The Necessary Unpleasantness

By Brand Smit

WHAT IS THIS COLLECTION OF NOTES ABOUT?

Part narrative of a roughly 20-year period when I grappled with what I regarded as the "necessary unpleasantness" of trying to make money, and partly a report with insights I picked up along the way.

* * *

On Sunday, 7 December 2014, I wrote:

A strange thought recently occurred to me: to position myself as someone who gives advice on the subject of making money from home. I even thought of building up, like hundreds of other so-called internet marketers, a mailing list of people to contact every time I write a new piece on the subject, or when a new product comes on the market that might be useful to my readers.

Why shouldn’t I do it? Because it is a tainted subject? Because some sellers of information on how to make money from home are common criminals?

Okay, it’s not really a complex matter. If someone had asked me ten years ago if I would like to one day be in a position to give practical advice to people on how to make a little extra money, I would have delivered a monologue in the living room without a moment’s delay on how much better the world would be as a result.

I don’t even have to make money with it – 99% of the time it can just be my contribution to helping other people. I mean, don’t I already have many years of personal experience? Have I not gained a truckload of knowledge, enough to do something like this? Why should I stand on the sideline if I can provide advice to people on this topic – or warn then what not to do, or serve as an example of how to not go about doing things?

WHO IS THE WRITER?

Born on 29 June 1971 in Pretoria, in the Republic of South Africa.

Went to South Korea in June 1996 to work as an English teacher.

Worked in Johannesburg for six months in 1998.

Departed for Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, in January 1999.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brand Smit
• Release date: Aug 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463434741

Brand Smit

Brand Smit is a freelance writer, part-time teacher and since 2006, master of a wide variety of websites. Born in Pretoria in 1971, Brand traversed South Africa with his family for the next 15 years. He graduated from high school in 1989, as fate would have it, back in Pretoria. He then continued his training for life as a productive adult at the University of Pretoria, before heading south a year later. After five years of learning and thinking he followed the only path that seemed reasonable after thinking about it. Two years in South Korea had him yearning for the country of his birth. He returned, worked in Johannesburg for six months, then left again – this time for the shores of the beautiful island of Taiwan. He has called the southern port city of Kaohsiung home ever since.

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INTRODUCTION

This collection is part of a series covering specific themes. The material includes notes and essays. Some of the pieces were written for an audience years before I published them, and other pieces were originally only written as reminders to myself.

Available titles, in both digital and printed formats, include: In the grip of heretics – or, The Christian; Not a table, a dog or a pencil; The real, or non-real purpose of our existence; As long as you remain standing; The necessary unpleasantness; The adult life; On writing and the writer; Exile; Thirteen minutes on a Saturday night; Time doesn’t really fly.

More information is available from ASSORTEDNOTES.COM.

Who is the writer?

Born on 29 June 1971 in Pretoria, in the Republic of South Africa.

Went to South Korea in June 1996 to work as an English teacher.

Worked in Johannesburg for six months in 1998.

Departed for Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, in January 1999.

What is this collection of notes about?

Part narrative of a roughly 20-year period when I grappled with what I regarded as the necessary unpleasantness of trying to make money, and partly a report with insights I picked up along the way.

* * *

On Sunday, 7 December 2014, I wrote:

A strange thought recently occurred to me: to position myself as someone who gives advice on the subject of making money from home. I even thought of building up, like hundreds of other so-called internet marketers, a mailing list of people to contact every time I write a new piece on the subject, or when a new product comes on the market that might be useful to my readers.

Why shouldn’t I do it? Because it is a tainted subject? Because some sellers of information on how to make money from home are common criminals?

Okay, it’s not really a complex matter. If someone had asked me ten years ago if I would like to one day be in a position to give practical advice to people on how to make a little extra money, I would have delivered a monologue in the living room without a moment’s delay on how much better the world would be as a result.

I don’t even have to make money with it – 99% of the time it can just be my contribution to helping other people. I mean, don’t I already have many years of personal experience? Have I not gained a truckload of knowledge, enough to do something like this? Why should I stand on the sideline if I can provide advice to people on this topic – or warn then what not to do, or serve as an example of how to not go about doing things?

* * *

The first piece dates from May 1996 when I was waiting in my older sister’s apartment in Arcadia, Pretoria, to go to South Korea. I was desperate for the opportunity in Korea to work out: I needed to earn money, and I needed my life to go in a certain direction.

