Question 161: “Please fix my life?”
Posted: December 31, 2011 Filed under: Families, Mental Health, Money, Reader Questions | Tags: bad decisions, consequences, crime, despair, downward spiral, poverty 36 Comments »Dear Captain Awkward,
Hello! I hope all is well with you and things. I have a long rambling question that is either summed up as “money: how do I get it” or “life: how do I fix it,” so, yeah.
Relevant life history: Recovering alcoholic dry drunk unintentionally emotionally abusive father, unintentionally emotionally abuse mother, batshit crazy running in both sides of the family no matter how hard my mum tries to deny it, income wildly varying between working poor and lower middle class. I’m the middle kid and either “the scapegoat” or the only good one. I mean, the story my parents had about me was that I was their success because I was wicked wicked smart, well-behaved (unlike my younger sister), wasn’t going to drop out of college when I got there (unlike my much older brother), was going to make lots of money etc etc etc.
Reader question #110: How do I claw my way out of this depressing living situation?
Posted: September 12, 2011 Filed under: Families, Mental Health, Money, Parents, Reader Questions, Work | Tags: depression, ithaka, making a fresh start, overcoming depression 43 Comments »
Make something about your dream concrete and visible.
Dear Cap’n Awkward,
I’m stuck in a depressing living situation and I don’t see a way out. I spent much of 2010 living on my own, doing a halfway-decent job of getting by, occasionally needing my mom to help me with rent like many a financially irresponsible 22-year-old. The thing is, I’ve been pretty badly depressed pretty much all my life, but when 2010 started I was doing a really good job of keeping that under control. I was no longer a socially inept dweeb who was convinced he would die a virgin – I had recently learned how to be self-confident and interesting and get dates. I was in a long-term relationship with a very smart woman, which was awesome for me given my former social ineptitude. I had a job – the soulless corporate kind where you can tell your bosses view you as a disposable resource, but still. Income.
Reader question #108: Jealousy and Law School
Posted: September 11, 2011 Filed under: Dating, Money, Reader Questions, Relationships | Tags: competitiveness in a relationship, jealousy, law school 13 Comments »
How I picture law school.
Dear Captain Awkward,
My boyfriend and I have both just started law school in different cities, and I’m having trouble adjusting to the change in our financial situations. For the last couple years we have been living together, making roughly the same (small) amount of money. I’m going to a good school and have gotten some scholarships but I will be graduating with at least $50,000 in debt, and I expect to be paying it off for many years since the field I’m interested in is not exactly lucrative. My boyfriend got a scholarship that gives him a full ride and very generous stipend at a top school. He’s brilliant and hardworking and amazing, and he totally deserves all the good things that are coming to him, but it’s been a little tense between us lately because A) I can’t help being sort of jealous, and B) he’s not being particularly sensitive about the fact that he’s won the law school lottery. I am having trouble figuring out where A ends and B begins, and how to deal with it.
Reader question #46: I have a great job and a great life, but I feel like I should be doing more to help others.
Posted: May 8, 2011 Filed under: Money, Work | Tags: activism, finding meaningful work, Work 15 Comments »
Dear Captain Awkward:
I’m a 23-year-old in Chicago who’s had a pretty smooth transition out of school and into a job I like. I get to use some of my skills from my history major, I have flexibility and can afford to live on my own, and I’m getting professional respect from doctors and physicists who value my work. In the year since I started I’ve been offered the chance to go from contingency to full-time work and been promoted. In a year or so, I plan to take them up on a tuition credit that could allow me to go back to school for very nearly free (I’d pay for fees and books). I work in pediatric radiology research, managing the studies and making sure that they’re carried out efficiently and ethically. The work we do allows children to get an MRI instead of a biopsy, or avoid being exposed to radiation just to figure out why they’re sick. If I sleep poorly at night, it’s definitely not because I’m irradiating children.
But can I honestly say that I love not irradiating children? It’s good work and I’m learning a lot, but the issue that makes me mad and breaks my heart isn’t childhood illness, it’s poverty. I’m still proud of the activist I was when I was younger, but I’m not like that now. I was vice president of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance during its most active years. When I was 15, I was protesting in downtown Chicago the night we started bombing Iraq, and I was back the next year serving dumpstered vegan food to the protestors from a bench in Federal Plaza. Those things are great, but what have I done lately? Mostly: given some money, signed some petitions, and not irradiated some children.
I’m thinking about ways I can grow in my work to address this. Pursuing an MA in medical ethics then going to law school would allow me to teach, write, pursue human rights work, and speak with some authority on the things that really bother me. Getting out of school and into work has already been clarifying, and I know the answer to my career path might be something I develop, not something I find. But I’m doing my thinking with a lot of guilty asides about how much my employer has done and will do for me. In a way, I feel like I’ve gotten it too good too soon– I don’t know that being a 23-year-old with something to lose is a very stable situation. And I’m not sure how much my activism needs to be part of my work if I can find some other way to make it part of my life.
First reader question: Friends With Money
Posted: January 13, 2011 Filed under: Money, Reader Questions, Soup | Tags: Reader Questions 4 Comments »You guys! An actual question from an actual real-life reader!
Nicole Holofcener's Friend With Money
Dear Captain Awkward:
I don’t have a lot of money (like, in debt right now?) but friends keep inviting me to eat out with them. Sometimes these people are from out of town; sometimes I am going to meet someone for lunch near their office, and it’s 10 below; etc. It’s important to me to spend time with my friends; how can I do this and also not spend a lot of money? Can I just always order the soup, or will they feel awkward?
This is a subject that unfortunately Captain Awkward can personally relate to. Those $8.00 sandwiches at that charming cafe near your friend’s office and that $15.00 tagine at the cute Algerian place with out-of-town friends can really add up. And then you miss the last bus home and it’s late and you take a cab and $15.00 became $30, and the cab wasn’t a stupid decision because your safety is more important than money, but now you’re eating peanut butter and jelly for a week. Or you order the soup and your friends order a dinner and a bottle of wine and then there’s that horrible moment when it’s time to pay the check and you don’t want to be That Guy so you fork over $20 anyway.
First, I want to give yourself permission to be poor. There’s a big taboo in American culture around admitting that you don’t have quite enough money. We’re all faking it until we make it. Stop faking it. Just be honest with yourself about your financial situation – you’re working hard, you’re digging yourself out of debt, and you need to be really careful with money for the time being. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and in this economy you are far from alone.
Second, I want you repeat this to yourself. Your friends just want to see you and have a good time. If they knew their invitations were causing you anxiety, they’d either offer to pay your way or suggest something different. That weird cocktail of shame and deprivation you’re feeling when you weigh whether you can really afford that Pad Thai on Friday? Sadly, I know all too much about that, but your friends don’t know.
Now I have a few strategies for you. Read the rest of this entry »
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