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JnnyThndrs posted:Another thing, and I don't hear this mentioned much, what with the mad rush by the boomers/x-ers to poo poo on millennials, is that it used to be TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY hosed to live at home after HS. This isn't due to home sizes, previously it was expected you got married out of college or even right out of high school, and the lack of birth control and options for work and education for women facilitated this. The reasons people left home early were different but equally hosed up.
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Jul 10, 2016 11:34
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Scudworth posted:This isn't due to home sizes, previously it was expected you got married out of college or even right out of high school, and the lack of birth control and options for work and education for women facilitated this. The reasons people left home early were different but equally hosed up. I'm not saying your wrong, but you're arguing a different point than the one I'm making - I'm using the Boomer post-HS living situation to contrast today's post-HS kids' living situation, not trying to argue that there was no other reason people left home early back in the day.
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Jul 10, 2016 15:19
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This is a great point. Someone could probably convert my single family home into 3 separate apartments, and each one would still be large (~1200 sq feet). 3 people live in my house.
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Jul 11, 2016 01:24
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Heres some life advice from some internet oval office about making an actual life: You are constantly making choices, all the time. Most of them are automatic, unconscious, part of the narrative story you have constructed starting with your earliest experiences before you could even form explicit memories. A lot of the rest are because someone has told you something or 'its the way things are', or a million other 'reasons'. How much of whats left is because of how you feel, based on how you used to feel, or might feel in the future? etc etc etc Learn how to actually be aware of your choices and your world will open up. Learn how to have enough. When you understand that feeling you will have an edge on those who don't. Our society is built around consumption and busy work, aspirational thinking, building a hole to fill. Learn how to live like peasants do, very poor people around the world are incredibly clever and resourceful and efficient. Then you can take some risks and do some interesting poo poo with your life and career because its not going to collapse while you are in-between because you can contract your lifestyle. You 'pay' attention and 'spend' your time. Think about that. Do everything that matters (work out what matters) to the absolute best of your ability. It will make it easier when no one rewards you or gives any kind of gently caress at all, which will be most of the time. And you will learn something. And sometimes it will be a massive complete failure. Its amazing to learn to experience that kind of shame and failure - where you tried to the absolute limit of your abilities and failed, there arent any excuses to hide behind or people to blame or what-ifs, it will teach you well. You are allowed to be happy, this means you. Work out what balance means in your life, to you, and how to keep that. What that looks like. What you can trade. If you can experiment. Eg: My previous job payed quite well but to be able to give 100% every day and deal with the massive amounts of suffering and responsibility I was exposed to I decided to do it 3 days a week so I had 2 days to deal with that, then a chance to be a human being before going back. When I got the job I decided I needed to live alone to do it. So it was like getting paid ok for a 9-5 everyday job. That was a good balance for me, and an incredible opportunity to learn at the edge of my ability. I would have probably lasted a few weeks if I had of gone full-time instead of a few years. Every day I learnt something new, and for the first time I had a job where I felt comfortable asking questions. And it taught me so much about life and myself that I may never have learnt otherwise. The funniest thing was that everyone who actually got the roles (advertised full-time positions) all said they would need to work part time. My understanding of my limits made me a better choice. Learn how to make mistakes, its a skill. People who talk about how the world doesnt owe you anything are normally the most entitled unconscious fucks, they are not aware of their own privileges or advantages. People who tell you to harden up are usually brittle and insecure and will buckle/crumble. Learn how to be flexible and actually deal with each situation as you choose to. And lastly a quote: "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path"
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Aug 19, 2016 17:34
