened, but I still didn’t stop the grind of endless work and perpetual waves of cortisol. I just road the whole damn thing like I’d done it my whole life. Like everyone else. Like The Hungry Ghost— I leaned all the way into that shit.

Bougie Crystal went back in the box 11 months ago when the man-children in charge of my place of employment went straight Lord of the Flies and burned it all down. I had a wad of cash in the bank and in crypto and I decided to take a few months off and figure out what’s next.

What was next? The abyss of an orange tinted, small penis wannabe dictator decimating everything that holds society together. Fun for all, right? May the odds be every in your favor.

Spoiler alert, they were not.

I began applying for jobs in January. I got my first interview request in late July. Then another. I aced that shit like the boss bitch that I am. I got used for leverage in both cases. Fuck this and the horse y’all rode in on. There went my employment fucks. Gone. Poof. An employee no more.

Cool, right? At 50, I got to exit a labor market I’d just chosen to participate in 3 years ago and return to what I know best-- self employment. Paycheck to paycheck-- but without knowing when that paycheck will or arrive-- or if it will at all.

I got to compost ALL the emotions. Anger at a labor market squeezing out the most talented GenXers in their ranks. Grief at not being able to participate in the ecosystem I devoted the last decade to and still put food on the table. Despair at knowing this collapse of the labor market, and every other societal system we depend upon, is by design, to benefit a handful of billionaire robber barons, an absolute “let them eat cake” moment at scale.

I know better. I spent most of my 20s, 30s and early 40s refusing to participate fully in capitalism. I did just enough work to cover the bills and then I produced art-- documentary photography, creative writing, lapidary art-- whatever. My time was mine and I lived well within those boundaries. So did 90% of my friends. It was beautiful and simple.

And now I’ve confirmed the lifestyle I’ve always lived, because in the end none of the adulting really truly mattered. Yes, my apartment is lovely and I am so grateful I have this nest to sink into during such dark times. But I also know that it’s temporary. And the past two months have been a testament to my scrappiness and the kind souls who choose to work with me that I’ve been able to eek out enough to keep this roof over my head.

There’s a deep release that occurs when you walk up to the edge of survival, and slip through to the other side. There’s an empathy that occurs when you don the hat of poverty or the pants of illness and chronic pain. Or both. You wear those garments, hopefully for a short stint, and then you truly know what it means to live in fear.

And when you take that shit off, you leave your remaining fucks in the back pocket. And, it's liberating.

If the Universe is kind and your self awareness is well-tuned, you learn to EMBODY resilience. For that’s truly the biggest gift of hardship and survival. Resilience. You earn that shit in the tears you shed while counting the days between the cutoff notice on the electricity and the final notice on your phone bill. You embrace that lesson when you’re doing the math on your grocery cart filled with clearance food items because your entire community can no longer afford luxury items we once took for granted and they’re all on clearance because tomorrow they’ll be rotten. You embody resilience when you realize that each demeaning moment of lack and each sliver of heart wrenching decision between food and gasoline and medicine and wifi is actually a lesson in need.

What do you truly need, and what can you do without until money flows into your lonely bank account again?

And if you're like me, navigating this dumpsterfire without any support from a partner or dual income household, that resilience is extra spicy.

When you face those decisions on a regular basis and survive another month of tetris between your bank account and your stack of bills, you emerge on the other side without the whispers of those fucks. You left them in the pile of fear next to those "quasi-optional" bills you’ll just ignore for another month and eventually chip away at once the economy returns to it’s senses.

Again, there’s a liberation in collapse. Fear. Anxiety. Self-loathing. You place those little picidillos right next to those whispering fucks you don’t care about anymore and let them figure it out. They’ll still hop into your head every so often, but they’ll pass a bit more quickly with a simple acknowledgement and a shrug.

