get a puppy or have a kid. Really. Boredom simply is not an option with either.
You do know that there are places out there that are not at all like the small town where you’re living, right? San Francisco is one of them, but there are others.
Travel. And not just in the US, either- get a passport and go somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be a Third World country- you can get your feet wet by going somewhere in Europe (that’s a whole lot better than never having been outside the US). It doesn’t have to be terribly expensive- there are deals on flights every so often, and there are relatively inexpensive hotels or hostels.
If you’re not happy with your current religion, or the religion you grew up in, you can take this quiz at Beliefnet.com to find out which other religions might suit you better.
Whatever coast you are closest to, get out and hitchhike to the other one. Stop every now and then and get a job, any job, move out anytime, continue…
Continueing to do what made you this bored will only make you more bored.
I was bored once as a young man growing up in a small town, since then, with no real planning I’ve…
(in no paticular order)
Almost been killed in a motorcycle accident
Shaken the hand of my senator
Visited Rome
Come to believe in God
Stopped a riot
Spent a semester in New York City
Lived homeless in Las Vegas
Made love to a beautiful model on top of a parking garage
Visited Ireland
spent $300 on dinner for two
Stayed at a luxury hotel in Manhattan for a week, comp
Fought off a mugger
Went on a business trip to the United Arab Emirates
Acted on 2 television shows
Petted a shark
Worked at the Rand Corporation
Had dinner with Wilt Chamberlin
Learned to make medieval leather boats
Cried from a broken heart
Toured Ireland
Smoked a joint with the Blues Brothers
Camped in Death Valley
Learned to fight with a sword
Read at least 5,000 books
Woke up in jail
Written and published a restaurant review
Learned some ancient Greek
Saw Ella Fitzgerald live in concert
You can do some amazing things if you just don’t think about it. One day you’ll look back and say: " I can’t believe I did that." hell, I’m only 46 and I feel as if I’m just getting started.
I have friends who went through the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program) program. You don’t have to speak Japanese, but very quickly you will be immersed in a very different culture. They loved it, and all of them had a better focus on what they wanted to do in life when they got back.
Well I think he should try hitting the sauce first. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps he should do both at the same time. It always seemed to perk my spirit up. 
I guess I’m not man enough either, because I have no idea what this means. Can you clue us in?
POST OF THE DECADE! 
There’s only one definition of FF I know of, and it makes me shudder to think of it. I’m not sure she would appreciate that. :eek:
I was guessing “flying f…”. Which may say a lot about me.
Put me in the Sunrazor camp.
Look, your main plan here is to figure out how you’re going to feed yourself when your med school SO, who is going to have bucketloads of opportunities come their way soon, gets sick of the whining and moves out. We haven’t got much time
OK, so working for anyone is out. That’s OK, plenty of people have made their fortunes through clever investment strategies. Of course, you need some money to invest, and with no job, that ain’t happening, but sometimes you can figure out a way to charm other people out of money that you can invest for them, and take your cut. All is not lost.
Yeah, you and every other 15 year old. Well, you’ll make scant money from recording these days (think of all the free downloads you’ve done since age 15 and do the math), so you’ll have to get out on tour, and that means getting off your butt, getting to a place where there are other musicians, and putting together some gigs for yourself until you can get a manager and a booking agent.
Oooh, shit, really? Damn, forget a career in music then. No seriously, it ain’t gonna happen. Actually, forget about investing someone else’s money too. Suck it up and get a job, and play the music for your own enjoyment.
Yeah, SF is a great place to visit. Crappy place to live on no money, however. Highest cost of living of any city in the country (even more than Honolulu!), and the one of the worst homeless problems as a result. Real pretty though.
If you’re in Texas, move to Austin. A city that celebrates Eeyore’s birthday with a tie-dye freakout in the park sounds like your kind of place, but a little cheaper.
Was that really worth your time? If you want to pit me that’s fine, but you’re pretty much jerking it here.