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I graduated in 08 right when poo poo was bad. I managed to snag a nurse as a fiancee so I wasn't living at home, but I certainly wasn't able to fully support myself. I got a job as a security guard and worked up to head scheduler indirectly in charge of 700 guards at 80 some odd sites. I was making enough to support myself at that point. Then my fiance decided to abort our twins, despite being a born again christian (Presbyterian myself) and we broke up. To me abortion = murder so my twins getting aborted had the same effect. Luckily I leveraged the phone skills I had learned getting useless security guards to actually show up to work and got a sales job with the help of my uncle at a distributor he worked with. However the whole twins being murdered thing lead to me doing enough drugs to go quite mad, ended up having the police take me in to a crazy house and landed at home a few month better. I can own a gun again as of about a month ago so I'm officially not crazy anymore, which is nice. I was at home living at my parents house for about 6 months before giving life another go. Funny enough I was not getting a stellar recommendation from my previous employer. I had hosed at bad enough that I was basically back to college graduate levels now except also a huge fuckup. It was becoming more and more apparent that a life of low level retail was in my near future if something didn't change. I did what any gently caress up with sales skills would do and got a door to door sales job ripping people off on their energy bill. The product was so bad I wasn't allowed to say "this will save you money" and the call in confirmation to my company would include them making sure the customer understood (this is about verbatim) "we are not saying this will save you any money, do you understand that we are saying there is no promise of cost savings by accepting this service and agree to a $100 dollar cancellation fee should you decide to discontinue service?" I saw not only 1000's of utility bills but over 100 people come into the office, try the job, fail at the job, and leave. One of our top salesmen had 8 kids with 8 different baby momma's, was about to go to jail for not paying taxes for 5 years, and lived in a truck/the manager apartment. I first got out of my parents house by being really good at this job. Top level sales people in our branch had the award of the manager allowing you to live in his apartment. If you turned him down, you where typically fired if your numbers slumped. It was a fraternity house for people who either never went to college (branch manager) or never wanted to leave college (2 of the supervisors). Once a month we would all drop about a grand or so in the city doing drugs, drinking, and picking up girls. I was once relentlessly made fun off for not loving a passed out chick I brought home and my manager called dips. After this I decided it was time to get another job at any cost. I ended up living in an SUV in brooklyn working for a copier company selling Kyocera's making less than half as much. What are Kyoceras you ask? Why the number one copier in China! They blow cannon and Xerox out of the water for 75% of the price! lol they sometimes catch on fire and have absolute poo poo print quality. I leveraged this job to working for a regional copier distributor selling canon and sharp copiers and finally moved out of my parents house. My first year I made more than I did the year I went crazy. I leveraged this job to get a job working for one of NYC's top 3 copier companies making even more and am now a lazy manufactures rep for components used in mass production robots. I have a stay at home wife, a new baby girl, and a bright future. Never give up, never stop moving.
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Aug 19, 2016 18:32
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Remove the ability to pay for college on loans, and watch the cost of a college degree drop like a stone.
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Aug 19, 2016 23:03
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GORDON posted:Remove the ability to pay for college on loans, and watch the cost of a college degree drop like a stone. Not really and that won't happen either.
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Aug 20, 2016 17:36
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GORDON posted:Remove the ability to pay for college on loans, and watch the cost of a college degree drop like a stone. Maybe if by "eliminate student loans" what you really mean is "restore government funding"
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Aug 20, 2016 20:53
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I'd definitely say that anyone who says life is all about making it on your own either wasn't paying attention or is lying to you, all the important things I got came from family bringing me in contact with someone or just plain lucking out. Given that, I'd say the main thing to do is just increase your chances of those two things; stay in contact with your friends and family, always ask them about anything that might be a good opportunity. If you don't have friends or family... well, you have us, and we should definitely have some threads in BFC for networking. If you see a job that sounds interesting but doesn't pay as much try it out if it'll still pay your expenses; you will advance much further and be more respected at work if you're doing something you care about. This goes for personal projects too, do things that have to do with the career you want in your spare time. Either you'll enjoy it and have something to put on your resume, or you won't and can take a look at something else. I can't really speak financially about the best way to burn down loans, just general saving. If you have money left over after paying for expenses, absolutely put at least 10% of it away in an index fund if your employer doesn't have a plan of their own; the long-term investment thread goes into specific funds to buy, but in general a Vanguard account or even talking to your bank about setting up a portfolio will go a long way. Don't buy individual stocks though, it's usually a wash in the long run.
