Life continues to spiral out of control.
The moment you think you've found some secure footing, however exhausting it is to maintain, another part of the floor drops out from beneath you and you cling to whatever comes to hand, even knowing it will only support you for a few brief moments.
Is this "adulthood"?
This tumbling from one creaky support to another, hoping each time you've hit bedrock, only to find it's just another rotted-out rope bridge?
Beyond all the home-ownership and car-ownership and MONEY, we were promised stability.
Peace of mind.
That if we worked harder, suffered longer, and planned more intensely, we would eventually reap the benefits. The kind our parents enjoy. The kind sitcoms detail in each succeeding episode.
When will it be our turn?
Or are we (or our older siblings, Generation X) merely the beginning of the end of the great American experiment, the initial rumblings of impending doom which we all feel in our hearts?
I wish I could say whose fault this is.
I wish I could point a single finger and yell "Get 'em!"
I wish a single act of removal would send shockwaves of positive energy throughout the system, repairing what is broken, filling in gaps which have existed for centuries.
But I can't.
Because it wouldn't.
Of course, in the midst of all that, it seems as though everyone around me has it all happily under control.
Everyone else has their dream job, or at least one which makes enough money that they don't have to worry.
Even the ones dragging around way too many children.
Are they better at faking it?
Do they really have it under control?
Or am I just delusional, hit with uber-level grass-is-greener syndrome?
I'm to the point where I can't even do the old Animal Farm adage, "I WILL WORK HARDER!"
I'm already working two jobs, both of which are very physical and are probably causing long-term health issues and which leave me with almost no time to rest.
This being a "right-to-work" state (seriously the WORST case of false advertising EVER), even if I'm a model employee who gives %110 %100 of the time (which with this workload could be fatal in the long run), there's nothing stopping them from ditching me at the first sign of a budget cut.
Kinda hard to be a good little employee with that looming in the background at all times, even if you like the people you work with.
Which is an ironic little thought, given that I get along with most of the people at the minimum-wage job that I've only been doing since January, yet am constantly in conflict with both my coworkers and management at the $10/hour job which I've been doing for almost six years.
I know what I want to eventually do for my big multi-decade job.
I want to teach college writing.
However, it requires graduate school, and I'm still dragging around a LOT of student loans from my wild-oats period...which just happened to be spent at a private Christian college.
Bleh.
Oh well.
It led to my wife, so it's hard to regret it, even though the consequences are going to become an increasing problem in the coming months.
Sorry for the rambling, but I haven't been writing much lately and this has been a huge weight on my mind.
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Yes, they are better at faking it. No, they don't really have it under control. You are not delusional.
ReplyDeleteWhen my parents got divorced a couple years ago, that really sucked, But it was for the best, and I think it was a good example of adults who somehow lasted 20 years living a life that didn't really suit them. They kept the discomfort bubbling under the surface until there was nothing left (kids) to hold down the lid.