That’s a bit harsh isn’t it?
You’re in the Mile-High Club?
Jerking it?!? A fine thing. I’m trying to give you a sense of what your life will be like in the near future without an attitude adjustment. If I’d said anything untrue or unlikely I’d be “jerking it”.
You’re new here, so I’ll clue you in. Pay attention next time the front page of MPSIMS shows a “How old are the dopers?” thread. You’ll find most people here, for whatever reason it turned out that way, checking in on the far side of 35. I just turned 40 myself.
I’ve noticed your username cropping up in the last couple of weeks, you seem fairly outspoken, so you’re shyness problems don’t seem to be following you online.
This situation is perfect for you. We’re the online version of your small college town full of “elderly” people with kids, but you seem to be actually able to talk here, so this is a good place for you to practice the real conversations you’re going to need to have to get yourself anywhere.
The only thing that’s over in your life at this point is the period where anyone has he authority to tell you what to do without you granting them that authority.
The only thing that actually sucks in your life right now is a lack of a sense of direction and purpose. That will eventually resolve itself one way or another, but everything else in life will get more complicated.
Now, let’s look at my “jerkish” post:
in your original post, you said:
That says to me that you and SO dated sophomore, junior and senior years, they got into med school in a small college town, you tagged along, and it’s now the summer after SO’s first year. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Med school and everything that comes after it is a punishing, impoverishing slog. Many get through it with a rich SO, which your SO doesn’t have. Their colleagues are going to to have or acquire them however, and in the next several years, your SO is going to be spending a lot more of each day with them than with you.
Now, it’s not my place to declare that you don’t have the rare, special relationship that can survive this with you not working, I hope you do. But the likelihood is that if you don’t make things change for yourself, your SO is going to begin feeling about you what you felt about the people you did team projects with in college who didn’t carry their share of the effort load.
The resulting fights and eventual nap on Curb Sofa you will enjoy then might be character building, but I’m sure you’d rather spend your time another way.
So lesson #1: If you are going to stick it out with SO, you need to make your peace with being wherever they need to be for at least the next five years, and it would be better for you if you pursued something that will make you a decent chunk of change, because SO isn’t going to have any dough at all, and will leave their training with crushing debt. If you don’t think that’s going to work for you, it’s time to end things as amicably as possible and move on.
Next:
I’m not being jerkish here, just honest. The rewarding work doesn’t go to the 22 year old entry-evel employees. You get to do the grunt work for no pay until someone in charge decides you’re reliable and trustworthy enough to give something a little more interesting to do. You showed you’re not that person by quitting, and if you make a habit of this, you will find that good number of potential employers in your small college town (where you’re staying because SO has to) have already heard of you at Chamber of Commerce meetings from their friends, your old employers. How soon this happens depends on how small the town is, and how many jobs you quit because your bosses don’t appreciate you.
But if you want money (and if you don’t want to put deal-breaking strain on your relationship, you definitely want money) there are other avenues. Learning about investment strategies and being willing to take some serious risks can make you rich. Or very poor.
[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
[quote=I’m Ron Burgundy?]
…I sing, play guitar/bass/piano and now drums and I’ve pretty much wanted a career in music since I was 15. …
There used to be an ad for Monster.com with bright-eyed kids saying things like, “When I grow up, I want to file ALL DAY!”, “I want to claw my way up to middle management”, “I want a brown nose”. It’s funny because no kid thinks this way. Neither does any 15 year old. They dream of making it big with some sort of glamorous career. As the book Cool Careers for Dummies put it, there’s lottery odds against you making even a subsistence living as an entertainer. There are maybe 10,000-20,000 celebrities (however you want to define that) in a country of 300million. Go for it if you really mean to go for it, but have a backup plan.
I recommend a current edition of Donald Passman’s book, All You Need to Know About the Music Business for a professional music-business-person’s inside look at what you will need to do to make it happen.