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Aug 20, 2016 23:55
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James Garfield posted:Maybe if by "eliminate student loans" what you really mean is "restore government funding" If you think continuing to give their customers unlimited resources is the way to keep colleges from keeping their prices high, then sure. I'm glad I took Econ 111 before it got too expensive, though, so I don't think it works that way. Check out the correlation between cost of a college education, and the advent of student loans, sometime. https://www.google.com/search?q=cos...chrome&ie=UTF-8
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Aug 21, 2016 01:02
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GORDON posted:If you think continuing to give their customers unlimited resources is the way to keep colleges from keeping their prices high, then sure. I'm glad I took Econ 111 before it got too expensive, though, so I don't think it works that way. the first result on that search directly contradicts your original post 
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Aug 21, 2016 02:41
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James Garfield posted:Maybe if by "eliminate student loans" what you really mean is "restore government funding"
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Aug 21, 2016 05:34
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This isn't the best thread for this debate, but there are a lot of things that have led to the increasing costs of college tuition. Yes, opening up college to many more students through more availability of loans was part of it, but mostly because we increased access to colleges without increasing state spending on colleges to compensate. In addition, there was inadequate focus on how to actually get all of these new students to finish college and enter profitable careers afterwards. Getting rid of loans would reduce the demand for college, sure, but it would also eliminate the best way for individuals from low income households to pull themselves up.
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Aug 21, 2016 16:26
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GORDON posted:If you think continuing to give their customers unlimited resources is the way to keep colleges from keeping their prices high, then sure. I'm glad I took Econ 111 before it got too expensive, though, so I don't think it works that way. I work at a university alongside budgeting. In our state, we had to raise tuition is due to the fact that the stated decided to start cutting back on how they funded us about 10 years ago. The money has to come from somewhere. Colleges also do things to offset tuition rates going up, that you don't see in bar graphs of tuition costs. We've been offsetting tuition raises with lowering fees, so it ends up about even. Plus there's always some new program to help with lower income students. Getting rid of loans would screw a lot of people, even those with high EFCs. Just because you have a high EFC doesn't actually mean you're family is able to contribute that amount. chemosh6969 fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Aug 21, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 21:20
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Ok OP, I'll bite... I initially had humble beginnings. I lived at home through college (though not in a basement, our home was only 1 story) due to financial reasons and went to school while holding a part time minimum wage job in IT I got through my university. I thought I was a special snowflake because I ended up going to college on scholarship and felt like people were going to just throw jobs at me. I blew my money partying with friends and going out on dates, never saving a dime. I also picked up the bad habit of playing MMOs in college thanks to a couple girls I dated that were into Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. Luckily I did keep my grades up because I had the pressure of keeping my scholarship eligibility valid. Upon graduating with a degree in computer science, I thought I was on top of the world and folks were just going to throw jobs at me! Alas, there were no jobs to go around. Then poo poo hit the fan in 2001 when my parents and I got all laid off around Christmas with the economic downturn. I went from spending money like water to having nothing, racking up credit card debt and playing MMOs all day for cheap entertainment. After 2 years of unsuccessfully trying to find steady work, reality finally hit me that I needed to change. I wanted to do something that I liked and growing up I always had this fantasy of being the town doctor. I had taken a temporary sales job in the interim to put food on the table. When I shared this with my boss at the time, he laughed and then said "You're too stupid to be a doctor, get back to dialing for dollars, that's your purpose in life." That made me angry, but rather than lashing out I decided to reevaluate my life and get motivated again. I still remember the breaking point: I was playing EQ at 1:25am, our raid had wiped in a zone called Ssraeshza Temple, knowing I had to work at 7am later that morning. I was dreading going into work sleep-deprived to make a series of telemarketing calls that I knew people hated me for. I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? My life is going nowhere." Over the next 6 months I got my poo poo together, studied hard, took the MCAT and went to medical school all on government loans. My goony rear end almost failed out of the first semester of med school due to World of Warcraft. Thankfully, one of my study partners shook some sense into me and got me to cut the