The second piece was written in March 1998, after almost two years in Korea. Shortly after I had noted another opinion in April, I returned to South Africa.

The following pieces of text date from the eight months that I mostly spent in Johannesburg in 1998, before I came to Taiwan.

The rest of the material was written in Taiwan between 1999 and 2017.

Basically a tramp

Monday, 27 May 1996

I have now been living the life of a drifter for thirteen and a half months: little money, no income, creditors who try to pick up my scent, no home of my own, belongings in different places around the country, and no satisfactory answer to the difficult questions at social events.

What, an interested person may ask, have you learned from the life you’ve lived these last thirteen and a half months?

The answer is simple – money. Without money, you have nothing, and you are no one. Without money, you cannot conform your life to the style and standards of the community; consequently, you are not taken seriously. Without money, you are depended on and left to the grace and mercy of others; therefore, you have to adapt your lifestyle and your personality (or curtail your lifestyle and personality) in order not to upset your protector and provider.

The world is not made for people with no money. Magazine articles are not written for people with no money. Without money, your dreams remain … just that. Without money, you can’t really improve yourself. You can’t register for a course in interior design or gourmet cooking because you can’t pay for it, you don’t have an address, and you don’t have any facilities.

Without money, you are basically … a tramp.

One single factor

Tuesday, 24 March 1998

Everything I’ve always said about freedom, financial debt, my own ideals, my aspirations, my dreams, achieving my potential, living as I’d like to live, crystallise around a single, essential prerequisite. I have seen enough, experienced enough, and read and heard enough to understand how important power is: The power to make choices and act on those choices. Kto kgo? asked Lenin. Who (masters) whom?

If you don’t want to play the role of the servant, the debtor, the person in self-imposed economic exile, for the rest of your life, stop running and start working, purposefully, effectively, with a single goal in mind: to acquire what will make you free – from creditors, bailiffs, poverty, and an insignificant existence, and free of economic masters who want to rule your life.

If I want to survive, in the first place, and then be able to get more out of life than mere survival, and to have the ability to exercise my choices, I’d have to work on obtaining the one resource that will make these things possible for me: financial prosperity. That’s all that remains.

Easier said than done? Not if it has taken your entire life so far, years of poverty, shame, embarrassment, and frustration to get to the point where you realise that this is the primary means to so much you hope to achieve.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sunday, 19 April 1998

What I have learned is that money is more important than many other things in life. The more you have, the better. In the world I inhabit it is every person for himself. There is little mercy for the poor guy, and many rewards for the rich man or woman.

I’m not interested in the illusion of security promised by companies and corporations. People build their homes on foundations that are provided by, or are on loan from other people or businesses, only to find out one day to their shock and grief, and that of their families, that the foundations could crumble overnight. Why should I commit myself to such a world if I already have this knowledge, and have already experienced the shock, grief and humiliation?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Wednesday, 27 May 1998

It’s my fourth week back in South Africa. […] What I found out so far confirms what I suspected. In fact, if you are serious about making money – what I figure most people are not, there are more than enough books available about everything you need to know.

In short, if you believe money gives you power, and you’re desperate enough to get this power, the road you have to take is not some secret, known only to a blissful minority, over-grown footpath. It’s a well-traced route, but one I believe most people – who have the potential to take it – don’t opt for, for one reason or another.

One problem is getting a project going and developing it to such a point where it makes money you need at least a few months. […]

Fact is, you can’t go into a kitchen and think you’re going to cook up a masterpiece just because you’re hungry. Even the best chefs need certain things: the right ingredients (money), a good recipe (methods, concrete plans or specific projects), and time – if the chef doesn’t have enough time, the final result will either be raw, or it will simply fall apart.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Disillusionment and new plans

Sunday, 8 November 1998

What a year …

Four and a bit months in Johannesburg. What have I done so far? I have taken chances. I have done things, and am still doing things that I said I would never do. I moved to Johannesburg to do an office job. I took my boss/friend up on his offer to stay in the servant’s quarters on his property. I do sales … And what do I have? Nothing.

I keep myself busy productively – that’s all I can say. I read. I write. I can’t afford to go to a restaurant. Even if movies were free, I wouldn’t be able to get there. Even if there were a hundred women who posed possibilities for a man, it would only be of academic value because if they don’t live within easy walking distance of my house, I can’t meet up with them. And even if I had a car, I don’t have any money. I live in a backyard room like a student. I don’t even have a proper radio!

