The Trauma of Poverty

Drive is not just ambition; Sometimes it's an autoimmune disorder of the soul.

“If I didn’t work, I don’t know that I would have the drive to do anything.”

— A friend, mid-sip of wine, watching the ships pass from the window of my beachfront home.

At the time, I reflexively countered in disbelief. She would want to do things, right? Strive for something, eventually, after taking a break? She’s a nurse—one of the most demanding jobs imaginable. Of course she’d be drained. Of course she’d want rest, to read books and sip wine and just exist for a while. But eventually, surely, she would want to do something big.

But later, the conversation kept echoing. Something was bothering me. I realized I had been selling a quiet cultural myth: that drive is inherently better and inevitable. That obsessive ambition is a marker of strength, character, and potential. That not wanting it is just a temporary state of being.

I don’t believe that anymore. Not for myself, and not for most of the people I know who are "driven."

A year ago, I would have told you I didn’t have trauma. I grew up poor. Welfare poor. Moving-all-the-time, food-stamps-and-eviction-notices, alcohol-and-abuse poor. And yet I had great memories, a rich life surrounded by instability. But that childhood installed in me a singular obsession: avoid financial insecurity.

And as I grew, I optimized for survival. Evenings and weekends disappeared into research, side hustles, financial planning, and worst-case modeling. I didn’t want to be rich. I wanted to be safe.

But the cost of safety scales. The fear simply changes costumes as your capacity grows.

In my teens, I feared losing housing, so I worked miserable jobs for a paycheck-to-paycheck existence.
In my twenties, I feared food insecurity, so I stocked my pantry like a prepper.
In my thirties, I feared job loss, so I chased financial independence to extend my unemployment runway.
In my forties, I fear losing my health, the economy crashing, extinction-level threats.

The trauma engine never turns off.

Instead of drawing, writing, or playing music—things I love—I manage obsessively meticulous spreadsheets. I simulate forecasts. I prepare for collapse. I model every variable like it's a boss fight. In many ways, I hate money. And yet I’m consumed by it.

I could have retired years ago. My life plan spreadsheets have been yelling at me since 2018. But I don’t retire. I can’t. The fear won’t leave. And the golden handcuffs of exponential returns are addictive.

hit goal in 2018, but what if there’s a recession? (that’s accounted in the target)

Even though my investment fund yields as much as my salary, retiring to write fiction feels... foolish. I like my job now. I like my team. The justifications to stay are endless. And I’m not alone. I know peers who also could have retired but haven’t. Thanks to the printing of dollars and the inflation of housing, American millionaires are the new middle class.

While my wife paints watercolors each morning, I could be working on a creative project, another deck of playing cards, or finishing one of my many short story drafts. Instead, I read labor stats, listen to macroeconomic podcasts, and tune my investment algorithms. The system works—32% extracted APY over three years. The spreadsheet is the game. But isn’t solving the money problem supposed to unlock freedom?

My wife’s work has followed her interests—teacher, photographer, artist. At some point we realized her teaching salary was less than my annual bonus. It didn’t make sense to keep burning herself out for so little financial impact. And eventually, she left that path.

She searched for meaning outside of money for nearly two decades. And the success of that search, I’ve come to realize, is a luxury not of wealth, but of freedom from fear.

Which brings me to a bigger question.

We’re told that if mass automation eliminates jobs, we’ll have a crisis of meaning. That people need work to feel purposeful. That without labor, we’ll spiral into collective uselessness.

But do we really believe that? Or are we projecting the anxieties of the working class onto everyone else?

There are about 103 million working age+ Americans who are not in the workforce.

Some are caregivers. Some are in school. Some are disabled. Some are retired. But many are just... living. Spending time with friends, raising kids, exercising, painting, reading, learning, just being. They are not, by default, in a crisis.

Maybe they aren’t depressed. Maybe they’re free.

I’m not romanticizing poverty. But we have to challenge the idea that labor is inherently virtuous or meaningful. Some work is fulfilling. Some is soul-crushing. Some people are lucky enough to be free of either. And freedom from work is not a void, it’s a canvas.

Watching my wife deconstruct the myth of job-as-purpose over the years, I’ve come to a stark conclusion:

Drive is a pathological adaptation to uncertainty.

For me, it was fueled by poverty but it was empowered by video games.

Games taught me that persistence creates results. That failure is temporary. That achievement is the inevitable end-state of enough repetitions of failing. That trauma can be gamified into progression. You fell off a cliff (recession)? Time your jumps better. You got killed by that boss (laid off)? Learn the moves. The mob is too big (networking)? Level up your skills and gear. Is there a bug in the system (monetary debasement)? Exploit it—that’s part of the game!

And it worked. I’m beating the game, right? But like any over-leveled character, I broke the system. I ignored pain. I overclocked my body. I didn’t blink, didn’t sleep, didn’t stretch. I squeezed every ounce from the meat-sack.

Just in the last two years have I started exercising, sleeping better, eating right. Basic human maintenance I didn’t feel entitled to until I forced it into the routine.

But still the grind goes on. My spreadsheets are now an MMORPG. Net worth is my XP. Financial runway is stamina. The game never ends.

And what’s the point? In a decade, your creative work will be one indistinguishable pixel in an AI-generated library of infinite variations. Nobody will remember your output. Nobody will care about your final score.

Worked Really Hard, Still Dead

Years ago, at a dinner party, someone posed the prompt to each guest at the table:
“There are two kinds of people…”

Everyone had unique answers to this prompt. Mine was this:

There are people who let the river carry them. And people who carve the riverbed.

The first group flows. They accept. They surrender.
The second group fights. They engineer. They must control the current.

I am the latter. Not because I chose it, but because chaos once meant danger. Peace feels unnatural when fear built your software stack.

But maybe the floaters aren’t lazy. Maybe they’re enlightened.

And so here I am again, on a weekend, with a morning free to do whatever I want.

Not writing fiction.
Not drawing, or playing music.
But drafting yet another article.
About economics.

Not because anyone asked.
Not because it brings me peace.
But because I don’t know how to stop.
Because compulsion wears many costumes,
and sometimes, it masquerades as insight.

Meanwhile, someone else is sitting quietly on their porch, sipping coffee, watching birds.

Not optimizing.

Maybe they figured out what I was too busy winning to notice.