I literally went through the realisation that this is exactly what is wrong with me - about 5 days ago. Since then i've done some hard work in changing how I feel about money, and what money means to my life.
I don't know if I'm there yet. If anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears.
I spent many years feeling guilty because I secretly wanted to make money. Realizing that it's ok was a huge relief to me.
I'm reminded of the King of the Hill episode "Orange You Sad I Did Say Banana?" where Kahn (who always wants to be rich) becomes convinced that the should be in touch with his roots and not want or care for money. In the end he realizes that the people trying to convince him not to be rich are the rich people and he was happier being true to himself.
I'm not sure what exactly brought on the realization. I've always been a self-help/introspective kind of guy. But I know that one day many years ago I was trying to understand my core values, the things that make me, me. And I couldn't get around the fact that I wanted money even though I was ashamed to want it. So I made the decision to embrace it instead of fighting it. (or at least to try not to feel bad for wanting it.)
I came out and told my friends during one of our talks about being "real" artists. Some of my friends stopped being friends with me and I got closer to one of my friends that felt the same way. (she never said anything before because she felt ashamed.)
The biggest changes have been that I've been happier and I make more money than I ever did. I don't feel like I "sold out" or any of that nonsense I hear from time to time. I moved across the country and I have no regrets.
The downside is that my happiness is probably tied a little more with money than it was before. It can be really hard to see the positive side of life when a large financial burden comes along or I lose my source of income. Overall I think it's been a net positive change. If nothing else I don't feel guilty anymore.
Anyone who says they are not in it for the money is lying. The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. If they truly wanted to do something not for the money, they'd be in their garage carving figurines not spending every breath maintaining a (probably) already dead startup.
I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear).
I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like.
These two statements are contradictory. The whole point of having it is that it is stored value that can provide you with the things you actually need; time, in your case.
I don't see it contradictory since my freedom and time is not solely brought by money; money is just one ingredient (in the middle of knowledge, confidence, etc etc).
Similarly, I don't care much about H alone, but I definitely enjoy H2O!
Yes your freedom and time is solely brought by money, and because money is a representation of value, anything you do of value for someone else effectively buys you the means to freedom and more time which is exactly what you are doing to afford yourself the freedom of not caring about money.
However, if you did not have money, you would either:
a) Be comfortable living the most basic lifestyle humanly possible.
b) Be working so you can afford yourself the lifestyle you want.
Clearly, you are not in group A since you have a more than comfortable lifestyle, so it's B. You did contradict yourself.
Your first sentence is an opinion stated as a fact, which I disagree with. But I don't consider that stating something demonstrates it.
Later you divide the whole humanity in A, B (and C). I certainly do not consider this is correct, and believe there are many more cases to be considered.
I cannot see what could possibly go wrong, going from here, in terms of deciding that people contradict themselves, logic, etc!
Feel free to consider I contradict myself - I certainly do not agree.
It sounds like you're pretty confused about most people's reasons for caring about money. Making sure you have enough money to not need to worry about money is pretty much the entire goal for most people
If you're poor and need to improve your financial situation, sure. But now that I have a solid middle-class job I don't personally feel a need to earn even more money. Now I spend my incremental time on things that generally don't earn money: research side projects, writing Wikipedia articles, contributing to open-source projects, etc.
In many cases I've found trying to monetize content makes it worse. Not always, but sometimes the right choice from an intellectual perspective is to improve an existing article somewhere else, whether by editing Wikipedia, or sending in corrections to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or sending a documentation-related pull request to a project on GitHub. The alternative, if I put monetization first, would be to always find a way I could "own" the content: it needs to be published on my domain, where I get the credit and SEO and personal-branding out of it, and can put AdSense or Amazon Affiliate links on it. Instead of fixing the Wikipedia article or the docs, write a linkbaity blog post mocking their errors, for example, and submit it to HN. Not as constructive, but many people do exactly that. Decisions that are good for monetization don't always magically align with non-monetary goals like improving publicly accessible information, and sometimes they're in direct conflict. In that case, I don't think it's necessarily laudable to prioritize monetization.
All money put aside, I'd definitely prefer to be maintaining a startup (it's not dead since money is put aside) than carving figurines in a garage.
Everyone his hobbies. If your hobby can land you some money so you can get a roof and some food, then you're already a good way to becoming an happy man.
> The underlying goal is always money, few admit it.
I love to build cool shit. My salary does not matter to me. Of course, it is fairly high so perhaps I have the luxury to say that, but if my basic needs were taken care of, I'd be just about as happy just building things in Ruby.
I don't know if I'm there yet. If anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears.