As most of you know, I worked in Iraq for 19 months, from October 2005 through May 2007. I saved $150,000 while I was there. I thought that by making the short term sacrifice of spending a year and a half working 84 hour workweeks in a war zone thousands of miles away from home I'd grant myself freedom from the rat race forever. I was wrong. Or was I?
"I got a cousin, he's broke, don't do shit." -Lawrence from Office Space
I filled up with gas today at a station near Rundberg and I35. This intersection is pretty much the heart of the Austin ghetto now that downtown east Austin has been cleaned up. Anyway, while I was filling up, a crackhead approached me and asked me for money. I've had a particularly rough week at work, and today was the worst day yet, so I was in no mood for his schtick. I exploded on him. I won't give details on what I told him but I will say that I was yelling, and ended up chasing him after he ran away.
I got off track.
When I first got back in the US in June of 2007, I got a job at Hula Hut working 3 shifts per week. For the six months that followed, I was happy for the only extended period of time in my adult life. I didn't work weekends. I never had to get up early. I had plenty of money to buy beer.
I don't have expensive tastes. I drive a Jeep Wrangler with over 150,000 miles. I take pride in buying my clothes from WalMart and Target. I'm cool with drinking Keystone Light and Bud Ice. I live in a modest home. So why can't I live my current lifestyle while only working 3 days per week at a restaurant? Is this too much to ask?
In my office, I have a spreadsheet with a formula that refreshes every time you press enter. It calculates the amount of time, to the second, until my (average) life span runs out. So, I literally sit in my cube and watch myself die.
I don't know what the point of this post is, other than to vent on the depression tip. But the question remains: would I be happier as a vagrant?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Well, the first thing is that you should delete that spreadsheet. The secondthing is you would NOT be happier as a vagrant. There are almost zero bums who chose to be bums. They all chose things that led them to bumdom, like crack. The rest most likely suffer from severe mental illness. No one in their right mind would choose vagrancy because it demands a rejection of the social contract. Without that implied contract among your fellow humans you are left to be treated as subhuman at the whim of whatever socially integrated person with whom you come into contact. I see lots of these people. I haven't seen any that I would describe as happy. I don't think that you would be happy in that situation, or even any closer to happiness than you are now. Here's what it boils down to: circumstances fucked you. You just happened to come into enough money to make the money start working for you rather than the other way around about 15 months before the world economy went into the worst tailspin of your lifetime. Nothing you could do about that. If you want to write an angry series of alternating iambic and amphybrachic couplets then go ahead. It didn't undo the damage to my car and it won't get your money back, but it might be fun. And it might help you just take it in the ass and move on down the road.
You don't have to go vagrant style to eliminate things in your life that are dragging you down. If you hate your line of work, get into something else. You're a smart, engaging, talented guy with 30 years of work ahead of you. The odds that you will be better than whatever schlub is right now doing the job you want are pretty good. But I don't think there's any such thing as a career change head-hunter. You have to make it happen. Do you want to manage a restaurant? Booking agent for clubs? Musician? All the options are still out there, you just have to pick one and go. (Okay, the NBA is off the table, but pretty much everything else is still viable. Except Natalie Portman's pubic hair stylist.)
The answer to your question is, "No" you would not be happier as a vagrant. You would be about as happy as you are now. Zero sum. But not really. The shit Llogg's saying about the social contract is pretty valid in my book. I don't want to adhere to the social contract either, but we've been so heartily conditioned to do so it's waaaay easier just to go with it. I do my little non-conctractual shits to feel like I'm ahead of the game, but still. Being a vagrant isn't the same as just tearing up the social contract - it's using it for toilet paper. You don't need to go that far. Actual bums have a pretty hard life. They sleep outside in all weathers (Hi M*!!) and they don't know where their next meals are coming from. If you are the social type of bum and you need to be around people you are probably going to be around other bums, who are not the highest class or most interesting people. They're going to smell bad and say a bunch of weird shit and probably try to steal whatever you have. There are steps short of actual vagrancy that would probably be far better (though whether you would actually be happier I don't know). Take a look at our relatives in Spicewood. I saw many, many hippies and wanderers in Hawai'i who had checked out of society. They seemed happy when I saw them, but I don't know what they'd do if they had to take their kid to the doctor.
In answer to your other question - is it too much to ask to live your current lifestyle working 3 days a week at a restaurant. The answer to that one is "yes." It is too much to ask. There are 3 ways to look at work and economics: 1) you get less than you give, 2) you get about what you give, and 3) you get more than you give. You want to be in Class 3. Degrees, special knowledge and talent and crime can all lead to Class 3. (Although crime could quickly downspiral into sub- Class 1 if you go to jail.) You are trying to live in Class 3 with a Class 2 (the Iraq trade was about even, wouldn't you say?) Plus a Class 1 (waiters get less than they give). In this case, 2 + 1 does not equal 3.
You've got a Class 2 asset - your work experience from Iraq that will allow you to get another job overseas or a job like you have now. You've got Class 3 possibilities in entertainment, but there are risk factors because it's so hard to make it. (Of course, you could probably get to Class 2 level if you just wanted to pay the bills - Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, etc.)
Listen to your brothers. And yes, post already!
Hello internet stalkers! ;) Just FYI, no, I am not crazy (or any crazier than anybody else).
Post a Comment