Merlin Star's Website

One of the nice things about working on dissociating yourself from the crap of all of these oppressive systems is not only feeling self love, but also being somewhat resistant to the pressure put on you to conform.

I don’t want a romantic relationship. I don’t care for jobs. I just want to hold hands, vibe, and tear down unjust systems. I have just enough privilege from various things (highly educated, US Citizen, ability to work, etc.) that I can actually do this. It feels freeing. Of course, things won’t be perfect and I’ll have plenty of difficulties along the way, but I do have some choice.

I’m thinking about how I want to set up my life and I’m noticing how much of the framing is what I don’t want. I don’t want a house. I don’t want a family. I don’t want this or that.

What do I want?

I have to think back to early childhood for some of those answers. A place to vibe. A place where others take care of each other. A place where there is enough food and water to go around.

Obviously, I don’t live in this world. What can I do to build it closer to what I do want?

I can advocate and fight for bills making it easier for those to get on disability and to fight for a higher living stipend for those disabled. I can push back against companies that deliberately bleach the food they trash. I can get involved with folks collectively agreeing to live in one building and sharing expenses and such.

However, I need to be careful when doing so. I do have significant amounts of disprivilege. Cops will not hesitate to threaten and hurt a Black trans disabled person. So, more of my efforts are going to be more reform / liberal based than I would like. Until the left wing gets its stuff together and actually starts centering those disabled and affected with significant amounts of disprivilege, I will have to manage my own level of risk and play it safe.

As I have been preparing to immigrate and make my belongings significantly less (everything can fit into a car), I’ve been getting less and less attached to material things. I never had much of a strong attachment, but I’ve been looking at the stuff in my vehicle and going “Do I need this? Do I even need this car?” I do plan to get rid of my car by next year. The only reason I had it was because of some jobs that I had requiring it.

I definitely don’t want to fall into toxic minimalism and be minimal for the sake of being minimal. I do want stuff, just not a whole lot. If I was in my ideal place, I would have clothes, books, an ereader, some notebooks, cooking ware, a basic phone, a desktop, a laptop, a dresser, and a bed. That was basically how I was living during my bachelor’s and I didn’t really want more stuff than that other than cooking ware. I’ve been down to 2 suitcases before in terms of stuff. I would prefer to go for 3 suitcases in terms of stuff that I own.

The only thing I actually feel a sense of urgency on is going for a doctorate degree. That’s more because I have no idea how long academia will be stable due to climate change. I don’t think academia globally will be stable to study at after 15 to 20 years because of this. That’s not to mention the places already unstable from climate change and various other reasons, such as politics.

As I’ve been thinking more and more of the life I want, I’ve been feeling more imaginative. My mind feels freer. Overall, I think that this is a direction that I want to take my life. I think I want to avoid locking down my life for the most part and just have it more free flowing, especially after the PhD.