Or maybe you will just awaken to the fact that none of it really matters anymore and perhaps something beautiful and necessary will rise from the collapse. Maybe the market won’t find sanity again and maybe this is the new reality for all of us. In those moments I catch a glimpse of what life is like without capitalism. In my forced simplicity this summer, I’ve returned to a deeper self that I placed on a shelf for the illusion of adulting. I’ve returned to the person who has her time back.

I’ve found the crack in this insane reality that I stuck a wedge in and tapped into a beautiful well of abundance. And not the abundance of those golden handcuffs I enjoyed, but the abundance of restoration and a simple life.

The abundance of spending the morning at the coffeeshop with my dog reading a book that enhances my ability to navigate chaos and soothes my soul.

The abundance of having an entire afternoon to dedicate to a client’s last minute need so I can be of deep service because I had the time to spare.

The abundance of flexibility, staying up late to build something to put a little more beauty into the world and sleeping in the next day.

The abundance of not wasting the best of your energy each morning on a meeting stack that’s designed to demonstrate "productivity and leadership" for a souless corporate overlord.

The simplicity of cooking food from scratch, mostly of necessity, but bountiful and rewarding regardless of the why.

The abundance of a 3 hour coffee with a dear friend exploring the collapse we’re all navigating together and how to keep our sanity.

The abundance of having the mental headspace to not take any of these economic shortcomings as a personal failure and not internalizing any of it.

The abundance of living without the perpetual stress of corporate life, the endless meetings, the slack messages that bounce at all hours, the toxicity of cutthroat colleagues and narcissistic bosses.

The resiliency coupled with such abundance IS the work right now. We must compost the real emotions that accompany living through accelerated collapse. If we don’t, if we dwell in the emotions or internalize the systems we can not control, they will destroy the best of our life-force.

We can not succumb to the robber baron's system designed to make us all slaves to their false God of endless profit. We must protect our humanity and our neighbor's as well. We must redefine how we travel through this world and how we exchange value for the gifts we freely share.

And if you’re blessed enough to NOT be going through the chaos of collapse right now, either personal or societal, be forever grateful. And turn to your neighbor or friend who IS in the trenches and offer them a hand. Not a handout, but a hand. Join them for coffee one afternoon and listen, let them vent, tell them you’re here, bring them a jar of home-cooked lentils and show them they won’t go hungry. Co-regulate your nervous systems together. You both need it. Trust me, that means more than you’ll ever know. It’s a simple bridge to our collective humanity and we all need it now.

And in the blink of an eye, you may need that hand to help you cross your own bridge over the chasm of collapse. At some point, we all will need to co-regulate and cross the chasm together.

So, my dear readers, we are all barreling through this collapse together and it will look different for us all. And that’s as it should be. Because the beautiful element of losing our remaining fucks is the liberation of just being with what’s left. The beauty of freedom. And peace.

We are all in this together. In community. Some of us are sharing our reality with the world in a very public manner so some stranger walking through their own resiliency adventure can find a sliver of solace. Others are gathering in ceremony to hold space for all of us to witness our truth and share it. And some are simply bewildered by it all and hoping the worst never comes and tomorrow delivers stability. And we need all of that.

No matter what your current state might be, know that on the other side of your journey is a liberation that only surfaces through resilience.

A liberation earned by leaving those fucks on the side of the river and just diving in.

During my time at Naropa, my religion classes usually had two oral exams a semester, following a traditional warrior structure from Eastern traditions. For the final of my Alternative Religion class, our professor took pity on us and allowed us to memorize a passage that resonated and recite it in the ceremonial warrior exam circle with our classmates. I have almost zero capacity for memorization, so I chose the lyrics to one of my favorite songs so I could use my commute time on the way to class and sing the lyrics and seer them into my being. To embody them. To release my stress through singing, which I’ve done since middle school.

I chose Rising Appalachia’s song Resilient. It’s still one of my favorite prose, a mantra for times of accelerated collapse.

Bookmark this one.

Signals & Seeds is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.