- Joined
- Nov 10, 2019
JFC all that is just whinging.That dude went to college just to get a Bachelor's in fucking Fictional Writing and doesn't have any debt because his parents are rich.
I haven't posted here in like 5 years but I'm in a really bad way at the moment so what do I have to lose?
I'm a 26 year old man who has felt like I haven't had my shit together since I graduated college at the end of 2015. I graduated with a bachelor's in Fiction Writing from a good college and I was lucky enough to have parents who could provide for me and let me avoid taking on student debt. I'm pretty much the poster child for privileged millennials, and when I look back on how privileged I am, I feel completely dejected, because I have what people would kill for and I've managed to fuck it up.
I had an internship with a small real estate magazine doing copywriting for most of 2015. It was an unpaid position but I honestly enjoyed doing the work and I did learn a lot on the job. I had hoped, and was told, that there was potential because of my work quality, it could turn into a full time position. I had basically gone into doing full on journalism by the end of my internship period. By my graduation, they recanted and instead offered a freelance position for 900 a month, which tapered off after March of 2016. I didn't get fired, they just stopped responding to my emails and work stopped coming in. I had tried taking other freelance positions, but they either weren't interested in paying me, or promised pay then didn't. Meanwhile, my fiction writing has stalled. I haven’t been published unlike a lot of my classmates. I can’t generate new ideas for short stories, not that they’re selling anyway, and flash fiction is something that’s completely stumped me. Meanwhile, I have been trying to write a fantasy novel and a graphic novel (I even had inks done for sample pages for this) for years, neither of which I can make any headway on. I love writing about video games, but just lol if I think I could ever get into that flooded market. I just feel like a total and abject failure on the thing I dedicated a ton of my life to, and something I want to be successful at. I lost my spark a long time ago.
So that lead me to working at my current position: a vague office assistant type position (My official title is Office Administrator) for $16 an hour for my dad’s family business. Again, seems like it would be a sweet deal, but I don’t think I’m able to sustain myself anymore. I make $1,720 on average per month. I have to live an hour and fifteen minutes away in a super shitty rural college town because the rent is affordable. I pay $270+$80 for utilities as part of a four person apartment which has its own fucking issues (roommate currently very behind on rent and refuses to find a job but instead just plays WoW all day and we’re all signed on the same lease so we’re all fucked, and that’s just what’s happened this past two weeks). I have a $350 a month car payment for a new car my parents talked me into getting. My food bill varies like crazy for reasons I’ll get into, but it’s on average $250-300. My gas is anywhere from $140 to $240 a month because I also drive for work frequently and am not reimbursed for the gas specifically, just vague mileage. I have to pay around 150-250 dollars every month and a half or so for car maintenance/repair, but it’s starting to tick upwards (had to spend $612 total on maintenance + brake pad/rotor replacement last week). I also was diagnosed with sleep apnea and because of how my work insurance works, I’m on the full hook for my bipap machine which is going to total around 3k to 4.5k, with around $300 dollars having already been paid on it for set up and equipment and another $240 due by the 20th. I also have an additional $2,000 dollars of debt I’m trying to pay off from credit cards/bad purchases made during stupid impulse mania moments when I was more confident in my living/money situation. This is the first time I’ve written down all the expenses I can think of in a while because every time I tried to budget before, I just find the numbers unworkable and have a minor panic attack.
Also I feel like I need to expand on the family business part: the entirety of the office side minus one person is of my close family (Grandfather is the president, my dad is the VP, my mom is the accountant. Me and another unrelated person are office assistants). I basically hate every second of it, both in the content of the job and working with my family. I’m on medication for anxiety and depression and both along with my temper are ramped into overdrive being around my family in a work related setting. I don’t know why, for the most part they don’t do anything different than the other office assistant does, but it bothers me like crazy. Like, to the point of genuine anger and stress. I thought for awhile it was because I work in a very open office where I’m not allowed to shut my door, and my inspection area for part of my job is literally in the office break room (Which is also the shipping area I have to oversee). And maybe that’s part of it, but I didn’t have any issues working at the magazine where I didn’t even have an office, I was just in a corner of a room with 7 other people working on their own computers. I'm tired of being such an angry and anxious person.
