Working to provide for a family, while trying to preserve the time that family needs.
This is a personal account of where the song began. It does not define what the song must mean.
The work that pays today
I know how to earn a living by doing the work I can. It helps meet the immediate needs of life, but it also uses my body and the hours I have.
When there are household costs and children to provide for, simply stopping is not a real option. At the same time, I know I cannot keep trading the same amount of energy forever.
Trying to build another future
I have been trying to create work that might eventually give me more control over my time. It requires more hours now, with no guarantee of success.
That is the contradiction at the center of the song: I am spending time in the hope that I might one day buy some of it back. The harder I try to secure the future, the more of the present can slip away.
Why the lyrics leave room
The song avoids naming a target income or promising that a new project will succeed. It is not a success story told after the fact.
The question matters precisely because I do not know what I will have left if the work finally pays off.
What the song adds to the album
A Place to Be Human is concerned with ordinary time: the time spent earning, the time spent away, and the time a family cannot simply repeat.
Money can sometimes be earned again. A particular day with the people I love cannot.
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