cord. After ditching WoW and getting back to studying, I was able to recover my grades nicely. I ended up dating my study partner for the remainder of my 2 pre-clinical years and went on to graduate with honors. Thankfully, she also encouraged me to dream big again rather than just chase money. This saved me from going into a sub-specialty I would have disliked. A long residency (with 100 hour work weeks and 30 hour shifts) and additional fellowship later, I now practice and teach medicine. I also managed to use my computer science degree in my sub-specialty. I have a ton of student loan debt still however I found a job that will allow for public student loan forgiveness in 6 more years as well as a pension. Now I am married with a roof over my head and have a wonderful 1 year old daughter. I also started a successful side business last that is now profitable after one year in my spare time just by reading business books. I hired my father to work with me because he believed in me when no one else did. To summarize: People care about what you can "do," not just what you look like on paper. If you want to go from Goon to Great, get off your rear end and go "do" something constructive. Pick up a book and read. Learn a new skill. Remember that any skills you pick up are useful (Including sales experience!). Get out there and meet new people. Network with others. If you don't like where you are, take steps to change it. Life answers to those who take action. Don't be afraid to fail because I learned life's biggest lessons from my failures. Take chances however be smart about it and do your due diligence before jumping in with both feet. As someone else put so eloquently, "The harder I work, the luckier I get!" Find something you enjoy doing but know it is okay to do something you do not like temporarily to put food on the table. Just don't lose your vision. Some of the happiest people I have met aren't rich or have a prestigious job, rather they are content with who they are and where they are at. If you meet someone like this, bask in their presence. Make a point to treat everyone with kindness and dignity, even when they do not reciprocate. Not just because it may benefit you some time later but because it is the right thing to do.  The sticky threads in BFC are a wealth of solid information for adult finances. Learn to live on less than you make. I wish I had known all that back when I was 21! There's my 2 cents. On that note, I need to get off my fat goony rear end as these weights aren't going to lift themselves 
Richlove fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 02:26
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Richlove posted:To summarize: People care about what you can "do," not just what you look like on paper. If you want to go from Goon to Great, get off your rear end and go "do" something constructive. Quoting this in case anyone needed a TL; DR. Going from goon to great in a work sense is not unlike going from goon to great in a physical fitness sense. You are 300 lbs and you want to be 185. You don't just decide one day to be 185... You decide one day that 300 isn't your game anymore, and you try to be 299. You decide one day you want to be a doctor, you don't just become a doctor... you buy an MCAT study book. You don't read the whole thing - just the first chapter. Then the next day... the next chapter. Fast forward several years and you're a doctor. Regardless of what "privilege" you started with, or didn't.
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Aug 22, 2016 03:17
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I don't know man. I am 21 and I can kind of see where everyone in this thread is coming from. I am pretty tired of being a gently caress up but I didn't like college so I'm going to become a plumber or something. In the mean time there are decent manufacturing jobs in this area. I can save a couple grand and move in with some of my fellow gently caress ups from high school back home. Unfortunately a large proportion of them are addicted to drugs and I am pretty reckless myself. Spent the last 3 years working retail, dating and roaming the US. Wound up in my parents' basement (lol goon stereotype). It sucks but it's a lot better than sleeping in my car. Resisted every type of conformity and beneficial structure, did impractical things because of my dreams. Economic distress is a fact. The special snowflake things carries water. It's a confluence of circumstances and it's difficult to pinpoint who to blame. I can certainly understand why millenials are obnoxious but its not like we popped up out of nowhere, this culture and economic climate were handed down to us.
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Aug 22, 2016 05:10
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a dog from hell posted:I am pretty tired of being a gently caress up but I didn't like college so I'm going to become a plumber or something. In the mean time there are decent manufacturing jobs in this area. I can save a couple grand and move in with some of my fellow gently caress ups from high school back home. Unfortunately a large proportion of them are addicted to drugs and I am pretty reckless myself. You'll make a good amount of money as a tradesmen, more than the average 4 year graduate. It's not a fuckup job if it's skilled. I used to rent from a guy who installed fiber optic cables. Don't move in with dudes who do drugs if you have a problem with it, it goes to a dark place man. "I can certainly understand why millenials are obnoxious but its not like we popped up out of nowhere, this culture and economic climate were handed down to us." Why do you care? The problem is the problem just move on from it and go be you.