Next:
See, if there’s not a big music scene in your town, you’ll need to network and promote yourself to get a band to play with. Then you and your band need to promote yourself to get one of a limited number of gigs at the few local watering holes that have live music. The person in charge is not interesting in supporting your art, they are interested in selling booze. If your music in their place will sell more booze than silence or the jukebox, they will hire you to play. You will need then, to get warm bodies buying booze in there when you play, and with no friends you’ll have to work that much harder at promoting your gig. You’ll have to do this for each and every gig you get until you get enough gigs under your belt that the small number of music managers and booking agents in your small college town are willing to take a look at you. You will need to network and promote yourself in order to get them to look more than once.
That goes for music, investment, anything. The world has 6 billion people, and is not waiting with bated breath for, nor will it automatically recognize, the wonderfulness of you. You need to convince the world of it.
And remember, success in your music dreams will mean spending a lot of time outside the small college town where your SO must stay. Tough decisions ahead.
And I was dead serious about Austin, it’s a great town. Might mean leaving the SO, though, depending on how far it is.
Wait, theres an Eeyores birthday party??!? That is so cool, I wanna move there now dammit.
There is so much that I wanna do, I’m 19 Mr Burgundy and it’s not exactly I feel my life is over…morelike I’m stuck, but I have a lot of ideas like you, but realising them is difficult. So one small thing at a time.
It seems theres one major thing you’re interested in, if it’s giving you a headache right now, step back from it and do something completely different for a little while, like saving up some money then going abroad, maybe a working holiday if you’re into that sort of thing. The information for any of this is online at BUNAC something I’ve recently discovered, also there are plenty of other helpful websites and if none of them tell you what you want you can ask sdmb because somebody is bound to know on here.
I would get any job, save money and go somewhere completely different for at least 6 months. Maybe you and SO can save money together and have a huge trip lasting a lot longer than a month.
Also reading this thread I don’t get the impression people are being snarky, morelike the tough love approach.
Truer words were never spoken!
Most musicians I know, even ones with moderate local success have a hard go of it. They are networking constantly, and are deeply involved in the local music and arts scenes. Even musicians I know who have played with names known Canada wide at festivals, and have toured extensively do not make much money at all.
And to top it off, in order to have the time to devote to their music, they need to have more flexible jobs, which often means lower paying jobs either in service or involving the arts where other people will understand that on Thursday you won’t be able to work because you have a very late gig on Wednesday night.
You are lucky you are at least in a college town, if you really want to become a musician, you will have at least a small community in town regardless of the size of the town.
Your first step is to get the college “newspaper”, or check out the bulletin boards at the college for people looking for bandmates, or post your own as a drummer looking for a band.
Also where to do the college kids hang out and go see music? Every college town at least has a coffee shop, pub, or somewhere where the kids go to see bands. Start hanging out there! You don’t need to drink, just get to know EVERYONE who hangs out there. Get to know everywhere where the musicians and other artsy types hang out, and get to know the owners of all these places. Get to know the local bands too, maybe help someone haul their to the next town gear if you have a van. I know someone who went from a roadie to a guitar tech for BIG NAME bands (he later got married, and because even this didn’t pay the bills or give him enough time with the family, he works a 9 to 5 job).
Most musicians are shy and awkward as well, although on stage you’d never guess it, and my guess is you will fit in quite well, and don’t worry about being weird - since you play the drums, it will be expected that you are weird. 
And check out Austin - I visited years ago, and this is one of the most creative cities I have ever seen.
Quit feeling sorry for yourself and listen to scotandrsn.
Agreed, scotandrsn is talking a lot of sense. But, you are 22 and if you don’t mind me engaging patronise mode, you should go and see a bit of the world - think about your relationship (are you going to be there in ten years time? twenty?). There are few times in life when a person has total freedom before things tie one down. Seize the moment, dude, and head off to Europe or SE Asia for six months.