Time

theotherpeopleplace

There just ain’t enough of it. I woke up around 4:30 AM, and I thought to myself: “Only a quarter of a century more than I’ll be 50. What will I have to show for my life then?”

I mean, I’ve got a few things to show for. I still have my faculties in check, I have a college degree, and I’m not hooked on crack or some shit.

But I thought about all the other things. I don’t have a steady career figured out yet. Before the writer’s strike, I was working on TV movies. This year I was finally seeing some real progression, and I was well on my way to join a Union, but then it was all gone overnight. Four years of college wasted, and two years post-grad all thrown out the door. At this point, I’m considering going back and getting my master’s in something with a real future, like computer science. Either that, or trade-school. It’s just so frustrating to work so hard at something, and see little to no progress.
And when that progress finally comes, it’s just taken away from you.

Especially now. I’ve got 254 dollars in my bank account, 2,500 dollars owed on my credit card, and I can’t find work. I’ve been applying everywhere. McDonald’s, some after school coaching program, being a janitor, etc. I’ve been rejected by all. I can’t even get work flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Me, a man with a college degree, can’t even flip burgers. You know how that feels? It feels so fucking awful. I was actually working at Amazon for four days before they fired me. They fired me because I couldn’t deliver 300+ packages in 5 hours. It’s fucking ridiculous. If it wasn’t for my parents, I’d probably be homeless. I hate that. As the days go by, I feel like a leech more and more to my family.

I still live with my parents, and I can’t afford a home of my own. I‘ve never had a girlfriend, and I don’t have a family to call my own. I’m not driving that ’92 Skyline I always wanted. I haven’t done that solo cross-country trip across Japan I wanted to do. Hell, I can’t even finish my damn video game backlog.

Next month I’m turning 25. Will I be in the same place I am today, or will life change? Only I can decide, but no matter how hard I try, it doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. When I was 23, I told myself that I’ll be doing fine, and that I’ll be out of the house by 25. Now, it feels like I’m going to be living with mom and dad well into my thirties.

I’m afraid for my future, and I feel like my time is growing limited.

Lumeinshin

theotherpeopleplace
I feel your pain. Its oddly tough to get into a job where it shouldn't be.
Those sorts of feelings you've outlined are part of why I host things and have this forum. To try and bring a bit of levity back somewhat. Most of my concerns are internet-culture based but I have seen a lot of what you're experiencing around.
Don't give up, keep going. IDK what your area is like where you live but it might be worth handing in resumes or talking to small local business owners if you can. Annoyingly it might be worth trying to see if your parents work have any jobs you can do. I am sure that will be frustrating, I was doing things like that when I was 16, which is when thats expected of you, but I think expected ages are all out of whack right now, at least a 10+ year delay for most of us, so whilst it may be embarrassing or demeaning, it may be worth trying to start again there and work up.
Good luck.

friffri this is about the long and the short of it. I think bad times will make you a stronger person isnt a bad saying, but its more so along the lines that bad times show you that you have to be a stronger person. We all just have to do what we can where we can.

Gigachad

theotherpeopleplace I’m afraid for my future, and I feel like my time is growing limited.

Unless you have cancer or are obese I would plan on making to at least 60. 50 if your family has shit genes. Things will get better my dude. Seasons come and go. Money comes and goes. People.come and go. Death and taxes are constant but people forget change is also a constant. Also drive carefully.

theotherpeopleplace When I was 23, I told myself that I’ll be doing fine, and that I’ll be out of the house by 25. Now, it feels like I’m going to be living with mom and dad well into my thirties.

When I was 23 I was 140lbs and had never worked out. By 27 I was 165 and entering my first powerlifting meet. I would have never ever in a million years guessed I would do that. Your future is the same. In 5 years you will be a different person in a different situation with different goals. Good luck on the house thing. My wife is harping on about that not understanding that a 3 bedroom house from 1980 should not be valued at 250k. We're all priced out of homeownership. You are not alone in that boat. I had to get my brother to move in with me and my wife to make enough to rent a house. Seriously takes 3 incomes to live on your own and I live in one the best housing markets in the US.

friffri I tell myself bad times will make me a stronger person, but it's all cope.

It's not cope. It's truth. It's just not instantly visible strength like getting ripped. Instead it will look more like when a kid first works a job with their dad. The kid gets tired and the dad isn't. You will be able to go longer before you break. Man cannot shape himself without pain because he is both the sculptor and the marble.

Fantasy

I was in a similar spot.
I am still in that spot.

gingermilk

Good luck. I am younger than you and still in school yet I am seeing my future in your post considering how socially inept I have always been.

CyberneticNomad

gingermilk Are you about to enter college? Or perhaps you're on the ending stages of high-school..?

friffri

Same age as you, got a job but everything else I'm the same as you.
I tell myself bad times will make me a stronger person, but it's all cope.

Good luck, I wish I had something better to tell you.

agoraoptera

Gigachad When I was 23 I was 140lbs and had never worked out. By 27 I was 165 and entering my first powerlifting meet. I would have never ever in a million years guessed I would do that. Your future is the same. In 5 years you will be a different person in a different situation with different goals.

Latching onto what Gigachad said, it's actually pretty insane how much a person can change in a year or so. I feel like there's a core of me that has remained mostly consistent, but I'm definitely not the same creature I was when COVID-19 first hit. Your ideals and values change and grow. And just as importantly, that same change is happening across a billion souls and a million places, all at the same time.

Francis Fukuyama wrote his End of History in 1992, and it reflected the optimistic spirit of the times that a particular system of values had won, that there would essentially be no more 'change' from that default and that the valueset would perpetuate itself into an everlasting peace. The world has changed drastically since then, but in the same way that the zeitgeist then believed in things staying a certain way (or to put it less nicely, stagnating), present circumstances won't last forever. Things right now are pretty painful and depressing, but both utopian and dystopian thinking are unrealistic.

There has never been an endless winter on this planet. Snow falls, spring comes, and the ice will melt away.

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