The last paycheque I received, for the last “job” I had, was from the Western Cape Education Department, 25 years ago.

Since then, money has never arrived predictably, never arrived consistently or reliably.

Thinking about the consoling regularity of a paycheque makes me laugh. I have been in the financial wilderness for so many years now, robbing Peter to pay Paula, juggling overdrafts and credit and learning to master the art of the delayed invoice and in-the-nick-of-time payment, that the idea of receiving a set amount of boodle every month is the stuff of dreams.

But dreams that can stay unrealised, thanks very much. 

A salary kept me tethered and obedient, neither of which is my natural state. After leaving teaching – my post as a Special Needs Educator was not renewed when Special Needs education was phased out of schools – I had to improvise fast. I had already spent my meagre state pension, against the advice of anyone with half a brain.

At one point, I counted eight ways I was earning money – not much, but enough, collectively, to pay the bond on my first home. Including taking in tenants, an adventure in itself.

I had imagined that having a paycheque was some kind of umbrella, keeping me financially dry. Then I discovered it wasn’t even raining.

Freelancing is difficult, anyone will tell you that. In addition to the struggle to find decent work, there seems to be a level of disdain for freelancers.

I feel that when I say freelance, it connotes that I’m a gun for hire, and the target is always acceptable if the price is right, which it often isn’t, but I’ll shoot anyway. I have bullets to spare.

In my village, I know three women who write up corporate annual reports for a living. All fine writers. Is this what it’s come to?  

As a writer, which was one of my several nascent occupations back then after teaching, I enjoyed developing relationships with a handful of newspaper editors, and was thrilled to be published in their pages.

I wrote about fonts (yes, fonts) and other things, how to talk with your children about Jacob Zuma. Not easy subjects, either. Those little gigs have shrivelled up for a number of reasons, as have some other opportunities I once enjoyed.

I sold my bakkie, so I don’t clear out people’s gardens anymore. I stopped tutoring kids with learning difficulties, as I lost touch with the curriculum. 

Now it seems the world of employment is shifting, with a big injection of AI into the mix.

Perhaps I could become a cobbler? There’s something urgent in the quandaries of my generation now, perhaps hoping to duck under the AI bar before it beheads us.

As a sage person informed me and some colleagues recently, AI will not take my job, but someone using AI will.

So yes, Google Gemini can write this article. Or part of it. But you’d know the difference, I think.

A vague manufactured coolness and emptied-out enthusiasm for things should ring a few bells, perhaps. Do machines do irony, or sadness?

How do they transcend the paycheque when they’re not on it?  

My point is, this “steady employment” arrangement only suits some. And it’s a fallacy anyway, only good for as long as the employer decides.

It’s infamously fragile, whereas freelancing widely builds a kind of reliance, an anti-fragility, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb has described.

Some, myself included, seem to need to test ourselves against the world, and answer to ourselves for our failings, our indolence, our leisure, our exploits and achievements, or their lack.

This is especially true in this country, I think, where there is so little state support, so much unemployment, that we are by necessity entrepreneurial, opportunity seekers, boer maak ‘n planners.

We innovate, we take risks, we fail. And because we have all the time in the world, we go for a walk, a ride, a swim. There’s more to life.

Even if the anxiety around money remains, it quietens, as I have learnt to live within my means. Not always. I’ve never kept a budget, and to do so would just depress me. Ignorance is bliss until the bailiffs arrive.     

I could still be that schoolteacher, I guess. Called “Sir”, inured to change, a fixture in the school, chained to that paycheque, which, in this economic climate, looks increasingly tempting.

But other things have emerged, over time, which have enriched my life, which I could never have imagined. Unexpected things that have brought deep pleasure, and a new way to value my very existence.

A measure of relationships formed, rather than things procured, even if that status anxiety does rattle the bars of my cage at night. Thankfully, I’m not in it, so I can’t hear the rattling anymore.