life goals, pt 1

the biggest issue with being alive in 2026 is that you're constantly having to set goals for yourself. "what do you want to do with your life?" the shittiest thing that neoliberal capitalism did is take this question and force it through career paths and college applications. john mayer directly addresses this in the song "no such thing," which i listened to again recently for the first time since it was new. it's a truly fantastic song that got overlooked by my generation, one that desperately needed it (i was 13 when the song was released). seriously, take a critical look at the lyrics:

"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat, take your life
Plot it out in black and white

i don't know what career day looks like for children now, because i'm 39. but i do know that i was told, over and over, to decide my college major and future career path as a teenager. i really truly cannot overstate how insane this is. you have no clue how the world works, but you're expected to know how you're going to earn a skill and trade that skill for the money you need to survive as an adult. and, as john mayer so handily points out, this is handled with direct condescension by an adult who knows you know how nothing works and is fully ready to take advantage of that by saddling you with 5-6 figures of college debt before you've started working.

Well, I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding up my sleeve

the last line is, to me, the most important line in the song. john was 24 when this song was released, and what he said is almost certainly literally true. i don't want to re-litigate his public persona here, but some light reading on google will confirm that he was in fact, not his best self at 24, and that he has done work to find what's hiding up his sleeves.

the reason i highlight this is because it applies to literally every single person reading this article, and the person writing it. none of us have discovered the best of ourselves yet, and we certainly had no fucking clue what the best parts of ourselves were when we were thrust into the room of a high school guidance counselor. every single person on this planet is on a continuous path of self discovery, regardless of what you put down on your career sheets 5, 10, or 20 years ago.

what i personally want for myself has changed a lot over the years, because my material conditions have changed a lot over time. but as of this moment, i can define what i wish i had.

i wish i was as comfortable as people on the internet assume i am. i do not wish to be rich. i simply wish to have enough money that i no longer have to spend precious mental energy worrying about food, housing, clothing, and medicine. i wish i could free up all that energy to help the people i want to help and to fulfill whatever my life's goal or purpose is.

i wish i could buy a house with a wing for my uncle and mother who are on disability and cannot hold down jobs. then, if all three of us were removed from the constant mental stress of money, we could focus on the real work of healing each other's trauma and regulating each other's moods, like how we evolved to. currently, we can't even visit each other because of time, distance, and mental energy.

thanks for reading.