If you missed the last 2 years, you can find them here :)
So you’re 27 now. I think this might be the first year that wasn’t noticeably better than the last. Every year has its challenges, but that’s usually an opportunity to grow and become better. It doesn’t really feel like that’s what happened this time around though. Don’t get me wrong, you definitely learned things. But you learned them first hand through cold, hard experience.
You hardened up this year. That tireless patience you’ve been honing all of your life was tested almost daily and quite frankly you’re burned out. This year was difficult on two levels, personal and societal.
I wish I could say that things will get better, but I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet. I think things are going to continue to get worse for a time until they improve, but I am honestly questioning if we’ll be able to reach the turning point peacefully or not.
Let’s start from the beginning.
So around this time last year, you were packing up your life and making the move out west. You’ve had a California mindset for a long time and to finally be moving there is a great feeling. Being surrounded by like minded people is comforting, almost intoxicating. It’s a hard thing to pull away from, which is what people are calling echo chambers right now. But moving to Long Beach honestly felt like going home, right from the beginning.
I cannot stress how much I freaking love Long Beach.
The diversity of the people and the culture they bring with them. The immensely walkable Downtown/East Village. The almost absurd friendliness of the people. And of course, you can’t beat that great California weather. At the risk of throwing shade at my friends in San Francisco, it feels like a better version of it (don’t hate me!)
It feels good to finally be somewhere where your community actually seems to care. As much as I love Atlanta, it always felt like no one seemed to care about the city. And that made it difficult for me to care in turn. But it’s obvious that the people here are interested in building a better life for not just for themselves but for everyone around them.
You’ll finally get rid of your car after 10 months when your parents visit and drive it back to ATL. To say it’s liberating is an understatement. Let’s try and see how long we can go without getting another one.
The new job is great at the start, but over time you realize that you have no future here. It became clear over the year that the people in power are more interested in keeping what little power they have over their subordinates than actually working together to build a better world, or even a better company for that matter. They like their underlings to be mindless sheep who do as their told and not ask too many questions.
To mindlessly follow is something that you’ve never be able to do. You’ve always welcomed people who challenge you to be better, and in turn you challenge them back. But when it feels like most of the people who are supposed to be pushing you to grow aren’t interested in doing the same themselves, the dynamic just leads to resentment from both sides. They’re probably frustrated by my unwillingness to do work without understanding why and how we’re doing what we do, and I’m frustrated by the apathy, incompetence, and lack of communication being displayed by people who are supposed to be my superiors not only in title but in skill and knowledge.
You stuck it out in the hopes that things would get better over time, but they never did and they only got worse. From January to August, 50 hour weeks turned into 60 which turned into 70 which turned into 80. You were initially ok with the extra hours, partially because you were told it was temporary (this was naive and too trusting of you) and partially because you were able to visit friends around the country on the weekends. But as the hours expected of you continued to climb, the weekend trips stopped happening. Saturdays were just another weekday, and Sundays were eaten up in transit between North Dakota and California. It’s hard to take even weekend trips when almost every waking hour of your life has been stolen for the company.
In fact, you stopped making any future plans altogether. It was near impossible because your project manager was terrible at his job and failed to communicate any sort of project timeline to the entirety of the team (I believe the Leads might have known more, but then even they seemed clueless half the time). But of course, you were expected to drop anything and everything on a whim. How can you plan a trip for 2 weeks from now when you could end up being strong-armed into working the day of your hypothetical trip?
You did manage to get a week off in March to travel to Europe. This only took two months of forewarning and asking your PM every week for approval, which he finally approved 3 weeks before the trip. Thanks for costing me $400+ in just plane tickets alone, asshole, all because you can’t plan ahead that far (let’s not even talk about how a large portion of your job is literally just making long-term plans). Barcelona and Amsterdam you’ve already seen and they were great to re-experience with friends you hadn’t gone with before (shout out to Brian, Daniel, and Syneva). But the real experience for you was the solo trip to Iceland. Your first time traveling alone was a little scary, but well worth it. Also meeting up with another friend who was in Iceland at the same time as you was a surreal experience (s/o to Casey). You learned things about yourself and are now more confident for your next solo excursion.
You were able to get in a few weekend trips before things got out of control at work. Being able to see Leah, Casey (different Casey), and Jasmine after a few years away from college and Charlie for the first time was awesome! And of course, the weekend of your parent’s anniversary, Daniel’s birthday (different Daniel), and seeing Mansi in the hospital was crazy hectic but well worth it. Unfortunately, around this time the hours became too much and you had to stop taking these trips. You just wanted to be in Long Beach alone for a weekend so you could not be a stressed wreck for the next grueling week of work.
Depression surfaced once more. Last year it was from a lack of work, this year from too much. You finally got taken off the project at the beginning of August, and you’re still working too much, but at least you’re working on things you want to now. Tough it out, you can do it and you’ll be better for it.
