With the economy continuing to go down hill, I worry about the future of the infamous boomerang kids. While I’m continuing to learn money savvy, and ways to keep my career moving so I can have a roof over my head and food on the table these guys are still chillin’ at Mom and Dad’s house. While I support the Occupy movement, and believe to my core that things need to be different there is a point where our own perseverance has got to get us through.
One of the initial comments when occupy stated to happen was these were the kids who did everything they thought they were supposed to do and couldn’t get jobs. Truth be told they are probably a large number of the people at the camps, because they have the time to put all their focus on their struggle.
However, sorry kids but you went to school in a time where certain majors, and career paths were being pushed for a reason. Really, like any other time in the history of higher education. You didn’t listen.
I actually read a Boomerang blogpost, paraphrased and edited slightly to not identify the author:
I live with my parents, and I’m in my mid-twenties, I know I’m not to the point of me being pathetic for living with my parents, I also feel that being here is my biggest safety net and allows me to act like a child in some ways, which leads to not stepping it up and pushing forward with more in my life. While staying here does allow me many opportunities, buying what I want with money that would otherwise be needed for rent, I also feel like it limits me in other ways that I can no longer afford.
Only a few years younger than me, and completely naive. When I was her age I was squawking at getting occasional handouts from mom and dad. I was actually completely on my own struggling with a new job, a divorce, and all the emotional fallout that kind of stress brings. On top of figuring out how to make rent, pay the evil and way overpriced utilities, and continue to eat.
That struggle is a rite of passage, and it is vital to survival. Scraping it together then, allows me to do it now when the economy is far worse.
I have other friends who are doing what I’m doing, and what we are is the key to this country’s fucking survival. No one is going to hand us an answer, and it’s going to be a long hard road. I am the 99% that the conservatives can’t bitch about, and I’ve got a laundry list of complaints. I did it the right way, and am still having a hard time.
I get the job issue, our country imports just about everything, including it’s own products, services and inventions. The old idea of what an American job is, is completely dead. Though like so many other pieces of the economic collapse the writing was on the wall for years. I paid attention. I worked hard in school to find something I loved, and that would consistently bring in an income. I gave up dreams of getting rich, or becoming a full-time bohemian with a slick MFA.
While I have all sorts of complaints about American economic policy, corporations actually lead my atheist self to believe that the devil exists, and that we’re doing it all wrong I also believe:
People need to stop be so fucking complacent and ignorant!
Especially those of us who have some degree of control and opportunity in our lives. Those of us who went to nice public schools with new books and teachers who were invested. Those of us who had the means, and often the expectation, to go to college. We were all handed the keys and instead of using them to open new doors, we borrowed money and time until we were all in the shitter.
People want a better world, where they have more of a say in what happens with policy. They want more equality, more choice, and better opportunities.
To get these things we need to be more invested in our own lives and futures.
People have developed this sense of entitlement that isn’t getting us anywhere. People still dream the American dream refusing to recognize that it is a lie. The only way forward is for all of us to pick up the pieces and rebuild our own lives and this country. Politicians certainly aren’t going to to it, and we sure as hell aren’t strong and invested enough yet to replace them.
