Uh oh. Here comes the inevitable 20 year old existential crisis
DOSW
Posts: 2,014
So, as I prepare to head back to college for my sophomore year, I think I'm finally hitting that "what am I going to do for the rest of my life" stage. For a couple years now I've been interested in politics and chose to study it so I could pursue it as a career path. But the problem with that is getting to a point where I could actually make a difference is next to impossible unless you're a lying, thieving scumbag. And I don't want to do that. So now it's like... okay, now what?
The problem is, I hate the idea of jobs. Not because I'm lazy, but because I don't want to spend the next forty years of my life wasting 8 hours a day just because I have to. It's fucked. It's a fucked system. I work about 25-30 hours a week this summer and even that felt painfully restricting. My mom and my dad both work insane hours and their lives are a mundane, depressed mess. I don't want to end up like that. I just want to be HAPPY. The more I think about it the more I realize that modern society is set up to make happiness a rare treat as opposed to a way of life. Work your job, be happy on your weekends and vacation days, but come back and be depressed and boxed in the other 80% of the time.
There are only a few jobs I could imagine having and being content with, at least for a little while, that wouldn't make me feel like I'm boxed in and only doing it because society says so. One would be a professional musician, but that's all but impossible. The other would be owning a record store or a musical instrument store, but record stores are declining and music shops aren't a growing industry. So I think that's a dead end.
It's just really frustrating. I just want to go to a lake, build myself a cabin there, and just live free for a while, Thoreau-style. I could take or leave society for all I care... as far as I'm concerned the only things I need from it are music, electricity, and easy access to food.
I guess everyone goes through this at one point in their life until they just let it go with a sigh and settle into the mundane. I hope that never happens to me. I want to see amazing things, not an office desk!
The problem is, I hate the idea of jobs. Not because I'm lazy, but because I don't want to spend the next forty years of my life wasting 8 hours a day just because I have to. It's fucked. It's a fucked system. I work about 25-30 hours a week this summer and even that felt painfully restricting. My mom and my dad both work insane hours and their lives are a mundane, depressed mess. I don't want to end up like that. I just want to be HAPPY. The more I think about it the more I realize that modern society is set up to make happiness a rare treat as opposed to a way of life. Work your job, be happy on your weekends and vacation days, but come back and be depressed and boxed in the other 80% of the time.
There are only a few jobs I could imagine having and being content with, at least for a little while, that wouldn't make me feel like I'm boxed in and only doing it because society says so. One would be a professional musician, but that's all but impossible. The other would be owning a record store or a musical instrument store, but record stores are declining and music shops aren't a growing industry. So I think that's a dead end.
It's just really frustrating. I just want to go to a lake, build myself a cabin there, and just live free for a while, Thoreau-style. I could take or leave society for all I care... as far as I'm concerned the only things I need from it are music, electricity, and easy access to food.
I guess everyone goes through this at one point in their life until they just let it go with a sigh and settle into the mundane. I hope that never happens to me. I want to see amazing things, not an office desk!
It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win
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Join politics at a local level. There you can make a difference.
Try out whatever you want. Eventually you will find your calling.
Keep your head up and be grateful for what you have. Make it a goal to do what you really want to do to be happy, but don't expect it to be handed to you.
I WISH ITUNES NEVER HAPPENED. I want to own a record store sooo badly, but nope. iTunes is the death of that dream.
We are spoiled.
i'd buy from your record store.(if i lived in your area that is)
i love cd's.
you get the art, in most cases the lyrics, and you can collect em and put em all in those cd housing thingy towers.. i myself do not own an mp3 player or whatever else those lil fucking gagets are called.. fuck em..
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
do what make you happiest.
a person doesn't have to do a thing society trys to steer them into.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
With that said there is opportunity to experience the world and life and to live a life that is not ordinary and mundane.
And most importantly life is what you make it, or perhaps how you perceive it through nature or nurture.
I have always been happy no matter what I'm doing, that is my personality. I feel I chose it in some part, but that most of it was who I was pre-programed through my genes to be.
Had an awesome fulfilling college experience, worked as a Brewery Rep for the Magic Hat Brewing Company for three years, taught English (ESL) in Korea, traveled through Europe, China, Tibet, Nepal, southeast Asia, and India.
Now I teach people how to play black jack and poker and look forward to going into work most days.
