Desperation Approach

The almost-grown up problem index went up several degrees into the orangish-red area with two simple things: my dad asked about my student loans and I looked into my bank account. These two problems exist in two dimensions of money woes: with the bank account blowing wide open budget, rent, vacation issues and the loan inquiry pertaining only to some cartoony, scary, pretend amount of money that I could never hope to pay off in any sub-geological time scale.

It's all Beloit bullshit. If I were to take the numbers and grades and make a beautiful flow/venn/graphy chart-diagram, I could easily, easily say that it wasn't worth it. In the range of visible damage, I have stayed mostly the same save for a few scars, and as far as internal wounds, I am not sure, but it probably isn't good. The immaterial things I have gained and lost with Beloit is definitely in the positive range to a high degree. Friends, lessons learned, actual school lessons learned, experiences, and newfound abilities are abundant, but invisible to the quantitative nature of money regrets. I'm a bit fucked, but I hear most people my age are. I

I don't even own a credit card, so I'm a few steps ahead.

Thinking about the pains and trials of sub-adulthood, I, like every generation before me, wonders if the 'sound' advice of the last generation will apply to my own transition. You know, with the issues and all. The news issues. The sad things the white guy and the black guy on TV talk about hopefully while calling each other sonsofafuck.

I know every generation has its set of fears and anxieties related to their near future, and we've got ours stacked up high. Sure, we don't have as intense of a fear of nuclear annihilation as my father's youth (and majority of his life), but the legitimate fear of the loss of economic steam and the power of the American hegemony over the world is pretty relevant. I've heard talk relating my generation (Generation Y and on, if those sociology think-tank terms can be used) more to what a lot of jerks call "The Greatest Generation" than the Baby Boomers. Reaching adulthood on the precipice of a large economic recession is the only comparison that I can pull out now with being unable to locate the article that spoke about that. Maybe I just want to drive a wedge between myself and the generation that has constructed the bullshit that is going to make life a bit harder for me and my generational contemporaries.

But that is what history is all about, inheriting the problems of the generation previous, and attempting to fix them in adulthood. Great-great-great grandparents (I'm speaking in a general and vague way that places the blame of the ruling parties on all of our dear, likable, actually mostly good family members) built up petty border disputes while exploiting people globally with cruel imperialistic practices, our great-grandparents had to deal with two wars that resulted from European disputes while creating unstable solutions to the problems those wars presented (balkanizing of middle eastern kingdoms for the convenience of the west, dissolution of Palestine, advent of the atomic bomb). Our grandparents lived under the fear of nuclear war and communism, and in the process built more of the odious bombs and in the process burned down South Asia along with installing questionable leaders with strange coups. Our parents, whose trials are the most familiar to me, saw the end of the Cold War and legitimate fear of nuclear annihilation, but have given to us not one, but three hilarious wars without end.

We're going to be all over Iraq, Terror, and Drugs for a long time to come. HOOOOOOPE and CHAAAAANGE be damned (but preferable).

Those were all international issues, nevermind the wacky domestic jive we've got. I'm also not much for politics talk, as I get flustered and am not much for argumentation. Next semester I am taking a class on argumentation, so I will get back to you on that. People won't trust what I'll have to say, being a middle class white man with a BA in Communications Studies anyhow. But if I were a politician in any capacity, or a Political Sciences major, people would trust me even less. The prejudice goes in all directions, academics versus layman, mistrust of academia, left v. right, media against stuff people tell you.

Then there is the concept of selective media watching due to information overload. With so many sources of news, people choose to ignore all but one or find a way to not trust the rest. It's a universal phenomena that has manifested very visibly in the days of cable news networks, RSS feeds, and news link sites.

(An aside: A Joke I made: Why does Wolverine only watch network news? Because Cable's news always involves genocide and all of his friends dying or becoming evil.)

Nobody has the whole story, nobody will source their information, and we got to do what we can.

See that? It's the ultra-typical response of one of the shining examples of this generation's worst aspects. Starting by talking about how he got his dumb ass into big debt, justification for debt, blaming previous generations, using wikipedia as a legitimate source of information, speaking about their useless liberal arts degree, deep cynicism, reference to 80's-90's pop culture, and the eventual weak indecisive conclusion. All of this on a blog when he was meaning to search for a job.

All of this comes out in these occasional bursts. My introspection is usually limited to something akin to that Halloween game that involves sitting in the dark touching normal (often soggy) items and recoiling in horror. It's also all tied to half-jokes and strained similes.

I like trite bits of media. I like girls. I like good times. I like drawers and walls full of strange things. There isn't a complete man between all of this, but there shouldn't be. It's always a work in progress.

And hell, I'm working.
But I'll work harder.