Feeling fairly anxious because of a phone call I got today.

It was from my bank. Vancity. A nice lady told me that Medicins Sans Frontiers, aka Doctors Without Borders, was taking $20/month from my bank account. I then get charged $5 for an overdraft fee, then if I didn’t cover the overdraft within a few days, I get dinged for another $25 overdraft fee.

Because banks love charging poor people for being poor.

This is troubling news because :

1. I thought I had canceled my donation to MSF
2. I thought I had only ever authorized a payment to MSF via my credit card, not my regular everyday bank account
3. I thought my payment was $10/month, not $20/month
4. I thought I tended to have an overdraft to cover when I cash my monthly check because student loan payments were being taken out, not MSF payments
5. The amount of overdraft I pay each month varies, and the explanation I got this morning would result in the same charge over and over

The plot thickens. I just looked up my account online. There are no monthly payments schedule and MSF is not listed as a payee.

Where the hell has my money been going?? And can I get it back?

So now I have a host of mysteries to solve. like :

1. The nice lady on the phone said the payment was from MSF but I don’t see a scheduled payment to them listed under preauthorized payments, yet…
2. …I check the account history, and there’s a preauthorized payment to MSF for $20
3. I checked the entire last year and this is the first time MSF has charged me, so
4. Where the heck has that monthly overdraft been going??

Because there are no payments listed for the entire previous year. Yet every time I cash my check, there’s an overdraft I have to cover.

This makes no frigging sense.

Have I been scammed all this time? IF so, by whom? My bank? MSF? A third party?

When I go to cash my check next Thursday, I am going to ask some frigging questions.

Oh, one more thing : I know that money is going to pay down my student loan because once a year, for tax purposes, I get a statement showing how much I have paid.

Over the years, I have knocked it down by around $1000.

Yet those transactions don’t appear on my transaction history.

I even checked the history on my reloadable Visa, just in case, and nope, no payments to student loans there either.

The whole thing is complicated and mysterious and confounding and because it involves my money, I am now very anxious and perturbed.

I will take a break from trying to figure things out now, but one way or another. I have to figure out WTF is going on.

Especially because there’s a possibility someone owes me some money back.

Not a huge possibility. The problem might be that online banking does not show all forms of transaction. Which would be stupid.

But at the very least, I might stop having to pay a $20 to $50 overdraft every month.

That would freaking rock.

More after the break.

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Why Their Earlier Stuff Was Better

Here’s why i think your favourite artist – be it a musician, a comedian, a writer, a visual artist, or any other kind of reator – was good for a while but then started to suck.

It all comes down to success. But not exactly in the way people think it does.

It’s not just that success gives people swelled egos and thus distances them from their fans and it’s not just that success gives people access to all kinds of vices that is regular folks can’t afford either.

It’s not even just the lure of “life in the fast lane” either.

In addition to all that, there’s other, less obvious factors, like :

1. Temptation. It’s not just the life in the fast lane stuff that can kill an artist’s output. It’s that literally anything they want to do, they can. At the same time, they acquire a whole lot of people whose entire job is to do all the hard, boring, and unpleasant things in life for them. And art is hard, y’all. It takes effort, focus, self-discipline, giving of yourself, and grit to do it right and get it done. It’s so much easier and more fun to just be as hedonistic and self-centered as a child, which is what this new lifestyle has turned you into. This also leads to…
2. The diminution of the art itself. In a life like that, it’s very easy to go from a dedicated artist to someone who thinks of their actual art – the thing they are actually paid to do and that gets them all their money and fame and excess – as this annoying task you have to do now and then – so lame – and so they want to spend as little time and energy on it as possible. Also,
3. They lose their sense of objectivity. All day, they are surrounded by people who feed their ego and tell them everything they do is wonderful and they are god’s gift to art. These people are not lying, for the most part. Instead, they are idolaters who want you to be their idol and so they idolize you. Great for the ego, but terrible for your art because you lose all sense of whether what you are doing is actually any good. And the previous factors make you want to believe that you are so god damned talented that even the very halfassed, perfunctory, generic crap you are putting out now is manna from freaking heaven.

What all this means is that, if you are an artist concerned about the quality of the art that is your legacy, you have to face the stark reality that the biggest danger to your artistic output is the very success you are working so hard to achieve.

At least then, you can make an informed choice as to which is more important to you : living the spoiled toddler lifestyle, or leaving behind art you can be proud of.

I mean, go ahead and be spoiled and terrible – nobody will stop you.

But know that the people who know the most about the art – the fans – will lose all respect for you and mock you behind your back.

And your legacy will be crap. The last impression you will leave the world with will be of a hackneyed joke who ruined their own legacy for no good reason.

It’s up to you if you can live with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.