My shitty Midwest city needed a co-signer for me to move into an apartment, even with a roommate. My parents refused, so I recruited a friend, rented a car and drove 2,000 miles away to a beach where I didn’t need a co-signer or shoes, for that matter. Had some rough times, but never looked back.
First apartment was a one bedroom in a famous SoCal beach that would drop in price by $100 in the winter because I guess demand would decrease. My roommate and I would alternate between taking the bedroom and the living room. There was a shitty, bulging waterbed in the bedroom that the previous tenant just left. It felt luxurious.
I could hear the water crashing all day and night, I never even needed a fan for cooling due to the breeze, and I could see the ocean (just a sliver) out the bedroom window. The living room window was above a dumpster, though, and some player in the building would always argue and break up with his girlfriends by that dumpster. We eventually nicknamed that dumpster the Dumpster of Love.
I worked shitty temp jobs for a while because I could type fast, but I kept working myself out of a job. I learned pretty hard that corporate America is about looking busy and not actually getting anything done. I routinely finished 3-day temp assignments before lunch and would get dismissed with only 4 hours pay for my trouble.
Eventually I had a friend who was working on a film production for a low budget company. They blew up cars and shit and were pretty popular overseas. My friend invited me to come to set and work for free for a week with the promise that they’d hire me for their next film. I had nothing better to do, so I gave them a week. I worked on bad movies with them for the next several years nonstop, getting paid, though. My friend quit after that first one.
A lot of this stuff says I’m either stupid or I was exploited or both. But I’m not mad. I still think it was much easier for my generation than the ones that followed. Also, everyone living a life worth living learns as they go, imo.
They’re always talking over their children. Makes sense to ignore everyone who has lived experience with autism in favor of parents getting over the narcissistic wounding that came with having a kid that didn’t fit their fantasy.
For sure. It’s a recipe that has been around for decades, but today’s “solution”—due to the internet—is more troubling in part because a lot of those old economic “opportunities” have dried up. The culture doesn’t even offer the old, shitty ways for men to “make it” anymore.
Not bagging on you, but men mature late. People also tend to learn from experience and relationships in high school tend to be mutual torment in a lot of ways. Boys/men, being on the winning end of that, snap out of it later because they don’t see the problem until a few heartbreaks.
My shitty Midwest city needed a co-signer for me to move into an apartment, even with a roommate. My parents refused, so I recruited a friend, rented a car and drove 2,000 miles away to a beach where I didn’t need a co-signer or shoes, for that matter. Had some rough times, but never looked back.
First apartment was a one bedroom in a famous SoCal beach that would drop in price by $100 in the winter because I guess demand would decrease. My roommate and I would alternate between taking the bedroom and the living room. There was a shitty, bulging waterbed in the bedroom that the previous tenant just left. It felt luxurious.
I could hear the water crashing all day and night, I never even needed a fan for cooling due to the breeze, and I could see the ocean (just a sliver) out the bedroom window. The living room window was above a dumpster, though, and some player in the building would always argue and break up with his girlfriends by that dumpster. We eventually nicknamed that dumpster the Dumpster of Love.
I worked shitty temp jobs for a while because I could type fast, but I kept working myself out of a job. I learned pretty hard that corporate America is about looking busy and not actually getting anything done. I routinely finished 3-day temp assignments before lunch and would get dismissed with only 4 hours pay for my trouble.
Eventually I had a friend who was working on a film production for a low budget company. They blew up cars and shit and were pretty popular overseas. My friend invited me to come to set and work for free for a week with the promise that they’d hire me for their next film. I had nothing better to do, so I gave them a week. I worked on bad movies with them for the next several years nonstop, getting paid, though. My friend quit after that first one.
A lot of this stuff says I’m either stupid or I was exploited or both. But I’m not mad. I still think it was much easier for my generation than the ones that followed. Also, everyone living a life worth living learns as they go, imo.