My dad did not succumb to the typical boomer mindset. I’m M40, I freelance making software and hardware, I’m a bicycle nerd with a specific bone to pick with the bicycle and I have to absolutely knock the problem out of the park for it to be useful to anyone in real life. I’m broke, the R&D phases are brutal living on a thin margin. Good at what I do, but my gut health really screws me up, which is a major contributor to why I left the 9-5 behind, my body is having trouble hacking it. My pops is experienced at various product marketing and research stuff, and he has been forced to pay attention to ever changing prices of materials as it affects the bottom line for his employer (thereby trying to ensure his job security). Unlike too many of his peers, he gets it. There’s a few typical boomer pitfalls that have ensnared him but those topics are pretty tame.
He doesn’t harass me why I don’t have a significant savings. He knows why I am constantly trapped in car repair expenses. If you make stuff, you can’t function in the USA without a car, and the costs are untenable. You live to work to afford your car to work to afford your car to work to afford your car.
I recently got out of a depression phase where I know I am forced to raise my prices (gestures broadly). I grew up lower middle class and I have a strong urge to AVOID taking advantage of people, and I’ve learned through talking to peers that I have some sort of self worth problem where I have a hard time advocating for myself. I just try to make quality and let the results do the talking. Turns out things don’t really work like that.
It feels like there are invisible roadblocks in certain areas of progress at any job (or gaining a job when qualified or over-qualified). If you know, you know. If you don’t know, I’ve gathered that it SOUNDS like pointless whining of weak-willed people. One of my clients is someone rather capable at manufacturing, but when it came to making carbon fiber stuff, the litany of technical details is just too much to cope with if one is even a little bit distracted doing other stuff. It was validating to hear an otherwise successful businessman say something like “And then I just hit this WALL, and had these negative thoughts of am I even going to be able to do this? Now what?”
I know, dude. No OnE wAnTs To wOrK aNyMoRe, I don’t buy it. There’s just… problems sometimes. Often the problems are practical and unforeseen, but just as often the problems are unfathomably petty. Like schoolyard boy levels of petty nonsense the-adults-told-me-it-would-get-better. Again, I’m 40. The spats some guys will have at work. FFS.
The way I survive is the fact that I’m married. I carried her for years. She has carried me for years. Now it looks like we are going to switch majority roles again. NONE of this would be true if we had socialized medicine. Our bodies are crapping out in part because we can’t afford preventative medicine.
I used to make a good salary working for the media by writing software tools adjacent / behind the content. I saw the writing on the wall. I was having stress sweats, heartburn, trouble sleeping. I’m comparably wondering where my food is coming from a month from these days, but I no longer feel that my work is harming the general public and I sleep a lot better.
You might be thinking “cool story bro” and wondering how the heck are you supposed to gain non-corporate employment without a partner. I don’t have an answer for you other than maybe you need to be reminded of something important: that you are not weak, that you are not stupid.
I even had a long time software recruiter confide in me that they can’t get companies to call them back. Something like, “People my age are complaining about the young people, and I find myself finding real stresses in my own peers.” I avoided talking about cognitive decline because corporate doesn’t care what happens to us after we become unable to lift 50 pounds.
Recently, I had a client drop into my life who has been the epitome of accommodating and is offering fair pay and being more than nice. The work is well within bounds. I don’t know where to find more of them. My general conclusion is that some people go through life consistently running into one good client after another, and their lifetime experience is that they genuinely don’t know what it is to be smart + motivated + financially clapped out.
Unfortunately, the only way they can learn is through poverty. I have no idea where we go from here, what I do know is that my retirement plan is to make weird bike parts until I fall over dead.