Imagine.

Florist. Gift shop clerk. Bookstore operator. Those are the jobs I dream about. What would you do if the bills were all covered?

It’s a shame that, as a society, we’ve devolved to a place where we have to forgo these types of jobs for other, less rewarding ones because the ones we’d like to have don’t provide a living wage. What would you do if you weren’t tied down by a 401k, paid vacation, and health benefits? Because more and more these benefits are being cut. And job security? What’s that?

These days many of these jobs have been swallowed up by the corporate giants. And trading in your corporate career for a part time gig in a big box store admittedly sounds pretty miserable. But what if we opened our own flower shops, gift boutiques, and bookstores? What if we created the community meeting spaces we so desperately need, where we could fulfill our career ambitions, serve our fellow neighbors, build a thriving community, and make a living wage all at the same time?

The world we’re living in was not built for us. We can sit around lamenting the state of things, give up and retreat to our couches where we scroll endlessly through social media, avoiding the real world, or we can take control of our environments, building what we need and avoiding the broken systems offered to us by big business.

We deserve better, but no one is going to do it for us. We deserve dignity, respect, community, and connection. We deserve free time to explore our personal interests and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the world around us. We can have all of this and more if we abandon the systems that aren’t serving us and build new ones that provide the holistic support we all need and deserve.

Imagine a world where you know you neighbors. Where your provide services or supplies that they need and they do the same for you. Where you could do something that you actually enjoy day in and day out, where, just by doing your job, you naturally are contributing to a community and society that lifts us all up and provides a network of security and connection that puts us all in a position to comfortably afford the necessities in life plus a healthy investment in our hobbies and interests. It’s not really that far fetched. We’ve done it before and we can do it again. It just requires us to break free from the stranglehold big business and big tech have on our lives. We can have better if we’re just willing to build it for our selves and each other. Imagine.