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Aug 22, 2016 06:52
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10-Shot posted:Don't move in with dudes who do drugs if you have a problem with it, it goes to a dark place man. Seriously. Don't deliberately put yourself in a hole, you'll never get out of it. There's no reason you can't live a good, middle class life as blue collar. Put 10% of your pay right into the bank first thing, stop spending all of your disposable income on drugs (if that applies), because that is just an escape. Get a couple cheaper leisure-time activities for evenings after work, like a Netflix account and Steam... lots of cheap games. There, your monthly entertainment budget just dropped to 20 a month giving you cash for a couple nights out on the town. And MOST IMPORTANTLY... start some type of fitness routine. Join a gym or something. Being healthy and fit... even just working on becoming healthy and fit... your mood will lighten and will change your entire outlook on life. And you might even meet some new people who don't do drugs all day. It isn't all that hard to get your poo poo together, and you'll be surprised how other people will be drawn to you for that reason alone. Ah to be young and single again, your whole life ahead of you. Sigh. But beware: if you start getting your poo poo together, get your own cheap place that's YOURS and start filling your hours with stuff other than drugs... the old druggy people WILL try to take advantage of you. You're going to get requests to crash on your couch to 'sleep it off,' or want to chill in your place because they got evicted, or whatever. Then you end up with unwanted roommates smoking in your living room all day, eating your food, and not doing dishes. This is how people are. If you want to rise to a regular life, you'll have to sever from the people in the hole. GORDON fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Aug 22, 2016 |
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Aug 22, 2016 13:34
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Thanks folks. That's pretty encouraging.
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Aug 22, 2016 14:43
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I'm 27 - been living at home but am now finally in the process of moving out. I graduated in 2012 with a degree in advertising. A year before I graduated I realized sadly that it wasn't really for me, but I was so close to graduating I decided to just stick it out and not switch majors and pick up more debt. I graduated, and literally didn't do jack poo poo for almost a year. I had a lot of depression issues in university, which led me to getting very close to me trying to kill myself and realizing I needed help while at school. After graduation I just spent time at home on the internet and playing games not really knowing what to do or where to loving go. I had a degree in something I wasn't really passionate about and didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. A friend of mine hooked me up with a fast food job and I told myself I would only do this because it was a way to earn money while I look for that real, adult first full-time job. I ended up spending more than 3 years there because I got comfortable and complacent, and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt like a loving loser serving lovely teenagers for minimum wage. Plus my parents were supportive initially and understanding, but once I spent a couple years here I could tell they were sick of me working at a fast food place. Luckily a friend of mine noticed I wasn't doing so well and pointed me in the direction of a temp agency that helped recent college grads. It took a while, but I finally got a position through them doing basic data entry stuff at a local hunger-relief non-profit. As part of working there I had to do a few shifts in a food bank, and seeing homeless and truly needy people really kind of lit a fire in me. It showed me while I was depressed about not having enough money to go out to bars or whatever with my friends, these were people who were actually, really struggling and the stupid poo poo I was complaining about didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I also liked the idea of the work I was doing not lining a CEO's pockets and actually helping people. My temp period ended with them and I just kind of drifted for a few months. Eventually they actually called me up, and wanted me to come in and interview for a full-time position since I guess they liked me during my temp period. I've been full-time there for a while now and I finally have enough saved to move out on my own and get my poo poo started. So yeah. I guess be persistent and you just gotta keep moving.
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Aug 28, 2016 02:13
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ElectricNeonPanda posted:After graduation I just spent time at home on the internet and playing games not really knowing what to do or where to loving go. I mean, I graduated high school in '95 and BBSes were a thing, but it was not limitless like the internet is. And gaming was Super Mario, which it's not like you could spend weeks or months doing. It took an hour to beat the game, and after a while you just got bored of it. There was cable TV, but even that had its limits. Rewind 15 years to 1980 and there's no significant cable, no internet, no video games... Computers existed, but it's not like you could kill time on one. Certainly not weeks or months, probably not even hours. If you didn't know what to do after graduation, you couldn't just sit at home and kill a year. You'd just stare a hole in the loving wall for two days and eventually get up and do SOMETHING just to stymie the boredom.
