I assume this is a general sentiment for this sub, but… Today is just a lot, and I need to vent.
I'm a millennial, born in 1990. I saw the life my parents had, my mom worked for the government as a minor ministry employee and my dad was an occasional general contractor. They owned a large home, before eventual divorce saw everyone go their own way. My parents stressed to me the importance of going to Post-secondary school, and I was a child so I believed in their wisdom.
I went to Post-secondary for Interactive Multimedia Design, a Bachelor of Information Technology. I have a degree and a diploma in programming and worked full-time hours while I did it in a service position, but gradually learned as the years of the schooling went on (you know, after the debts are already taken out) that the information that my parents gave me was outdated. That the lucky few may find a career in the field that I dreamed of working in (A video game studio) if they moved across the country and got very lucky or benefitted from nepotism, but the rest of us just threw money we didn't have into a void, literally indebting myself for decades for zero benefit.
I switched gears, I researched and informed myself about something more realistic, something long-term with obvious benefits and a secure future. A career that gave me the life that my parents had with financial security and money for occasional vacations or renovations or toys. My now-wife and I moved from where we went to school to come back to home, and I began an Electrical Apprenticeship, while she began schooling in Nursing.
Now I'm 33. I have three kids because my wife and I both really wanted a young family, at a time when so many of my friends decided to wait, and wait, due to financial concerns. Most of them are still waiting. I'm am Electrician and my wife is a registered Nurse, she works part-time since the price of daycare would nearly entirely offset any extra income she'd make by going up to 4 12-hour shifts that the full-time nurses work. I am absolutely not hurting for work – this past month has been a huge push at a jobsite I live two hours from, pulling me off of more local work and reasonable hours, to my current situation working 54+ hours and driving another 20 hours every week. I work a good, technical job with days so long that I haven't seen my kids awake in weeks except for during weekends. Even then, I do side maintenance work when I get the opportunity; Anything to try to get ahead, but it's just… Never enough to start clawing down debt.
Did anybody else do the “beep test”, in High School? You all put your foot on a line, and there's a beep noise – everyone starts to jog to the other side of the gym simultaneously — Make your foot across the line before the next beep, or you're out of the game until it's finished. The beep takes a while at first with long intervals, but that interval shortens as time goes on. When you get to the line, your next jog needs to be faster. Faster.
Life right now feels like a fucking beep test, one I've been stuck in since adulthood. I make twice as much as others might make, and my wife makes a fair amount despite part-time hours. In many ways we've been very lucky, having been able to afford a home before real-estate went utterly insane, having healthy children and some semblance of the life my parents had — but it's a twisted version. I get up at 3:30am and get home past 8:00pm. My body hurts, I'm so tired, and I subsist on Aleve and Tylenol and ADHD meds and Edibles to let me work and stay awake and give some semblance of relaxation when I can. I've been making extra money this last month, more than I've ever made in my life due to all the overtime I've worked, and I couldn't fully tell you where it's all gone. Not only am I still fighting the knife's edge of credit card debt and car repair and home upkeep, I can't confidently say that I've even made headway. Extra money just goes to less-urgent payments that have been nagging away at me.
I'm just… Very done. I feel betrayed, by society, by my government, by my employer. I'm supposed to be fucking happy at this point in my life, I've been struggling and working and scrounging since I was 15. What drastic fucking thing do I have to do, to no longer have to be so consumed with worry and so full of pain and exhaustion?