Your health really took a dive this year. When the only things you really have time for are working, eating, and sleeping, it’s not surprising. That chest pain you’ve been carrying around for months and haven’t been able to see a doctor for still? Who cares as long as the project is going well. Still need to get those wisdom teeth pulled too, but taking a week off to recover from that was out of the question since the project would have suffered. That extra 20 pounds you put on in 4 months should be on display proudly as a trophy representing the millions of dollars you made for your superiors. Crapitalism is great, y’all!
I think you would have been OK with all of this if you at least got paid overtime. But you’re salaried and when the rest of your team fails to speak up alongside you about the 16 hour work days, you end up looking like the crazy person making a fuss over nothing. I have to stop and ask: what is exactly crazy about working the 8 hours (give or take a few here and there) that you signed up for? Never fall for this again. If a company insists on working you to death, you will at the very least be paid well in the future.
You considered actually taking this to HR and maybe even higher court to fight for the lost wages. But friends advised that this move is not great for the long term, because other companies will be wary to hire someone who tried to basically sue their last company. It’s a catch-22. You either do the right thing and get what you’re rightfully owed, or you save your own skin because trying to fight a corporation is impossible in the US (and possibly the world?). There is no justice in the world, only survivors.
As unfortunate as it is, it might be time to start compromising on your morals to get ahead. Everyone else is lying and cheating their way to the top so you might as well join them, if only to actually be in a position of power to make real and lasting changes to the status quo. Hell, even Mom said that sometimes you have to do some rotten things to get ahead in life. It feels wrong but it might be the only way to avoid being left behind from being too idealistic about how things should work and people should behave. It’s how you avoid getting beheaded like Ned Stark.
Pretty pessimistic so far right? There’s still more sad stuff to talk about, but not all can be put into written form at this time. Partially because of the sensitive nature of the topics (some very interesting personal developments between your friend groups and yourself). Partially because it’s become impossible to talk about things without offending people in some way these days. And I’m not even talking about using overtly “bad” words that we all know shouldn’t be used. People lost their shit over my use of using “men beating their wives” as an example of something terrible. Here’s the problem: when you can’t even accurately describe terrible things, you can’t have a discourse around those topics. If you can’t talk about these things, you will never be able to solve these problems and these horrible things will continue to happen. All because you lack the constitution to stomach a discussion of the awful things that humans do. But by all means, if you need your safe space to get through your day, please remove yourself from the conversation and get out of the way so the rest of us can get to work making the world a better place.
Read that whole post, it’s not long, but if you insist on not doing so, here is the relevant bit:
“If you intend to interact with the world outside your door, you do not get emotional safe spaces, because the world is not even a remotely physical safe space, and demanding that it provide an emotional safe space is a form of extremist privilege. At best, it is denial and avoidance; at worst, it is political chicanery, trying to shut down the discussion before it’s begun.
You are not safe. You were doomed the moment you were conceived. And you’re not going to feel safe or happy for all of the time you have left, be it eighty years or eighty seconds. The idea that you could is absurd; the idea that you should is offensive. It might be a salvageable concept if you’ve spent your life waging total war against every injustice served to every other human. You have not. You cannot even meaningfully try.”
In short, get over yourself.
That all started with the election of course. I won’t waste my time going into the details of my opinions on this past year in an attempt to justify myself to internet strangers, but I do want to have a record of my thoughts and feelings a year after living in a post-truth society. Here’s what you, anonymous reader, needs to know about me: I’m an unapologetic Bernie-Bro who thinks that the DNC screwed him out of an easy win against Trump or even Hillary running as a Republican (if you think she’s a Democrat, you’re misinformed).
I don’t think there was a single major platform I disagreed with him on. Did I think that everything he promised would happen? Of course not. I am naive at times, but I’m not completely stupid. But taking steps in the right direction, even if it is to just tread water against a Republican majority Congress, is the right thing to do. Sweeping the underlying issues of our government under the rug through Hillary would have been terrible. As for Trump, I don’t need to speak about his idiocy and evil since even a large portion of those who voted for him are finally snapping out of his trance.
I’m glad that our generation is finally starting to care about politics again. Make no mistake, this is only possible because Trump got elected. The better option would have been Bernie, since he also inspired a large number of our generation to get involved, but I’ll take Trump over Hillary. We don’t need any more corporate bought politicians in office, but if it had to be Trump at least he’s dumb enough to make the big wigs lives’ as shitty as they’ve been making the general population’s for decades now. Hillary would have been 4 to 8 more years of complacency and the illusion of progress. With Trump, we have to stare directly at ourselves and say “We did this. Now how can we make sure this never happens again?”
A lot of my left leaning friends will try to distance themselves from this responsibility. But you can’t, because we’re the educated elite and it is our duty to help those who are less fortunate than us. You should know better than to give in to your lizard brain and think purely with emotion like those who voted Trump into office. Those uneducated masses did what they thought was their best chance to improve their lives, and to put the blame on them is cowardice. If you fail to see that, I question your commitment of empathy, tolerance, and equality for all. Being ignorant, misinformed, fearful, and having terrible ideas on race, gender, religion, etc. does not mean that you should be exiled from the rest of our society. All humans deserve a chance at life, even the shitty ones.
