I don’t like expectations, so I try to live without them. Not in a way that skirts accountability, but one that tries to build meaning outside of, say, nuclear family-style support structures. Mentally I am here: a ball of matter chortling and tumbling through space, collecting and brushing off the dust of experiences as the universe sees fit. Bob Dylan also sang about this, albeit in reference to a more terrestrial stone; it is a lifestyle that is at once a choice and a product of my liberal, white middle-class upbringing (and this underrated Disney Channel movie). 

Last month, I left behind my freelance writing life to go 9-to-5 at a large media corporation. I got a new apartment and signed my first lease. These are changes that make me feel more secure, but slightly unsettled: My tumbling ball of matter is about to be tethered.

I’ve always looked to artists for the successful blueprint of living outside of traditional societal expectations, while forgetting that such success often demands cooperation — or at least interplay — within capitalism’s A-to-B fulfillment logic. I recently spoke with the author of an astrology book who said that of all the things she gained from writing it, an appreciation for a more forgiving, non-linear life was the most powerful. Before the Western zodiac was a party trick, it was actually a handy communal guide for tilling the earth. Loving it. Getting dirty in it. A more cyclical, spider-webbed approach to success that venerated both failure, and a non-hierarchical symbiosis. God, I love hippies. 

I remind myself of the above when I look up Joan Baez’s net worth ($11 million); I remind myself of it when I read the words of Angela Davis, who said,“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” I’m grateful for the support net my new commitments will give me at a time when our country is starving and sick. My hope is to redistribute them in organizations that value more cosmic-communist principles, such as mutual aid groups, so that it tethers me to more solid ground — something we are lucky to find before new tilling begins. MFK

Growing up in middle-class England, this was how I believed life worked: birth, nursery school, primary school, secondary school, sixth form, university, job, husband, babies (which apparently involves something called “sex,” whatever that means), wait for offspring to achieve all of the aforementioned, death. At some stage between primary school and secondary school, I have a distinct memory of my dad telling me, “You don’t have to go to university, you know.” It was a real light-bulb moment. I realized I had a choice. 
 
Even with this almighty knowledge, I still feel the weight of expectation, especially as a woman. When I got married (box = ticked), I was asked constantly what my new name was. For the record, it’s the same as it’s always been. Then came the questions about starting a family — questions that my husband is seldom asked. My deliberate attempts to subvert these endless expectations have shaped my whole being: my clothes, my speech patterns and my cultural tastes. My relationship with (read: rejection of) “feminine” things could be a whole chapter in a therapist’s handbook. Even when I worked at the very fashion magazine where Amanda, Mary Frances and I met, I was proud of how little I went shopping. Other times I have yielded to my stereotype, convinced that at least it’s on my own terms. Besides, I do love a good bargain. 
 
Generic expectations exist because they describe the median trajectory of human life, but that doesn’t mean the path is set in stone. I acknowledge that for me diverging meant not going to university and not wanting children; for others — people of color, queer people, oppressed women around the world — breaking free of their circumstances can entail real risk. But I maintain that is always possible; history is full of revolution. Or maybe my gentle path in life has made me wildly optimistic. AB