Reframing income as non-linear

I thought about calling this post F@#$ Capitalism. Just so you know where this is headed.

Then I thought better of it because we live in a capitalistic society. We need money to survive and often to thrive. We have to own things. Buy things. Earn money. Spend money. Do I dream of a world that isn’t run by greedy, power hungry capitalists? Yes. But we ain’t there yet.

So if we can't escape capitalism, can we rewrite some of its rules? At least as they apply to our own lives? Sure. Come with me.

Let’s start with income. We are taught that our earnings are supposed to slowly increase over time. Perfect trajectory from bottom left to upper right. But, in reality there are dips and troughs. Peaks and plateaus. 

There are times you dip because you have a baby, or you focus on creative pursuits that don’t pay. When you lose or leave a job and are figuring out what’s next. When you take a lower-paid gig because it sounds interesting or because it pays the bills. What happens to the trajectory when your little podcast hobby starts getting advertising revenue? When you take time off to write a book — and then get an advance for it? 

And let’s touch on the plateaus. Just because you are earning what you earned three years ago doesn't mean you're failing, but you think it does because we've been brainwashed to measure ourselves against a capitalist measuring stick. Maybe it’s flat because the economy sucks. Maybe you chose not to move up because that job doesn’t fit your life right now. Or ever. Maybe you stepped back to focus on your family, or yourself, or your creative work. Or all three. 

What if instead of “well, my income doesn’t look like a perfect positive slope, so I must be failing,” we asked, “what’s actually realistic right now?” 

Take my client, A. She has her own business that’s been on pause because she has a toddler. That human baby starts preschool in the fall which means she can start focusing on her business baby again. But school starts in September, and between the half-day transition schedule and the work of remembering who she is when she's not in constant mom mode, that month's basically a wash. 

December, as we know, is always a wash. So realistically, A has two months this year to focus on her business, and that includes planning, strategizing, executing, ramp-up, and all the other work that goes into making money that actually makes no money. 

That means this is a year of stability. Her goal could be “I want to make even $1 more than last year.” Or “I want to get one client / launch one offering / fill one workshop.” This is not the year to say “I want to double my income.” Or “I need to fill my client roster.” This is not that year. That goal belongs to a different year. 

Now let’s look at capitalism a little more critically. How the f@#$ do we have an almost trillionaire? Elon Musk is nearly there. And at the same time, people are starving — more people, in fact, because of his inhumane actions dismantling USAID. 

We can’t hold both of those things in our heads at once, and yet, here we are. How is this possible? How is this the world that we think is okay? How do we call this system functional?

According to Oxfam, with $1 trillion, Musk could pay off the debt of 31 of the world’s poorest countries and still walk away with more than three-quarters of his fortune. Or he could gift $1 billion to 1,000 people, increasing the global number of billionaires by over 30%.

I’m not interested in playing a game that upholds Elon Musk as the ultimate role model. And I think a lot of us aren't, even if we haven't said it out loud yet. 

My client A put it simply: “We can at least be in integrity with our values. I don't want anybody being burnt out or suffering in the world because I’ve contributed to this imbalance.”

So what does that actually look like?

Take someone like Shameca Tankerson — a coach I’ve worked with. She works with female entrepreneurs, helping women believe in themselves enough to build something real. And it's not just confidence she's instilling — it's skills. The kind that stay with you, that you carry into your own work, that you pass on. The women she works with go on to build their own things and teach others.

That's not nothing. That's a different kind of capitalism than the one we've been handed.

Because here's what I know from my own life: I'm not clocking into a job that has nothing to do with who I am. I'm not in a role that costs me more than it pays or grinding through work I hate. I may not always be earning what I'd like, but I'm doing this. And people like Shameca helped build the toolbox that made this possible.

She's operating inside a capitalist model, yes. But she's shaking it up from the inside. She's not the rich white man at the top accumulating wealth for it’s own sake. She's something the traditional model never really made room for.

I don't think the only options are full anti-capitalist rejection on one end, or surrendering to business-as-usual on the other. There's something in between. There have to be people who work within the system while fundamentally disrupting what it looks like and who it actually serves.

That's what I'm trying to do too — as someone who helps people make sense of the chaos, get clear on what they want, and build enough confidence to exist outside the mold. We get to write these stories. Nobody writes them for us. I’m doing my part. 

Am I successful by Elon Musk's definition? Almost certainly not. Do I care? No. But I notice that if I hold myself to that standard even for a moment, there's shame. And if there's one thing that stops us cold, it's shame.

So instead, let’s calibrate ourselves against our own standards. Against the people we actually want to measure ourselves by. 

So, yeah f@#$ capitalism.