Does it sound like I just complain, while so many people are worse off than me? Fuck that. I have my own agenda. If I were happy with what I have simply because so many people are worse off than me, it would be an insult to those people because even they want a better life, not to mention that they would think I was an idiot if I didn’t want something better for myself!

I need money. I need a car. I need a computer. I need a decent place to live. All of these things are beyond my immediate reach in South Africa at this stage. Maybe in five years’ time … That’s it, I’m going to Taiwan. And I’m not coming back to South Africa until I can properly take care of myself.

-------

[Explanation: The South African guy who had met me at the airport in Seoul with the Korean man more than two years previously was in Taiwan by this time. We had exchanged a few e-mails. He had told me about his life in Taiwan, and I had told him about my situation in Johannesburg. By late October, he had offered to lend me money for a plane ticket to Kaohsiung – an offer I initially refused.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Wednesday, 2 December 1998

One [option for someone with my background – middle class, tertiary education] is Foreign English Teaching: one-year contracts; good cash flow; you don’t need to live on debt and credit; relatively good living conditions; you don’t need a car; you don’t need to have a good credit record to get to a telephone; you live in a foreign country with a different culture than your own; life experience of a different kind; and finally, financial empowerment.

A perfect life? No. In more ways than you can count on one hand, it’s a rotten life. But it is a life in which you can empower yourself – in more than one area.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Workers from ancient times

In the Middle Ages and antiquity, how did the powers of the day retain the labourers who worked their land?

Slavery was one way. Feudalism entailed a relationship between the landowner and the ones who worked the soil where the latter were forced to work in exchange for the landowner’s protection. There was also indentured servitude. With all these systems the labourers were tied to the land where their labour was required by laws that favoured the landowner, and by measures such as tax, which kept the tillers of the land poor and dependent on their masters.

How are people today bound to the land where their labour or service is required? By amongst other things cheap credit and long-term pay-back options: monthly income minus payments on products that are already in use – like a new living room set, or a car, that leaves the average citizen with insufficient money to get away.

Of course, many do get away, and many never fall in. There are drop-outs, criminals, and people who wander around in other countries for years earning money in any way they can. As long as a certain percentage of the population can be bound to the land, though, the rest can be written off – or used at a later stage, like the drop-out who becomes a musician or a writer and who then provides entertainment or comfort for those in bondage.

It is important to note that this situation is fluid. People make their own choices at the end of the day. So I’m not implying large-scale manipulation, or sinister behind-closed-doors planning … no wait, manipulation does occur. As many people as possible have to be reached, and turned …

~ From the Purple Notebook

Exile nine

Tuesday, 20 November 2001

Six years have passed since I learned that it matters more that you have money than how you make money. This brilliant insight struck me about a week after a chain letter landed in my mailbox, which, in theory, could have delivered X amount of money each month into my bank account if I had followed the instructions. It dawned on me like a blessing that I didn’t have to be in a salaried situation to pay my monthly rent, and to buy a new pair of jeans from time to time.

This idea corresponded well with my lack of enthusiasm to fit into the conventional course of business where you go to university, after graduation send out your resume hoping that you can soon start your life as an adult, and then after a year or three marry the person with whom you’re sleeping at that point. I wanted to continue with the type of life of which my so-called student days were but a foretaste – a life filled with acquiring knowledge, sleeping late, going to the library, spending afternoons in second-hand bookstores, and most importantly, the freedom to grow my beard no matter how bad it looked.

I was 24 when I decided to come to Asia. I knew it would give me the right to inform anyone who wanted to know that I am an English teacher in Korea. I also knew it meant that I could delay a little longer the possibly inevitable point when I would have to trade my freedom for a more conventional life, and a clean-shaven face.

So I continued my search for an answer to the Big Question: What is it that this guy wants to do with his life?

Over the course of the next two years I came up with a few ideas. I wanted to live in England or Germany for a few months, or a year. I wanted to return, like a McArthur of the Philippines with trumpets blaring, to the lovely university town of Stellenbosch. And I wanted to write.

Shortly before the end of my time in Korea (May 1998), I added a few ideas to the list. Two of these was that I wanted to commit myself to something or someone, and I wanted to belong somewhere. Other ideas that were eventually added included that you need one thing to