Expanding on the expenses part of my work, I have to drive on site to a factory in Chicago where our company’s product is used to restock machines and pick up scrap. It really sucks outside of being out of the office, but it ramps up my driving time per day from 2 and a half hours to 4 and a half. I put on around 3000 miles per month through work driving. The only thing I’m allowed to put on my expense report is driving to and from the factory as a vague mile count that my dad defined for me. It’s even worse because it’s not consistent how many times I go. Some months I go four times a month, others I go 12. It’s totally unreliable income that ends up going right back into my car anyway. Worse, I don’t get to add gas to my expenses because “that’s not how I do it”, which is basically synonymous for all the fucking problems around here. Also, I get no paid time off. I got five paid vacation days after working here for a year, but I ended up having to blow most of those when I came down with bronchitis in the fall and I got sent home. So going to therapy/the doctor/getting car repairs done is doubly shitty because it also fucks my total paycheck.
Any time I try to talk to my dad about my situation or ask for a raise/added expenses compensation/even just changing how we do something because the current way isn’t working, he either deflects with bringing up religion and that I need to pray more, or he just tries to intimidate me/stares me down. When I confessed to him after a series of near-breakdowns at work that I was suicidal, he all but told me to find religion. This did not help, but I’ve managed to fight off that level of depression for the time being. I’m not going to do anything like that. My family doesn’t seem interested in my issues. Any time I bring them up, I get talked down to about hurting the business and being an adult means taking responsibility, and every time those words echo around my head I just feel like crying. My grandparents live in a mansion, my parents own a second house in Florida. Why can’t I ask for more than barely scraping by?
Additionally because I’m driving so much, I eat out all the time rather than keep food at my apartment. My food has gotten stolen/eaten without my permission more than once and none of my roommates ever comp to it, so buying food to keep at home seems like just throwing money away. The downside to eating out is obviously I’m blowing even more money that way and I’ve managed to put on a ton of weight. I was 190 lb at the end of college, teetering on the edge between obese and overweight, and now I’m 265. I’ve spoken to a nutritionist about cutting my weight down, but the number one thing that would cut down on my weight is not driving so much so I can find time to exercise and prepare real food. But walking around my neighborhood is a really good way to get robbed and/or shot (there was a shooting on my street last month, and two more on the next block).
I’ve wanted to quit since I got here, but because of how far away I am from work, the last thing I want to do on my limited downtime (Around 2 hours a night + weekends) is do anything relating to work. Weekends especially feel like they’re a race to try and make up for how little I got to actually do shit I enjoy on the weekdays, but a lot of the times I end up just not doing anything and feel even worse. When I have tried to redo my resume so I can start applying to other places, I always somehow make it worse, even after asking other people for advice. Even then, nobody wants a writer. I’ve interviewed at a handful of places since 2015 and I’ve always been turned down. I don’t meet their qualifications, I don’t have enough experience for this shitty entry level position.
I’m going to cut it here just because this shit is long as it is. I’ll probably find something to add later.
TL;DR: I just feel like I’m spiraling down, and have been for a while. Every aspect of my life makes me unhappy and I see no road to fixing it. I need money to get myself out of my shitty living situation but I can’t make money because the only place that would hire me is my dad who doesn’t respect me, and he doesn’t respect me because I’m a failure at everything I’ve tried to do. I feel like my life is a catch-22 but that I also shouldn’t even be bitching about it because I was given everything I could want and managed to totally fuck that up. I feel used by my parents as cheap labor, and I don’t know what to do anymore.
No one is making you pay for a new car or making you fat faggot.
Nut up and take personal responsibility for your life. I've worked in the same geographic are and there are plenty of jobs that just require a degree and a pulse.
I'm glad to know this dudes life sucks, confirming my suspicion he exerts control on a forum bc he controls nothing else in his bugman world.
If your reading this bud, do the world a favor and neck yourself.