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Aug 28, 2016 05:30
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GORDON posted:If you want to rise to a regular life, you'll have to sever from the people in the hole. Was rereading and I just want to say this is an awesome sentence.
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Aug 28, 2016 05:41
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photomikey posted:
Its called television.
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Aug 28, 2016 09:24
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photomikey posted:Rewind 15 years to 1980 and there's no video games... Computers existed, but it's not like you could kill time on one. Certainly not weeks or months, probably not even hours. As someone alive back then, there were home video games and arcades. Lots of arcades. For video games, there was that massively popular Atari 2600 that came out in the late '70s. We also had a computer and you could spend a shitload of time on them learning to program and do poo poo. We had cabinet style tv set with knobs and 12 channels (2-13) , a vcr with a wired remote, a microwave, and rotary phones.
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Aug 28, 2016 17:30
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Air Force Brat until middle school. Moved to South Bend, where my dad got a teaching job after leaving the service. Began work as a busboy at The Morris Inn, on Notre Dame Campus, in ''97 I graduated high school in 1998. I applied to Seminary, wanted to be a catholic priest. Bishop wasn't comfortable with my psycho-sexual history (I grew up on the internets), so he suggested I study philosophy in college and re-apply after I get my undergrad. Started college at IUSB in Jan '99, having taken a semester off after high school Not long after, I was promoted to the front desk of the hotel, guest services, concierge, that sorta thing. 32 hours a week, decent pay, full internet access during shift, little supervision. Registered on SA in '00, after months of lurking. I was an atheist already by then, I think. Voted for Bush. Graduated IUSB in '05, double-majored in Philosophy and Psychology, minors in History and Cognitive Science. Tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, a few thousand in credit card debt. In '08, was recruited into a hacker team named #marblecake. Helped social engineer the rise of Anonymous, watched the economy collapse, etc. I'd gotten fat, working a job where I stand in place all day, eating the leftover prime rib from dinners we served to dignitaries and academicians. Occupy Wall Street starts, an' I camp out in South Bend with some other politically-minded local folk. Out Indiana way, at that time, folk that show up for Occupy split pretty evenly between Libertarians and Socialists. I focus on encouraging dialog between the two, emphasizing Voluntarism as the common ground between 'em. My views start shifting more socialist. Meet a pretty girl, through Occupy. I give up my apartment and move in to her house. She's got an anxiety disorder that grows over time; it expresses itself as hateful rage. Meanwhile, the hotel is shutting down for renovations, and I've got three options: get re-deployed elsewhere on campus for the 9 months we're closed; find another job for 9 months an' have the university pay my insurances and promise me a job when we re-open; or take a buy-out of 1.5 weeks pay times the number of years worked, signing a non-disclosure and promising not to work for the university for another 2 years. I quit my job. Walk with over 10 grand. My partner and I have plans to take the city by storm - we'd been attending all the events in town, growing to be real socialites, a power couple. She was just graduating from college herself, with plans to find a job that makes ends meet while I focus on pursuing a career helping people start doing social media right (this was when most local businesses still didn't have an FB page). She starts snorting vivance, getting rip roarin' drunk, and insisting that I stay awake so she can keep berating and attacking me. It gets really ugly from there, but I'll spare the details. Suddenly, I'm without money, without a job, got a lot of student debt - and I'm homeless. So I walk away from my debt. They can't do anything about it. I keep going to social events - even as my ex decides to go scortched earth and attempt to destroy me, socially. End up living in the attic of a 60 year old therapist, in the nice part of downtown. His brother in law gives me a camera - sony nex5n, with a couple antique nikkor lenses, 50mm f1.4 and a 135mm f2.8. I start photographing all the events I go to, deliberately attending every public social gathering of any value. I strive to take a photo that I think my subject will find flattering. I post 'em all on facebook, tag everyone in. Release it all creative commons, and start talking about living on a tip jar. I make it even more of a point to meet every person I can. I begin to index the city. I still use Socrates' Elenchus method, but I work out my own routine. What's your passion? What are your aims and ambitions? What projects are you currently working on? What online communities have you belonged to? etc. Quickly become the loudest social media voice in a small city of 100k. I couch surf. Distribute my weight. Open a paypal. Start encouraging people to contribute, if they like