One ship, one life, and less stuff

When all of your fictional heroes are wandering, womanless hobos who move from place to place in a modest ship they call home, a troublesome identity is born. You know the characters; the Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, and William Adama's of the fictional world. They're all just guys living in flying Winnebago's, living from job to job, and moving on when a place doesn't suit them anymore. 

When I started to free myself from the preposterous domestic life a couple years ago, I didn't realize the full mass of the beast I awakened. I felt as though I was tearing away the chains that I mistakenly locked myself in. What I didn't realize is that I wouldn't stop tearing away those chains. 

Today, I find myself wanting less and less. I no longer want heavy things, things with lots of bags, boxes, and subscriptions. I want simplicity, experience, and labor. I don't want additional tax paperwork and monthly costs of ownership. And I most certainly don't want baggage and expensive dinners for two. 

The thing is, some of these costs are important. It's great having a truck. But do I need a motorcycle and a car and an RV and a house, too? What if I actually only need the truck? 

It's a strange thought, but I feel like the chains started coming off and I just don't want to stop. My education completely fucked my brain to the point that the only thing I want to do is wander. I no longer want to have stuff. I want to live out my short life in creative spaces on my own terms, not instrumental spaces on someone else's terms. 

Stuff helps make memories, but there comes a point when stuff becomes such a weight that experiences take a backseat to stuff. 

I now look back and wonder how I got all this stuff? I wonder why I still have it? Then I wonder how to get rid of it? 

Strangely, all of the fictional characters I identify with aren't attached to many things, other than that which they depend on. I no longer feel the need to have stuff -- instead, I want to see, feel, experience, and think. Instead of things to take up space, I want space... just space. And the few things I need to experience and be in these spaces on my own terms. 

All I need is my one ship. And enough to keep it flying.

The Higher Education Bubble: The Reckoning

A reckoning is coming. The housing market crashed sometime in 2008, but the path to the crash was set in motion long before the actual crash happened. The overvaluation of homes, the ballooning of home loan debt, the borrowing of material things against imaginary home equity, and then the inability to pay those loans triggered the biggest depression since The Great Depression. The crash of the housing market led to negative effects on the job market, the price of gas skyrocketed, and the price of food even went up. But the housing market is back, the stock market is back, and the price of gas is under $3 per gallon. Life is good. Except that there is another bubble that has yet to burst and has yet to be realized. It soon will be.

The bubble that has yet to burst is what I call the “education bubble.” The education bubble is more pernicious than the housing bubble and more dynamic. This bubble isn’t just about student loan debt; it’s about the other problems that arise from an educated public that can’t find equivalent work. Student loan debt is a known problem – there are people getting useless humanities degrees and are leaving school with $50,000 or more in debt. That’s preposterous.

Student loan debt is certainly one major dimension of the education bubble. Not only is student loan debt a major debt source in the U.S., perhaps greater than any form of consumer credit, it is also the kind that sticks with you. Student loan debt can’t be eliminated through bankruptcy and most of us won’t have our loans paid by a trust fund or a rich uncle. The amounts that each individual is carrying in student loan debt for college is unsustainable. It is a burden that makes college not worth it. Students walking out with $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 for a four year degree in worthless topics, like Philosophy, English, or Environmental Studies is so wrong, it should be impossible to rack up such numbers.

It’s not that these degrees aren’t worthwhile – they make better people. But in making better people, do we really need to spend five digits to get there? Should better people be saddled with unsustainable amounts of debt? What is the purpose of making better people when they can’t get jobs that will pay enough to live in adequate housing, own an adequate car, eat food, and pay off their student debt? The average job for the non-engineer appears to be $28,000-$40,000 per year. That’s great, but at that wage, deduct almost 20% for taxes, then take another 10% for retirement and medical coverage. After student loan payments, rent, food, gas, and necessary entertainment, there's nothing left.

But the education bubble isn’t about student debt – that’s a known issue and one that will haunt my generation for many more years. The education bubble lies in the production of too many big brains and not enough places to put them. Sure, big brains are great in all positions – whether working on cars, engineering the next bridge, or even serving beer at the local pub. But for those who aren’t engineering the next bridge or technology, the jobs out there are hard to get and don’t pay well. There aren’t enough of these jobs to serve all of the English Literature, Environmental Studies, Evolutionary Biology, and Germanic Language degrees that are coming out of the institution.

Instead, we tell children and teens to “go to college so you can get a good job.” What’s a good job, anyway? Is it one where you make enough to pay back your student debt? Is it one that matches your degree and line of study? Or is it one that you could have gotten without going through all that schooling, anyway? I think a “good job” is one that matches one’s training in a degree path, or at least utilizes one’s critical thinking skills gained from a degree path. I think it’s a job that pays well enough to justify the educational investment. Which isn’t most of the jobs out there today.

The cost of education is effectively a business investment. It is the cost to buy in. And it is an opportunity cost. For $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000, what else could be done to build better people and better lives? For those working retail jobs after college, jobs that do not require any college education, was the opportunity cost of college worthwhile? Or did it become a burden; a failed investment?

