How Do I Make Something of My Life?

[Guineas]

Originally Posted by mwv

I'd recommend Houston - it's the cheapest big city in the USA and has a very dynamic economy. One can get by without a car. There's a very big art scene right under the surface. After Texas residence is established, he can enter the University of Houston, as it has non-selective admissions.

You've got to be kidding... one CANNOT get by in Houston without a car, unless by Houston you mean the two blocks of Downtown and the Medical Center and that stupid tram.

[Guineas]

Originally Posted by Area_Man7

UPDATE:

After just under two months it would seem that I've been permanently laid off from the first actual full time job that I've been able to find in nearly a year. They dropped around a dozen people after their April numbers hit the table. And I even had my own office...

I've still got a small part time gig and a couple of freelance projects, but all of these combined aren't equal to a third of what I was bringing home with the advertising job. That pay check was our "ticket out of here" and now it's gone. It seems that as soon as I let myself relax and accept the possibility that everything really was going to be OK, the rug got snatched out again and I'm left here sitting on my ass trying to figure out how I'm going to pay the rent this month.

We had an itemized, line item budget that ran to the end of the year and detailed where every dollar would be going, the dates we would pay certain things off for good, increasing percentages moving into a savings account, etc. It was based on my salary from the advertising company, so that plan is out the window.

I have to say that at this point I am certainly losing faith in the system. I've tried and tried to do things the right way. I've worked my ass off for months and months, hitting the pavement, making phone calls, knocking on doors, applying to every single position I could find, going through training for jobs that never happen, filling out literally hundreds of applications, steadily losing weight from stress (there's not much left to lose at this point, I'm the thinnest I've been in over a decade), becoming a nervous f#@&!ng wreck over the constant rotating cycle of deciding which bills I'm going to pay late this month and whether I need electricity or food more.

And just when you think it's all coming to an end, just when you sit down and breathe a sigh of relief, they bend you right back over and you find yourself in the same position as before.

I can certainly understand why people turn to crime. At some point, the fear of going to prison is overshadowed by the need to feed your family. When you spend years and years working "within the system" and making no progress, it really gets to you. When you look back and the last couple years of your life are one long, miserable, sickening, stressful blur of doing nothing but looking for a job and worrying about your bills, you start to feel like you're reaching a kind of breaking point.

I've decided to take a more drastic approach. The economy in central Alabama is obviously not strong enough to support its populace. Or, perhaps, it's just not the kind of economy that's right for me. In any event, I've done my best to be a part of this system and to make it work for me, and I've seen nothing but resistance on every front. I've reached the point where my only impetus is to get out of the state of Alabama, and the South entirely, by any means necessary (short of joining the military).

If I'm going to be sad, sick, miserable and broke, then I might as well do it in a place where there's at least a small chance I could find a job that would afford me and my girlfriend some modicum of happiness or a shot at the kind of life that we want. You know, the kind of life where you don't sit up all night staring out the window, trying to figure out what you're doing wrong. The type of life where the idea of going on a vacation doesn't make you sick inside because you can't remember the last time you actually had one, and you know good and damn well that you're at least a couple of years away from even being able to begin to save for one. The type of life where images of happy people enjoying themselves don't fill you with disgust and envy.

So where do we go? We'll live in our car on a beach.

Anything is better than this.

Where are the jobs?

Go back to school. If your IQ is as high as you say ("genius range"), you should have no problem scoring 99th percentile on your SAT and ACT. Spend a few weeks studying for it (all out effort, no half-assing) and do lots of practice exams. With a 99th percentile and an essay like you wrote in your first post, you can get into a good (top 40, if not top 20) college with a scholarship. Your high school GPA wouldn't matter at this point, although it wouldn't hurt to take a few community college classes to demonstrate your academic abilities and commitment. Once in college, then figure out what else you want to do from there, although I would strongly not recommend "photography, graphic design, video production" as fields of study.

Your future is what you make of it. You still seem to me like you're dabbling around. It blows my mind that you are still considering fields like graphic design and video production when you have seen firsthand how rare those jobs come by. I mean, seriously, photography? Any Joe with a digital SLR, a 8GB flash card and a nice set of lenses can be a fairly competent photographer. What do you think the market then would be like for most professional photographers? Nil. There's nothing inherently wrong with the system, you just can't be Don Quixote.

You need to break out of your rut, minor adjustments like what you have done in the past year just won't cut it. And I hope this doesn't come out too harshly (I mean to illustrate my point): if you feel like you don't have what it takes to get a 95-99th percentile on a high school standardized test (algebra and reading comp), then you ought to adjust your entitlement accordingly and accept your chosen fate.

[dmarie123]

I think you should join the military, they only strip your individuality in how you dress for work...that's it. Get some free college while your in, and the GI Bill. You'll have a steady pay check, free health, dental, vision, life insurance, housing, benefits of a base wide community, career advisors, education counselors, instant credit worthiness, and the FREE college. When you get out, your GI Bill pays you a stipend to live on, while paying for college. While your in, you're getting a skill, getting paid, and getting free college that doesn't dip out of your GI Bill. 4 years- that's the length of high school! Just do it!

[ragingtulip]

I just read this thread. I hope things have worked out!