What is wage slavery?
No ‘One Size Fits All’ Solution
Everyone’s ability to escape wage slavery will be different. To determine your options, accept the reality of your given circumstances and set realistic goals. This is what I learned from my experience of leaving a job in which I was a wage slave.
Take Advantage of Privilege
Spit on the notion that everything must be hard earned. Take advantage of privileges afforded you.
A privilege is an advantage that’s out of your control and may be based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ability, religion, wealth, class and others. Many of them facilitate networking with people who share the same privilege(s).
You may use your wealth or qualifications to do a course to gain certification or flash your skin at people similarly melanated to be allowed into their club, for example. In my case, my non-heteronomativity and academic background afforded me a chance to do part-time work I enjoy at a non-profit dealing with gender and sexual minorities.
Patience & Resilience while Investing in your Escape
If working as a wage slave won’t cause you to kill yourself or others, then be patient and resilient, while orchestrating your escape.
Empowering yourself to quit and be in a situation you find preferable, may give you focus to better tolerate the job. While I may have shown resilience in the way I endured unnecessary staff meetings and trainings:
Resilience: “The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” Definition from Oxford Languages
I was not patient and would have perhaps benefited from better planning before I quit. The following may help.
Find the Gratitude
Use whatever capacity you have for living a great life now. This may require differentiating between unconditional self-worth and self-esteem, incorporating self-care into your routine or creating a gratitude list you revisit regularly to help you not take your achievements for granted.
I say this knowing, however, that it can feel impossible to stay in a job you despise or that has been prejudicial to your mental health. In which case, you do what you have to. Quitting isn’t necessarily the first option, though. You may be able to sleep with someone from Human Resources to ameliorate your conditions or transfer to another department…in Alaska. I quit and subsequently said no to a new nine-to-five although it promised financial security knowing that they’d find me walking down the street, naked and lathered in my own excrement had I said yes.
Post-wage Slavery Traumatic Disorder
Head’s up. Escaping wage slavery doesn’t mean you won’t still have to be patient and resilient. Post-wage Slavery Traumatic Disorder (PSTD), which I just made up, is real but probably not sexually transmitted. Since leaving my last traditional nine-to-five, there has been a lot of dissonance between knowing what I want and the feelings associated with having it. Initially, I struggled more with depression because a redefinition of success for myself might more frequently falter, faced with well-established definitions of what it should look like according to Capitalist consumerist society.
Being a part of a minority when attempting to chart your own path is challenged by the majority in the simple “So… What do you do?” you’ll get from someone you’ve just met. When your response doesn’t impress because you don’t say “doctor” or “lawyer” or, Rihanna forbid, you don’t have it all figured out, your response can feel like an admission of failure, even when you understand, rationally, ONE, that Capitalist realism (the pervasive idea that Capitalism is the only way to organize the economic system) doesn’t facilitate the exit of its wage slaves and, TWO, failure is an opportunity for growth.
Debt
If you’re in it, get out. If you’re out of it, don’t get in.
If you have children, give them away. Don’t pretend some of you haven’t figuratively done this already or that you don’t know you’re terrible parents – they’ll be better without you. Alternatively, love them until they’re 18, then remove the door to their bedroom and sprinkle broken glass on its floor…daily.
Save Money
Once you have an idea of the amount of money you’ll need to sustain what you imagine for yourself post-wage slavery, save towards it before leaving your traditional nine-to-five.
Personally, my conviction needed to be strong enough for saving money to work, since wage slavery was so terrible that money had to be spent on escaping reality, that is, on all forms of entertainment, especially swallowing rum. Saving is even tougher when you’re only paid enough to make ends meet (hello most of us!).
Something that helps me now is that I have separate savings and current accounts and at different banks. The following helps me most, however.
Live Simply
Give up on other people’s dream for your life
Decide how much is enough. After figuring out how much money I needed to do the things I wanted – mostly, to travel – I realised that, based on my work stipend (less than 1000 US a month), it’s pretty doable because of how I live.
I’m not a very materialistic person, and spend less probably because:
I had student loan debt and now will not even borrow twenty-five cents to buy a mint. So, no credit cards. Strictly debit cards;
Living for decades as an English teacher, I valued travel over accumulating things (and was also never paid enough to do so);
I discovered thrift shops in Japan and they fit my ethos of contributing to sustainability;
Travelling meant I was never interested in owning a house and now I have the privilege of not paying rent because I stay at the Airbnb residence I manage when it’s unoccupied, and at my parents’ place when it isn’t (it’s constructed in a way that I don’t even have to see them);
I’ve always walked a lot or lived in countries with good public transport and never owned a car, but have access to two, so I get exercise and don’t pay mechanics or continuously for gas;
I’m no longer at an age where I want to dress up to spend the weekend at the club or drinking alcohol (I’d probably still go out every once in a while if COVID hadn’t SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN!);
I’m a vegan who still kills and veganism is only beginning to catch on here in Barbados, so I have few options for wasting money on fast food and mostly cook my own (healthier) food.
My biggest monthly cost is for groceries which is about $200 US, requiring that I shop at a supermarket that isn’t as expensive as another where my bill would be twice as much, or as cheap as another, which would be twice as full of shoppers.
Supplement Income
When deciding to patiently and resiliently build the bridge to your escape, why not use free time to do work you’d enjoy as an entrepreneur, finding alternative sources of income that could possibly, supplement your wage slave income? I wouldn’t recommend it substitute your wage slave job, but that perhaps you invest in establishing multiple sources of income so you’re not relying on one thing you love to support you, as that might make you hate it and you’d also be more vulnerable if your income isn’t diversified.
Ideally, you want to have an income on your terms. The job could have a flexible schedule and be results-oriented rather than ‘number of hours spent in a physical place’ oriented. It could be something that helps you build a portfolio or that introduces you to a network of contacts within a particular field, willing to help you achieve your goals.
Turn to Like-minded People for Support
These are other suggestions for when you’re broke, angry and feeling trapped.
I rediscovered this essay How to Drop Out by Ran Prieur, and was pleased to see how relatable it still is, echoing much the sentiment I express throughout my blog regarding escaping wage slavery. Near the beginning of my journey, I’d come across the author. He didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear so I was open to trusting what he had to say, but his talk of dumpster diving frightened me (and still does).
He suggests just finding any job that’s better than the one you hate, watching out for the strings attached to benefits offered when networking and building your own way of being that is satisfying to you, among other things.
Don’t be hard on yourself
Chances are you were raised by people who were well-indoctrinated by the system.
Again, Capitalist realism doesn’t facilitate the exit of its wage slaves.
Do you expect the transition to be easy? Better to accept the experience as it unfolds while striving for it to be what you want. This requires vigilance to realize when you’re falling out of emotional equilibrium and finding your way back by applying rational, stoic thought. I may never become proficient at this, but it’s an essential element of living – things go the way you want sometimes, sometimes they don’t. Get in line emotions!
It is my experience that having the freedom to organize my time alone has been worth the inevitable struggles.
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