A while back, somebody asked me if I ‘wouldn’t rather have a nice new truck’.

I answered. In real time and then again here, a bit sharply both times, defensively, as it were, on behalf of my ancient pickup.

But I have a fresh answer.

It is: yeahhh … sorta.

It would be great to go back to the days of a vehicle so nice and new that all I ever have to do to it is stick assiduously to the maintenance schedule and otherwise just jump in and go, without thinking (at least for the first 100K miles. And I think it would almost certainly be a Tundra.)

But.

I am absolutely unwilling to go back to doing what I was doing, in order to be able to afford such unthinking luxury, which consisted mainly of enslaving myself to some pile of bosses, and their schedule for my days.

So … my critics near and dear are right in a sense. I don’t deserve a nice new truck–I am completely unwilling to make the sort of devil’s bargains that would make me that kind of deserving.

Here’s what I’d do if I was.

Very first thing, wipe all traces of consumer debt, about 20K worth. Second thing, wipe out what’s left on my mortgage, another 50. Third thing: stoop so low as to kill the last ten thousand of student loan debt that Joe promised to pay off and never will. Not because I think I owe it–I don’t–I worked it off just the way they also promised I could. But just to never have to think about it again.

Then I’d be even, and I could start thinking instead about ‘what to buy’, and a new truck would not be near the top of that list.

A habitation for the land in Silver. Maybe 70 thousands worth of doublewide at minimum.

A brand-new cargo trailer, ten or twelve maybe (I already have all the stuff to make it habitable as well, and possess an old trailer besides, which even still would need a lot of work).

A brand-new engine for my lovely old Lariat, and a transmission to match. A few enhancements to the suspension; a transfer case … I don’t know how much that would all come to in today’s dollars. But that would bring me most of the advantages I would care about in a new truck, while maintaining the old-school cool, complete with a copper plate.

Would 200 thousand, or a quarter of a million dollars I didn’t earn thus make my life perfect?

It would, technically.

Would it make me free?

That is exactly the kind of great question I insist on having the time to ponder.

Instead of giving that very time away to a Massa, no matter how nice or kind or undemanding a Massa it might be, and no matter how many dollars self-enslavement brought in.

***

This is the theory part:

My Work is what I rather pretentiously proclaim to be my art.

But my job, I reckon, is to get as close to the kind of perfection described above as I can, on a budget of maybe half that much money at best. Even that would likely mean selling off this house, which is not quite a devil’s bargain, but maybe a kind of gambling at a casino owned by a lesser demon.

***

Today, I stand in the place where I live.

Tomorrow, I turn eighteen again.

I’m looking forward to a life well lived.