Uncertainty, Frustration, and Taking Control of Life

For the past three years, I've felt lost about my future as someone who loves learning, creating art, and doesn't want to be miserable enough to later tell younger people to endure manufactured misery. Everyone wants to escape the rat race and some hope to even become benevolent yet stoic multi-millionaires, but I guess we shouldn't talk about why people are actually poor... These days, you just gotta join the military, grift online, or apply AI to your business if you don't want to work a lousy minimum wage job... Wait, there aren't even minimum wage jobs hiring? How could that be possible? 

What do you mean you don't want to work until you're 60 or 70 (AHHAHHHAHAHHHAHAA SIX SEVEN 😶) in order to start enjoying your life and stop living paycheck to paycheck? Just invest in companies that want you to keep buying their stuff by bombarding you in every corner of your life with ads, or even better, Lockheed Martin! Lots of really down-to-earth people work there! And if you're a woman, why aren't you tuning into your biblical feminine energy and having lots of babies while you're at it, while also submitting to the decisions of someone you share a roof with as well as do a majority of domestic, emotional, and even financial labor for?

It's normal for young people to feel lost and rebel a little, as the older folks may say, they'll just become normal later, but these days I think we (yes, WE) all know that it's exponentially more difficult to hope for anything beyond survival as opposed to a state of self-actualization. Out of touch billionaires pushing AI implementation, conservatives pioneering stupid online culture wars that somehow my generation is falling for, and for some reason everyone is surprised about the falling birth rates? It's totally not because the world was handed to us on a vomit rag, doesn't actually care about women & children, and that teen girls/young adult women are much smarter than people give them credit for?

All that existential word vomit to say: I really don't care what anyone above the age of 40 thinks, and for an even more specific demographic, I will also include the Christians I grew up with who subscribe to capitalism like a lifeline and their faith like the solution. Since I grew up very conservative but also had out-of-the-norm interests that were seen as cringe, I really despise how much these environments were a breeding grounds (unfortunately in the literal sense, too) for many of our continued problems. I always felt like I was living a double life, so the guilt and harmful thoughts snowballed. Luckily, I realized I still want to fight.

I want a better life. I am trying not to neglect my dreams and avoid building community, as my bad mental health and environment conditioned me to. But now I know what I don't want.

-Isa