The reckoning is coming. The education bubble is upon us. There will be a backlash toward institutions and the promise of higher ed in the near future. Mark my idiotic words. The education bubble isn’t just about ballooning student loan debt; It’s about the psychological harm that comes from spending time and money on an education for the promise of a “good job,” only to find that there are too many well-educated and not enough “good jobs.” Or that the education being offered no longer fits the markets that graduates enter after school. The education bubble is the high cost and debt to potential income ratio that we all face upon graduation. And the education bubble is the over-production of big thinkers, leaders, and the lack of places to put them. It is the creation of too many queens and not enough soldiers. We need soldiers. Finally, it is the fundamentally twisted way in which we define what a “good job” is and the inequitable process it takes to get a good job – the way we determine someone’s value and earning ability by proximity, pedigree, and luck. We have created a new class; the educated poor. We are also creating entirely new forms of social justice issues in our education system that have yet to be realized.

Higher ed is headed for a reckoning. It is already here. And it is about to burst. Hold onto your butts.

Bad Advice

Everyone has advice to give. There are good decisions, bad decisions; ones we support and ones we don't. In the advice we all seem to offer, some offer advice with intensity and others with support. There is a distinct relationship between advice and support, which sometimes appears totally polarized, existing at opposite ends of some imaginary spectrum. The relationship between advice and supportiveness appears to stem from different places, but it mostly seems to come from centricities and limitations that we are all inevitably mired in. Most of all, advice carries power, impact, and plays a pivotal role in the relationship between the sender and receiver. Lately, I have had many realizations about advice, where it comes from, and the role it plays in relationships. 

One of the biggest realizations I have had about advice lately is that a lot of advice is based on someone's own fear of the world and consequences. But that fear is entirely relative. So are the consequences the person is trying to avert another person from. Those consequences are based on one person's experience, which is limited to that person and their experiences. Some of these consequences happen time and again, but sometimes they don't.

If you watch thirty people try to do the high-jump in gym class, 10 might hit the bar, 2 might not even try, 5 might clear it with ease, and another 10 might have to work really hard to just barely clear the bar. If everyone in the gym class watched the 2 who didn't even try and took their advice, the entire gym class wouldn't even attempt the high-jump. What good would that advice be in the real world?

The presence of uninformed advice is another major realization. Advice that comes before the person has asked or even tried to figure out the other person's plan is inherently uninformed. Even worse, when the adviser is not giving advice based upon the skillset of the recipient -- the advice comes from the vantage point of one's own experience and skillset only. This kind of advice doesn't account for the fact that someone may be considering other options out of necessity or skills that may allow one to pull something new and different off. Just because you couldn't or didn't choose a different path, does that really mean that nobody else can do it either? Some people can start companies and become very successful. Others are better taking safer routes.

The intensity of advice seems to be distinctly related to a person's fear and their belief that you should act in the way they want you to. I remember when I moved into the RV; I had those who thought I lost my mind and were vehemently against it and those who, instead of venturing their opinion on my sanity or rightness, chuckled and told me stories of people they knew who did that and their experiences with RV's. Whose advice was relevant here? Those who were vehemently against it and thought I lost my mind, or those who were supportive and recognized my agency in the decision?

Those who are supportive appear to recognize the agency, skill, and variability of one's path, whereas those who loudly offer advice appear to want to strip the person of their own decisions. The relationship between advice and support appears to be polarized in some cases, but not others. Support seems to come from a kind of advice that recognizes another person's agency, whereas advice given with intensity appears to ignore a person's own reasons for taking the actions they take and the plans they make. When I moved into the RV, those giving intense advice or unsupportive comments ended up being really wrong -- and they wronged me. Those who were supportive were emotionally right and left me without distrust of their judgment.

When I make decisions, I do it because I have good reason to do so. When someone blindly comes at me swinging with advice that is both unsolicited and intense, I now just wonder why that person decided that I should fit their mold for how to live and what actions to take?

I am really skeptical of giving advice anymore. I have met enough people and had enough experiences to know that everyone has a different path, even if only slightly. Some like to sit at home. Others like to go running. Some like to drink at bars and others like to not drink at all. Some like to live in houses -- others in teepees -- and yet others in RV's. Some even like to live in different places at different times of years. Some like to go camping and others hate it. Can any of these people ever offer relevant advice to the other? Do people who drink in bars also always live in teepees or live in the same place the entire year? No, because we all make slightly different choices.

Anymore, instead of giving advice or beginning any conversation with the belief that I am right, I just offer my experiences and expertise to help someone with a decision they've made. Telling someone the wrongness of their decision or the consequences they will uncertainly encounter or inserting my own fear into their life choices just... hurts my relationship with that person. If someone wants to go skydiving, I personally don't care to make that choice, but if the person has made the decision to do so, I can only say, "That sounds intense! What made you interested in skydiving? Are you going to take a helmet cam? If so, send me the video link when you're done. Oh, and be sure to skydive with an experienced teacher, okay?"