my work. My aim, by this point, is /not/ to get rich - I'm no longer a 'temporarily embarassed millionaire.' My aim is to help get the local economy going, to make the city hip in a way that measurably improves economic conditions and helps with a global transition to a sustainable society where social justice is recognized as a central pillar. By this point, I'd wholly abandoned USD as a currency, favoring currencies I manage well, like Trust and Attention. I live as modestly as possible, forgoing luxuries like food that's cooked to order. I figure if I use as few resources as possible, and create as much value as possible, it won't be difficult to survive happy. I sell my car 'round this time. I sleep until rested every day - and still do. Start attending Drum Circle - an oft maligned group, but a social gathering nonetheless. Love it. Take a lot of drugs. June '15, I attend my first rainbow gathering. The philosophy there jives very well with my lifestyle and beliefs. Have a blast. Ate all the mushrooms. Took a lot of great photos. This year, I hitchhiked for the first time in my life. Left South Bend at the end of June, with no money, a pack on my back, a thumb and a sign. Made it to Vermont for the Rainbow Nationals. From there, I caught a ride to Manhattan, where I spent 3 or 4 days. Spanged up enough USD for a bus to Cleveland, where I camped in Kirtland Park for the RNC (got a shot of my ugly mug, sleepin' on my hammock, printed by the Old Grey Lady). Caught a ride with a caravan to Philly, where I camped at FDR park for the DNC (on the final night, I had a confederate steal a paddleboat from the middle of the lake, and we took it out, naked, whereupon we had police helicopters hovering over s,shining their searchlight on our junk). Then I caught a train and a bus back to South Bend, early august. Lost my foodstamps today - noncompliance. I never was good at bureaucracy, an' anyway I don't have a mobile device or an address, so giving them proof I'm 'looking for work' just didn't happen. Also just published all my photos from my recent hitchhiking adventure, and - since there were naked humans in some of my pictures - just got a 7 day ban from Facebook. I'm broke, no cigarettes, no cannabis - and now my main way of busking and /only/ means of communication is unavailable to me for the next week. I'll be just fine  Wanna see my pictures? What's your passion? Uglycat fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 09:56
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You would probably benefit from medication.
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Aug 31, 2016 11:21
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I was unemployed for two years, which was such a shiftless and miserable time that I've got to mentally add/subtract them whenever I'm remembering that far back, until I landed a low-paying clerk job and held onto it tooth and claw until it became less low-paying and then sufficiently well-paying for me to choke out my loans and move out of my parents' house. Now I'm six years out of college and I've got robust enough savings to focus on retirement plans and treat myself within reason, with enough of a buffer to leverage this job into something more specialized and better paying once I feel the need for it. I got to this point with no small amount of help from my family, but besides that it was just hanging in there and not completely giving up until a chance to prove myself came by. I could be doing better at this point in my life if I'd gotten a more in-demand degree or spent my unemployed years doing something more productive than trying to keep my head above the depression, but I think that a lot of the pressure on the unemployed, especially from our generation, seems to come from this unspoken belief that there's some built-in track to success and one misstep makes you somehow lesser than people who rode it all the way to the end. Which is bunk, obviously - every mistake's an opportunity to learn. At the very least, going through the "failson" experience and coming out the other side should be enough to teach someone basic empathy for people in similar situations, because long-term unemployment is definitely not the free vacation some people seem to believe it is. It's handy that Tony Montana posted so early in this thread, because he's exactly what anyone, especially those who start off on the wrong foot, should try not to be - he's successful, but spends his time screaming at shadows and haughtily talking himself up to strangers because it's not enough that he's succeeded, everyone who doesn't fit into his paradigm needs to somehow fail as well. Just focus on you. Once you get out from under any long-standing debt and can consistently keep a roof over your head and food on your table, happiness comes down to personal preference, and there's no shame in going "that's enough for me." If it's not, keep striving. And don't be a dick to people.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:17
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Who knew that being a purposely jobless, homeless beggar that's
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Aug 31, 2016 21:13
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For more fun, add in confusion about why you got kicked off foodstamps because you couldn't "prove" you were looking for work, when you were actually busy... not looking for work.
