This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

Wow. This is exactly the opposite of what I meant to convey.

It seems you would lose your pride if you ever had to take something less than you thought you were worth.

What's pride got to do with this? It's not about pride, or self-respect, or honor, or any of that. It's about a pervasive feeling of helplessness, of feeling unable to crawl out of the hole that you've slipped back into, after struggling out once before with lots of hard work and luck, and noticing that all the people you knew back in the day are still there, even though they're working about as hard as you did.

It's about fear. Once the fear has set in, that fear that you'll never succeed again, that it was all a fluke, that last year was the high point of your life rather than the latest step up on a generally progressing journey, everything becomes harder. It's harder to look for a job. It's harder to care about keeping up the non-job things you were doing. Coding for an open source project, playing a game or socializing with your friends, exercising, making reasonable-effort meals instead of nuking a frozen pizza, taking online courses -- these things start to seem pointless. Sending out resumes and calling recruiters becomes something you're doing because it's just what people do, rather than because you think that you'll actually get a new job that's better than the last one. Eventually you may stop doing that, because what's the point? You're exhausted, and you have to get up early to go to work and perform mindless activity with people you despise, because your fear and depression has poisoned your interactions with every new person you meet.

I've been down this road once before, in 2003, and I really didn't need to do that again. Instead, I looked for a job that could actually pay my lease (which was too high for a single minimum wage job, and I had 7 months to go) and other bills, and kept my spirits up by continuing to live life as though I were about to get a new job and therefore didn't need to shift into a lower gear (as it were), and that worked out much better. I did have to borrow for a coupla months rent (one after I already had a job, since I hadn't gotten a paycheck, yet), and I was out of work for 3-4 months, counting the months I didn't get paid for, but it all worked out.

In my life, every time I've shifted my aim lower because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do better, I've been right. Every time. What I've learned from this is that I should avoid spending my time and energy when it literally isn't worth it. It's better to keep my head up and my attitude cheerful, because without those things, I'll need a lot of luck to get back out of the rut again.

I am genuinely curious to know (you and the others that are cripplingly depressed when life doesnt go their way) -- Why would you be in a crippling state of depression?

It's not just life not going my way. That did happen in 2008, more than once (divorce, my business failed, then the company I started at when my wife and I split up also failed), but while I was very, very upset over some of those things, they didn't drive me into the depression and ennui that I used to feel all the time in the early and mid 90s, when it seemed that there was no way out of my current situation. In situations like that, the solution has always been to quit my job, rather than get a new one. In late 1997, I quit my refrigerator manufacturing job and bought a Novell Certification guide with the money I would otherwise have spent on gas to get to work that week, and by early 1998 I had a Novell network job (no previous tech jobs).

In 2008, I left Alabama and came to the DC metro, and had a good job within a coupla weeks. Only a few months before that, it had felt like I was trapped in Alabama with no future but working at $10/hr. This experience reminded me exactly what feeling to avoid, so that when that company failed in December (after not paying since mid-October), I knew exactly what I needed to do: I did all the job search stuff I could easily do for another programming job, and I avoided doing anything that I would do if I were planning to be out of a job for months. I played games. I watched a lot of TV. I did some Erlang and played with Java on my new G1. I invited a friend to come up to stay with me and look for a job here because the economy and job situation was so great around DC (!).

This sustained burst of optimism did the trick; I got a nice contract gig that turned into a permanent position, where I still am. If I had gone to get a gone to get a job at McDonald's, even assuming I'd immediately gotten a $10/hr, full time position, I would have been making less than my rent per month, after taxes. So, still borrowing money, but without the energy and optimism.

After reflecting on this and writing about it, I realize that part of the problem is that I'm very introverted and somewhat antisocial. Virtually every low-paying job is a service job, which means dealing with people all day. Much of the drained, depressed feeling I had for much of the 90s could probably be traced back to feeling forced to interact with people I would rather have avoided or ignored. Extroverts might well have the opposite reaction; I dunno.

It sounds like you've never done it. You have to think to do all of that stuff -- not enough to keep you from being bored out of your skull, but enough that you can't actively think about something else and still do it well enough to keep your job. Stocking shelves might get that way after a while, but those others involve talking to people, which isn't interesting, but does require a lot of processing to figure out what the expected responses and questions are. I have enough trouble making pro forma conversation passing someone in the hall:

"Hey, how was your weekend?"

"I'm fine; and you?" (Oh, wait, what was the question? Dammit, that should have been 'Pretty quiet; how was your weekend?').

Thinking about something else during conversation doesn't really work, you know?

That's always worked for me, but it's never been something I could do by settling for less, as you were initially advocating. I always had to shoot for more.

Another thing that worries me, however, is that I know a lot of people who worked at least as hard as I did, and are still stuck in that $10/hr job. Who've made the leap, and fallen hard, and had to work their way back up to having a car and new clothes and a steady job again. Why has it been different for me? It doesn't seem like I've worked a lot harder. It doesn't seem like I'm vastly more intelligent. Basically, it seems like I was lucky to be intrinsically interested in things that turned out to have market value (programming, system admin, etc). None of my childhood friends were interested in those things until recently, and none of them have made it to the middle class, financially.

A history degree is just as applicable to this mindset of educability as a computer science degree. The only difference between the two is that a computer science degree offers its bearer some amount of vocational skills.

I used to be extremely introverted. I thought I was smarter than everyone else (not saying you're like this), and pretty much was happy doing my own little thing. Then I got my first job. I had to go out and talk to a lot of people. Even though it was usually small talk, it had to happen. 2-400 people every day (I was a bank teller). That gave me some interpersonal skills and a shitload of confidence.

I like that you got the Novell book, studied, went after and got a job. That kind of thing takes heart.

But ultimately, that is what I don't understand. You have so much heart, but it seem like you don't want to recognize or apply it all the time. If one job at McDonald's wont pay the rent. Why aren't you getting a second job at Barnes and Noble? It sucks. It totally does, but there is a silver lining; You're in total control.

It is puzzling to me that you feel better about yourself living off of loans playing video games than working at a dead end job.

I've created a theory, rather unpopular among some of my friends. I think that people that believe in luck are more inclined to feel like you feel... You even specifically mentioned luck at the top of your comment. I don't believe in luck. As funny as it may sound "A real man makes his own luck" (Cal from Titanic, also quoted by Dwight Schrute) is what I subscribe to. Anything I get is because I worked my ass off to get there. I work hard, I produce results, life gets easier in the tough times... Believing this has made a significant change in my outlook on life.