The distance between advice and supportiveness can  be lightyears apart. Advice appears to come from a place of limited personal experience, the rules we have made for the world based on our own limited experiences, and perhaps fear. Supportiveness appears to come from a place of understanding someone's agency over their own life and the intrigue that comes with seeing how other people might choose to live. I do not operate on fear anymore, so when someone tries to instill fear into me about one of my coming decisions, I now only wonder if the person believes fear is anything but a mechanism for control?

The things I have been taught to fear aren't scary. Risk isn't that scary. Living differently from others isn't that scary. And making my own choices, even if costly are really only that -- costly. But the costs come in the form of my own lessons and a respect for those who are making their own path through these costly lessons. If a lesson is learned at the hand of oneself, the lesson is their own. If a lesson is learned through the fear and command of others, it is a shelter and a loss of real wisdom and knowledge.

I am no longer scared of my decisions. But I am scared for those who believe their advice and injection of fear and doubt into the psyche of another is relevant, fair, or reasonable. If you tell a student that they are going to fall, they're probably going to fall. If you tell someone they can't, they probably can't. If you tell a friend that they shouldn't go camping because a bear might eat them, they will be fearful for their entire camping experience and will soon hate camping.

Instead... Tell the friend that bears tend to bother people who smell like food and buy them a can of bear spray and teach them how to use it. Tell the student that if they take a few extra minutes in the evening to study, that they certainly can. Tell the friend that you have never skydived, but you can't wait to hear what they thought of it. Then, consider that you may be scared, but the other person isn't. That's the difference between advice and support.

My new advice is: Live life the way you want to live. Follow the river you are unavoidably embedded in. Appreciate your own experiences and the different experiences those around you will have. Live through others to enrich yourself. People will stumble, fall, and may need help getting back up -- Instead of pushing them back down for making a decision that put them on the ground in the first place, help them back up... even if it was their "fault."

A Major Fault in My Work Ethic

I recently realized that I have a major work ethic problem. It's one that no one knows, except me, and maybe a select few nearest to my more raw thought processes. And now anyone reading this. The flaw is that my performance directly correlates with what I am getting paid. That's a major problem.

What it means is that when I get paid $15 per hour, I give you $15 per hour worth of work. It means I tailor my efforts, the skills I offer, and the percentage of my skillset that I offer as part of my work day. At $15 per hour, you get the guy who can basically write a sentence or two, will be there physically when needed, and will offer generally friendly service when prompted.

At $15 per hour, what you do not get is the guy who comes up with new ideas for new projects, researches new approaches to problems, polishes all correspondence to a professional grade, maybe seeks funding, fixes anything from computer-based problems to human interaction problems in a workplace. You don't get the photographer, the researcher, or the guy who gives a flying shit about your lackluster organization's mission. You get Me Lite.

And there's a reason I do this. I have a huge range of skills. I have nearly four college degrees, including advanced research and writing work at the master's level. I can edit, write, research, tackle technical problems, and be the polished social face of your organization. If you're going to pay me a retail wage, you just bought a Corvette, but didn't keep enough money for gas and insurance. Congratulations, the Corvette you just bought is now a garage ornament. Whoopsies. Guess you should have bought a used Corolla and put gas in it instead, huh?

My bad attitude is real. And it exists for a reason: I didn't just spend the years of my life from Preschool through a dual-master's degree and ten years of professional experience to make retail wages. 25 years of my life in school for sub-restaurant wages. Do the math.

On the bright side, when someone pays a wage compensatory with my skills and investment, I give them the keys to the tool shed. I'll be your PR face, your troubleshooter, your think-tank, AND your grant writer. I'll work for you and I will work hard. I will even work more hours than I am contracted and I will do it with a f##king smile. I'll even drink coffee and offer you turbo-mode and the guy who can plan for the future and fill in for you when you take vacation.

Am I a sell out for having this bad attitude problem? You bet. I didn't spend 25 years in school because I thought it would be a good idea to make peanut wages and offer all those skills that I just wasted all those years practicing so I could get a "good job." By the way, a "good job" is one that pays enough to own an average house and a modest, yet brand-new car. By the way squared; That's not $15 per hour. And by the way cubed; $15 per hour is not enough to live in a shitty apartment anymore.

So, the moral of the story here is that I do have a bad attitude. I am entitled. And I have a major fault in my work ethic. You can buy me for just about any price, but you're going to get a tailored skillset with varying pay levels. If you can afford the Corvette, but not the insurance or gas, you just bought a Corvette that will sit in the garage and look pretty. If you can afford the gas and insurance, too, you just got the rock star that is going to make your mission sing.

You might be wondering what I actually think I'm worth? How can I quantify that? Here's how: I spent over 6 years in college, more like 7 if you consider all the classes I took between undergrad and grad. I worked my ass off for my degrees and gained professional experience all along the way. What am I worth? I'm worth the total amount that my degrees cost as an annual income every year and I am worth an above average income as an above-average-educated individual. Sorry. It sucks, but it's just how I work. I would rather be homeless than work for some donkey dick who undervalues their employees. There can be no altruism in the work life.

So, just like software, I come in Lite, Professional, and Ultimate editions -- and you can opt for which version of me you get. Interestingly, my highest level isn't even expensive -- it's just a reasonable, middle-class wage.