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Aug 31, 2016 21:51
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Uglycat posted:
Are you friends with the other hitchhiker Rainbow Fam guy from ask/tell? Ask me anything about hitchhiking in the United States http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3771282&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
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Sep 1, 2016 01:25
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Scudworth posted:Are you friends with the other hitchhiker Rainbow Fam guy from ask/tell? I'm not! I should like to be, sounds like I could learn a bit from 'im. I'm 35, an' this summer was my first such adventure.
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Sep 1, 2016 09:01
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photomikey posted:For more fun, add in confusion about why you got kicked off foodstamps because you couldn't "prove" you were looking for work, when you were actually busy... not looking for work. I was busy /working/. Not for money, but to produce what I want to produce. Mike Pence and the Indiana House Republicans set up the rules a couple years back, as part of their 'war on the poor.' You're a Pence man, are ya? Imaduck posted:Who knew that being a purposely jobless, homeless beggar that's I know, right!? I highly recommend it, but it's probably not for you. It's important /not to be a dick/. edit: I mean, like /super/ important. You, for example, would likely get murdered. Me, I'm a pacifist. I've thrown my last punch. Uglycat fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Sep 1, 2016 |
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Sep 1, 2016 09:03
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Oooh,  .But see, I'm comfortable with the "not being a dick part." It's the "fraudulently taking resources from social programs because I'd rather get high all day than work" part that doesn't really jive with my worldview. You're the one that justifies people like Mike Pence; I say I support social programs for people in need, and they point to someone like you and say it's easy to commit fraud and we're catering to a bunch of able-bodied drug addicts that just want to take money from them without working. Since it fits the theme of the thread, I'll throw out there that while all this stuff is cute and fun when you're young and healthy, it gets a hell of a lot less cute when you're a sick old man and nobody wants to give you free rides, free places to crash, pocket change, or even look you in the eye anymore. Hospitals will do the bare minimum to keep you alive and then kick your rear end out the door to deal with your chronic health conditions on the streets. But I'm sure you'll say "I know old folks who do it" or "the world will take care of me" or "whatever happens, happens" or whatever other bullshit to make yourself feel like you're on the right path and you've figured it all out. The truth is that even though you've lived broke and homeless, you've never truly been distressed or in the poo poo. Otherwise you'd take things like losing your free meals a little loving more seriously. By the way, you're about 1% as interesting as you think you are.
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Sep 1, 2016 16:04
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photomikey posted:For more fun, add in confusion about why you got kicked off foodstamps because you couldn't "prove" you were looking for work, when you were actually busy... not looking for work. Maybe the working was producing drum circle music and for some reason those bureaucrats up in Washington DC don't consider that working. Maybe hitchhike the drum circle band and play out in front of the White House until they take notice and fix the rules. He should consider writing an ebook or something because lots of people eat this poo poo up.
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Sep 1, 2016 17:54
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Uglycat, I hope you stay safe and healthy. Please try to seek out mental health professionals.
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Sep 1, 2016 19:59
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N. Senada posted:Uglycat, I hope you stay safe and healthy. Please try to seek out mental health professionals. I'm kinda confused. What in my post led you to suggest I need mental health care? Another poster earlier suggested medication. I thought the post implied I need /food/. It's kind've insulting.
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Sep 1, 2016 23:25
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In case you were looking for a quorum, I think you should seek help and from reading your post, it's not that hard to see.
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Sep 2, 2016 01:38
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photomikey posted:In case you were looking for a quorum, I think you should seek help and from reading your post, it's not that hard to see. but /why/. If you can't account for that position, merely re-asserting it is just cheerleading.
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Sep 2, 2016 02:34
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'Cause o' we been thinkin' as how it might be a rul good idea fer you.
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Sep 2, 2016 02:38
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i like nice words