Have a wife and two kids, two mortgage payments I can't afford, questions about sending my kids to school, too much credit card debt, school loans, Tenant issues (I'm the landlord), money problems, but through it all I'm happy.
Sorry for the long rant, just wanted to express my point of view.
Reading the OP, I was going to make a similar comment to yours. Somebody's pretty spoiled, IMO.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
There's nothing like listening to Yield while running through a snowstorm along the white waters of Lake Michigan.. or listening to Into the Wild while watching the day turn to night on a warm summer's eve..
The bitterness for being able to conveniently bring music into nature astonishes me.
Ed used to carry a walkman where ever he went and cassettes are way shittier sounding than mp3s. Again, nothing wrong with making the best of both. Music is music.
If you keep your life simple you can exisit with less. We make are own stress with all the objects we think we need.
Garden, fish, hunt if you eat meat(YUK).... I did it alone with three kids and NEVER accepted assist from the Government with food stamps etc... I had the greatest organic garden you could imagine on 1/4 acre.. I canned +froze veggies, made my own famous jam, that lasted me and my neighbors through the winter. We caught crappie and Bass all summer to freeze through the winter.
Id go to garage sales etc... You can make a craft and do craft shows or art shows if your even half way tallented. My entire family (except me) have been able to live that life for many years. They make jewlery and travel the shows following the seasons.
You can even sell CDs and musically related items at flea markets 2-3 days a week and make a decent living. I used to go to garage sales and buy collectables and good deals to resell at flea markets or at my garage sale for awhile.(These days you can sell on various online sites as well.)
I made more then I made when I quit to get a "real" job. I needed benefits for the kids and Myself. Thats what got me into the state I am. If you or they get sick ~ God forbid something really bad happens~ you have to have insurance or your left for dead. That fear enslaved me.
Someday I hope to be free again too. Its not just a dream.
I agree 200%. I was a resister until my daughters bought me an Ipod.
It broke and I miss it.
Everything on it was copied from CDs not i~tunes. There is nothing like sitting on the beach listening to Oceans ~or any PJ!! So~Perfect. I still love my LPs, and CDs. Still buy them too! But ~ on the run~ I find peace with my ipod. (or did)
haha well thank you
it sucks...almost all the record stores around me have been closing within the past 6 months or so. it's discouraging.
Yeah, but in modern third-world tribes and groups where they forage for food, build their own shelters, herd animals, etc. to survive they actually work less than us for survival and live much happier lives. Society doesn't "spoil" us. It's designed in a way that promotes unhappiness. We have all this shit - 24 hour news channels, designer jeans, retail megastores - but in the end, so many of us are so unhappy. Why is that? What do we really have?
I have no problem with the idea of working to feed myself and shelter myself directly, like building my own place or growing my own food or hunting to eat. It's sitting at a desk or whatever to get money that I don't want to do.
There's probably people who are looking for loopholes in my logic. And I'll admit that there probably are some. I don't know, it's just confusing. Sometimes it seems I don't even know what I want at all except that I want to be happy more than modern society allows.
Went to live in a commune in Virginia for 3 weeks. Was accepted as member there but decided not to go back.
I now have a first job at a grocery store, but volunteer at a music venue every show and now can say i feel like I have found a good portion of my calling and myself in music. Exactly what that will mean for future jobs, I cant say. But going to a commune, helped me figure out that while I think Walden and the commune life is important, even essential, I personally cant break myself away from music in the city. I need to be around people and music and art.
The point of the story is, I was like you a few years ago. There are people like us around today. Chris Mccandless and the kerouac's and hesse's of the world are guiding lights.
Travel, visit communes, go the unconventional path.
You seem to me to be a seeker, not unlike myself. Our oath's will always be harder than others, but we must walk them nonetheless.
The point is to follow your dreams. If you dont want a 9-5 job dont get one.
Dont worry you will find yourself and your calling. Its tough. I had some really rough times, and I still will i assume, but once you find your passion, its heaven!
Your life doesnt have to be boring or worthless.
I feel the same way. I spent 20 years in school preparing for the real world, and the truth is school doesnt prepare you for squat. Not how to get a job. Not how to deal with life. Not how to deal with bosses or coworkers.
I am not going to get a mundane job. I will not settle. Neither should you
dont worry....