This is not me being apologetic or sympathetic to these people. If they choose to wilfully remain ignorant or insist on inciting violence to the rest of us, then by all means I am in favor of letting these stubborn fools die out slowly or forceful retaliation if deemed necessary. Pacifism is not an option right now, but escalating immediately to violence is also wrong. Violence in self defense is the only acceptable form, and until you’ve exhausted all the other options it should ideally not even come to that.
I’m idealistic enough for Universal Basic Income and Artificial Intelligence and Automation to catapult humanity into a peaceful, space exploring super-utopia one day. I’m realistic enough that I know that this future is decades or centuries away and will be a hard fought victory for those who are left after the bloodshed. Make no mistake, there will be war. The older I get, the more solidified my belief becomes that most humans are too selfish and lazy to strive for the ideals that they think they stand for.
But in the meantime, it seems like the focus is on survival. Trying to get by as a reasonable, rational moderate these days is hard. And the worst part is that you’re not even a moderate, you’re just not a radical leftist. It’s incredible how intolerant the left has become to people like you (there are dozens of us! DOZENS!) - those who stand for all of the same ideals and values but don’t think that punching Nazis is the best way to achieve our long-term goals. You’re either exactly like them or you’re labeled as an enemy, which is just the other side of the same, fascist coin.
There are many things that I’d like to have a discourse on from this year that I’m actually too afraid to write down from fear of some militant leftist starting an online crusade against me because I choose to treat all people (especially the worst of us) as humans. Maybe I can tolerate racists and sexists and bigots because that’s what I’ve had to do my entire life.
Because that is life. You cannot avoid these people so you have to figure out how to effectively deal with them that works for you. Avoidance is not an option unless you never want to leave your home again. But good luck not getting offended on the Internet if you can’t even be in the same room as a bigot.
I want to talk about the doctor on United Airlines who got dragged off after refusing to give up the seat he was randomly selected for. I want to talk about the Google guy and his memo that was leaked when he was asking for feedback in a private group. I want to talk about how Trump is actually the best thing for this country in the long run, and how Hillary would have been a bandaid for a much deeper problem in US society. The one word summary is probably “anti-intellectualism.” Our cultural relationship to education needs a massive shift towards reverence of knowledge, not disdain.
But I can’t because I’m not frothing at the mouth and asking for blood, throwing some tantrum in a strange circlejerk with the violently inclined liberals who I thought were reasonable and rational people capable of using their words until this year. All of these topics are off-limits to those of us who want to discuss the nuances and intricacies of what these events mean for us not only today but in the future. If you think that any of those topics have a clear side that is completely right or wrong, you aren’t paying attention.
The days of open dialogue and discourse are gone. People will pick out a minor detail of your argument and then use that to invalidate the bigger picture you’re trying to address. There’s no more “Can you explain what you mean by that?” You’ll find the other person unwilling to explain because “They’ve explained it a million times before” or “They should know better, I’m not obligated to teach them.” Their lack of patience reveals their true intention of just wanting to feel superior to someone instead of using the opportunity to convert someone on the fence to our side. Way to stay humble fam.
I feel like I’m just rambling at this point. You should continue to have these hard conversations in person, because that’s the only way it seems to actually get through to anyone these days. Trying to have any sort of civil discussion these days online is a pipe dream. You’ll be met with either impatience, ignorance, stubbornness, close-mindedness, or emotional frailty (its usually all of the above).
So your goal for this year: stop trying to change hearts and minds on the Internet. It’s a lost cause. Focus on the small circle that you physically interact with and make positive changes there. There are only two people who come to mind right now who are willing to discuss sensitive topics without judgment and with true openness at any sort of length, Brian and Sebastian, and to them you’re very grateful (A lot of your friends will discuss taboo topics, but they tire quickly).
Finally, let’s end on a positive note. This year still had its high points, and it’s good to remember those times since it makes all the bad worth it. You got into credit card churning, and that’s going to help fund your future travels for years if not decades. You got to go on some pretty sweet trips this year (you already mentioned some earlier), out in the desert of Palm Springs for Cynthia’s birthday and of course, that MOTHERFUCKING ECLIPSE. Words and pictures will do it no justice, but you’re actually considering becoming an eclipse chaser from how spectacular it was. It’s as good an excuse as any to travel the world after all. Dragoncon was so great this year! Coming almost a week early to see friends and family was the right call and I’m already hyped for next year.
Mistakes were made but lessons were learned. Carry them with you. Be your own person and don’t let others define how you should live your life. You’ve always had a good moral compass, but you tend to doubt yourself a lot and seek others for guidance and confirmation. While it’s good to learn from those around you, It’s high time you started believing in yourself, especially when it seems like the rest of world is going crazy. I hope 27 is everything you want and more. See ya in a year from now.
