Editor’s Note: We have a guest columnist this week who was inspired to write a piece after the Valentine’s Day article! It’s a bit longer than usual but it describes his transition from wagecuck to proud NEET.

I had already spent about 2/3rds of my life drifting from menial job to menial job, never really committing to any one career path or trade or line of work. I’d essentially had every kind of dead-end, blue collar gig you could imagine. I’d shoveled dirt, I’d wheeled the infirmed and dying around a massive hospital, I’d even done biohazard cleanup (essentially mopping up the liquefied remains of the poor lonely souls who die of cirrhosis on their toilets and aren’t discovered for weeks). Nothing ever really seemed like something I could tolerate long-term, but somewhere along the line I internalized this idea that if I wasn’t suffering to earn enough money to survive, that I was essentially receiving ill-gotten gains. It’s hard to say exactly where I was first imbued with this martyr complex; likely it was any number of different “authorities” that consistently spout whatever dogma happens to uphold the status quo at any given time. We used to think that severing one’s veins with razor blades was the only treatment for “bad blood” (i.e. an infection) so that tells you how worthwhile collective dogma generally turns out to be.



I digress… Up to this point, my love-life had essentially mirrored my work-life: drifting from one girl to the next, never really feeling particularly satisfied. Somehow, I managed to charm a woman who was making substantially more money than I was. She was pursuing a PhD in STEM and had enough capital to support us both. She even expressed to me that she was perfectly fine with me taking some time to “find myself”. Such a notion seemed ridiculous to me at the time. How could she possibly respect me if I wasn’t killing myself to earn a living? I immediately rejected the idea and began looking for more lucrative work. A friend of mine happened to have an in with a burgeoning mold and water damage restoration company, so naturally I hopped on board.

What a fucking nightmare. I immediately found myself working 12 hour days, belly-crawling underneath houses, hoping I wasn’t bitten by venomous snakes, dragging 50-100 pounds of equipment behind me. The worst part was the requirement that I present a wholesome image of myself to the customer because we worked exclusively on private residences. This caused my personality to begin to bifurcate. On my days off I would consume as many drugs as possible to relieve my existential agony, and as a result, my days on became more and more of an uphill battle. I felt myself depleting rapidly.



About a year prior to this, I had befriended Austin (the founder, editor, and primary contributor to this illustrious publication, nay, movement!). He’d explained the concept of NEETdom to me in detail, but I just wasn’t able to fully comprehend the idea. At the time, it seemed to me like some coping mechanism for losers who’d essentially checked out. All I could think of was the Chappelle show skit with the Oscar the Grouch parody. I mean, that’s fine for someone that just can’t hack it in the “real world”, but I was a MAN. I was virtuous. I was SUFFERING! That HAD to count for something.

So, Austin and a couple of mutual friends had started up this chat group where we discussed any number of things, but a main topic of conversation that kept coming up was NEETdom. I found myself railing against the idea. I would try and explain that what I was doing “built character”. I was becoming strong! I was sacrificing for the greater good! I was benefiting society! In truth, I was triggered. I kept trying to argue that somehow what I was doing was virtuous, and they kept destroying my arguments with pretty sound reasoning. I honestly can’t begin to remember even a fraction of our exchanges (as I said, I was constantly on any number of drugs at the time just to cope with the utter misery that was my day to day existence) but I definitely recall the moment everything changed.

For the umpteenth time, I was trying to espouse the virtues of hard work to the guys in this group when they introduced me to the concept of the “Master of Capital”. My mind immediately began flitting between images of my boss, the owner of the company, sitting behind his Tommy Bahama, maple veneer desk, sipping on Glenlivet scotch, watching the money roll in, while me and my coworkers clambered around in crawlspaces underneath moldy houses literally slaving for 12 hours a day at slightly above minimum wage. Something just clicked. What good was the money I was making if I had no time to enjoy it? What good was this fleeting sensation of self-worth if it dissipated within an hour after having completed a job? If I was being honest with myself, I had no ambitions of pursuing this as a career path. So, why was I putting myself through this? I no longer had an answer.

Some part of me was definitely afraid that my girlfriend would find my decision to shirk my responsibilities as an able-bodied, American male reprehensible and kick me out. She’d expressed to me that she was okay with me taking some time off to “figure things out”, but straight up NEETdom? That seemed like another animal, altogether. Still, I was willing to risk it all at this point. Cumulatively, I had spent YEARS of my life doing things I hated just to survive. Why not see what happened if I just spent some time doing what I wanted to do?



I immediately quit my job. I know it’s cliché, but seriously, a huge weight instantly lifted off my shoulders. I could breathe again. My girlfriend wasn’t entirely elated by my decision, which shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve had any experience with women. In spite of what she had said prior to me finding employment, she seemed apprehensive about the whole idea. “A NEET? What even is that?” I calmly explained that I just needed some time. What I discovered shortly thereafter was pretty earthshattering.

So, we have a lot of ideas about what qualities make us viable mates, right? Most of those ideas were espoused to us by conventional (i.e. boring) people with conventional (i.e. boring) ideas about reality. The truth is, being your own person, discovering what is true to you, focusing on the things that you really value, the things that you’re ACTUALLY good at: these are qualities that make you a viable mate. As soon as I quit wage-slaving for twelve hours a day, I re-discovered the colorful, vibrant world in which I had been essentially sleep-walking. I began exercising OUTSIDE every day, breathing in the fragrant flora all around me, soaking up the sun, getting high on the abundant fresh air. I picked up my guitar again and felt the music I was making resonate throughout my being, something I hadn’t felt since I was 18 and carefree. I was actually happy. I had assumed that I would most likely lose my girlfriend and end up on my own, maybe in some kind of commune or something. Not so. She had never been more demonstratively attracted to me. Another preconceived notion was destroyed. It turns out, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A SLAVE TO ATTRACT A MATE!



It’s been two years since I became a NEET, and, obviously, it hasn’t all been a cake walk. I’ve had ups and downs in my relationship, I’ve slipped back into unbridled hedonism. I’ve been lazy, stagnant, unproductive; I’ve even had to return to the work force on occasion. Here’s the difference: It’s ALWAYS on MY terms. My time is invaluable and it belongs to me, it’s the only thing that’s really worth anything in this life; it’s MY TIME. I may never become a Master of Capital, but I’d rather spend my precious moments chasing my own dreams knowing there’s a small chance I could propel myself right to the top than crawl through the dirt in hopes someone will throw me a rope.