Indeed. I come from a background of people who did okay. I am currently doing okay, if slightly less “okay” than some. I could be doing better than I’m doing, but I choose for the moment not to, for reasons that are my own. I could tell you what these reasons are. I could justify to you each and every choice I’ve made, financially, educationally, and otherwise, that has affected my life situation. I could ask for your understanding, I could beg for your sympathy, I could demand your admiration; I could do any of a number of things designed to get an emotional reaction from each of you in regard to my life as it is. But you know what I figured out that differentiates me from so many?
NOBODY GIVES A FUCK.
even sven (and passengerpigeon): you’ve decided to pursue happiness in an unorthodox manner. That is wonderful, and I respect your decisions and wish you the best. However, as you should have been aware from the outset and are undoubtedly aware by now, such decisions often result in a period (if not a lifetime) of financial insecurity. It’s an inevitable byproduct of attempting to circumvent the system. Trust me on this: I know. My own aspirations are philosophical/psychological rather than artistic, but I still understand where you’re coming from. The point is, your decisions are going to have consequences, which in this case were/are not terribly difficult to predict. Complaining about them is unlikely to garner you any sympathy, and indeed may even work to counteract the understanding and support you’d likely have gotten from others in similar situations had you merely stated your actions and your reasons for doing them (rather than focus on their negative effects). In short, you knew this was gonna happen, ergo, deal.
Those criticizing even sven: some of you are only saying that she needs to quit whining. With that, I agree to a point (see above), and the following is not directed at you. The rest, however, are engaged in criticizing her choices, rather than her attitude about her current situation. Here I must agree with passengerpigeon that it is not your place to do so. I can see, to a point, where some of these posts could be construed as friendly advice designed to help sven get out of a situation with which she claims to be unhappy. Personally, though, I somehow doubt that sven is entirely unaware of the consequences of the choices she has made in the past and continues to make. Thus, informing her of means to alter her lifestyle is something of an irrelevant gesture. Let’s say, for example, that sven chose to spend her $20,000 inheritance on a couple truckloads of gumdrops. Let’s then say that, after doing this, she posts a thread to the SDMB entitled “I’m out of money again”, in which she details her current poverty and bemoans the fact that all she has to her name is $20k worth of gumdrops. Do you really think that, in this situation, she’d honestly need to be told that there are more life-enriching things to spend $20,000 on than gumdrops? Or do you think it more likely that perhaps she was aware at the time of purchase that the gumdrops would have no positive net benefit on her quality of life, and made the decision regardless? My advice to her in this situation would not be “you shouldn’t have bought the gumdrops; you could have done something else”. Even if she could change that, I’d suspect that she knew it all along. My advice would instead be equivalent to what I said above: “you had to know this was going to happen; now quit complaining about your situation and deal”. In addition to being more relevant to the situation at hand, this advice would also stand a far greater chance of actually being productive.
I find that hypothetical oddly analogous to a great deal of what’s being discussed here.
In closing, I would like to add, to those that would tell us their tales of rising from poverty to (relative) riches: that’s wonderful, I respect your decisions, and I’m glad they’ve worked out well for you. However, the instant you attempt to inject your own past experiences into a discussion of somebody’s individual choices as some sort of model that ought naturally to be admired and followed, I am forced to reiterate: NOBODY GIVES A FUCK. It’s sanctimonious and provides nothing of value to anybody who didn’t agree with you to begin with.
Thank you.