How to Deal With Getting Rich Quick
A windfall can come with guilt, anxiety, and other complicated feelings
Two years ago, I dreamed of some kind of windfall. By day, I worked as a web editor at a literary magazine. By night, I pitched and wrote my own stories, fighting through sleepiness.
It wasn’t the most lucrative arrangement, and I was very acutely feeling the squeeze. I had to sell a book, I thought, or win the lottery, or discover some incredibly valuable painting in a dusty stack at a flea market. But then, as if I’d made some sort of Twilight Zone–esque pact with the devil, the universe gave me what I thought I wanted in the most awful way it could: My father died, suddenly, leaving me as the sole beneficiary of his estate.
I spent the next few weeks in a daze, sorting through his possessions, dealing with all the logistics that are dumped into your lap when someone you love dies. He’d always been the person I turned to when I needed advice or support, and it felt almost comically cruel that he wasn’t around to help me navigate the aftermath of his death. There was also the issue of his money, more than I’d ever had in my life, now sitting in my bank account. I didn’t know how to feel about it, and for a while, I didn’t want to think about it at all — it was a reminder of the man I painfully missed, and ignoring…
