It feels like the nineties are coming back — the time when I was just starting my way in business.

Back then I walked around factories asking what they needed in exchange for pipes. Then I’d go to the people selling metal and ask what they needed. Sometimes a third party would show up in the chain — someone who had exactly what the metal guys wanted. And you’d tie those ends together so that everyone got a piece.

Now it sounds like a quest, but back then it was simply the economic logic of the time. Money existed, sort of, but there was never enough to go around, and almost everything held together on exchange.

That’s how, unexpectedly for myself, I also ended up in design. I was studying to be a programmer, but in parallel I was a student of an artist. And when I walked into one of those commercial firms, I didn’t really sell them pipes — I sold the service they needed most at that moment. Namely, a magazine. Well, not exactly “created” — I started doing layout for it. Got hired as a layout artist, a designer-layout guy. And stayed in that industry for a while.

A few years later I decided to step away from design and move into web development. And some of my first clients turned out to be, again, in the same barter spirit. Fitness centers offered me tennis — play and train for free. Stores offered to stock me up with sportswear. Not money — just whatever they could share.

Then somehow everything gradually moved into fiat. Barter schemes fell behind, started to look outdated, not interesting to anyone. Just money — simpler. It seemed like that was for good.

And now the twenty-sixth has arrived. When simply getting a job is, let’s be honest, no longer that simple. And I’m noticing on the market offers again in the spirit of “do something for something,” without any money at all. First you think — it’s a one-off. Then again. Then a third time. And it starts to look like a trend.

Where is the world heading? Or is it the same spiral we walked once already, and now we’re walking it again, one loop higher?

I’m also reminded of Kiyosaki with his rat race. I’d like, of course, to somehow get out of that wheel already. But if we continue the metaphor — then for a rat running in a wheel, my life turned out to be fairly nonlinear. With turns, ups and downs, role changes, and that constant feeling that each time you’re sort of starting over — except already as a completely different person. So honestly, for a rat in a wheel, I’ve lived a pretty interesting life.