[386] Hard Out Here For A Pimp

I hope I've never convinced you that I have much of anything besides hatred for most things. Sure, I can make a ton of jokes or explain my veritable regal lifestyle in a historical context. But, when some dreaded moments sound an alarm like a bomb next to your head, it really sobers, strangles, any hope for budding optimism.

Consequences carry. I knew back when I was a freshman that blowing 70 thousand dollars at a bullshit institution to get a degree I didn't want was a bad idea. I had no real choice. I was told the degree mattered. So I started my entrepreneurial endeavors on what was left over aided with a partner's savings for a year and our parent's help. Mind you, about 1/7 of my college fund would have sufficed. 1/7 of my total college fund, had it not been in the hands of my deplorable and fat fucking cunt of a Tammi, who allowed it to fluctuate, downward, with the market. All the while criticizing my laudable budgeting.

So I make the calls, get the permits, pass around the questions and plans. I need to immediately be a pseudo-everything from lawyer to accountant to woodworker. I operate under what I've been told by the “responsible business parties” who've given me the rules. Your first mistake is to think you can trust anything to be what it is. This, I learned far too late.

Because then I get fucked. I get fucked for a few thousand dollars, because people lie, that follows us the entire time we're at the mall. It amounts to several more thousand dollars that I had to sell my car to alleviate. My car to my uncle who, not only has, and has had more money than anyone could ever need, but uses it to hoard. Yes, hoarding is real, and exhibit A is the thousands and thousands spent on whatever is lining the floor of my grandma's old house. But hey, he needed to make a profit on his nephew, and figured he could fix and resell the car for more.

So then I get to sit. I get to wait around with all the supplies and knowledge and motivation for about a year. My “saving grace” being the death of my grandma. Then I get to have wheels turning again. I immediately buy the van. I tell 2 people I have a little extra cash. Incidentally, they're 2 people who could use a little extra cash. I give it willingly, because, let's say family. I get things done on the cheap, but not too cheap, because when the job costs $150, the people you're working with will make sure it costs an extra hundred or two, just for, let's say reasons.

But the van gets done. And it doesn't get used for months. Because right around the time you think you're getting money back, you're not getting money back. This means you can't afford a permit until a few months later. This means the insane insurance prices you've been paying, that you have to prove you have in order to apply for said permit, have been going towards a van that stares at you longingly from the parking lot.

So you wait. You get the permit. OH! But did you know your insurance was canceled 2 days before you had the money to pay it? This means you get to spend another huge chunk of money that was only going to go towards something modest anyway, like supplies. Here you go insurance, $600 bucks in case a car bomb goes off next to my van. You know, because this is how the terrorists actually win. I wish this was an exaggeration.

Enough time has gone by that you are noticeably less enthused. You go around flyering, trying to make an instant connection with someone who doesn't want to be at work, let alone talk to you, and explain to them you've got this awesome convenient coffee truck! And wouldn't you know it? These people have the same level of enthusiasm and capacity for empty promises as almost-customers in the mall! “I'll have to try it sometime!” “Oh! We love coffee around here!” “That's a really good idea! It's a wonder no one's thought of it before.”

Meanwhile I'm pretending these people are in a much higher place financially than I am. Sure, the branch manager at an investment bank, two of them actually, love the idea and are helpful and can afford it, but people have settled into their routines and already get their Starbucks on the way to work anyway. Here I go trying to ruffle feathers with an untested, inexpensive (because that means low quality somehow, thank you psychology background and perception documentaries) product. Brand awareness after all, brand awareness! You should charge Starbucks prices! Presumably out of spite because I have a tit-for-tat machine that runs like they do.

But wait, do you hear the insurance payment coming back around? Because here's another opportunity to pay $450 for 2 months before another $450 will be due in 2 more! The $300 to the health department, the $350 to the mobile permit people, the $300 to the push-cart police aren't enough. You need to be insured for millions of dollars in case Grand Theft Auto plays out on the square. So while you're already basically flat broke, trying to run your coffee van in that between realm of popular enough to prove the concept, but not so popular you have to beat away orders and get into a drug trial, here's half a year's future security just begging to be pissed away again!

And you have to do this because people around you think you're either dumb, lazy, or perfectly unreasonable in not pursuing the kinds of jobs and lives they lead. I had $3500 left from my college fund. My grandma dying netted close to $12000. I've done 4 studies for a total of around $11000. You know what my bills are a month? $350 if I choose to drive too much. I've been out of college 3 years. If I did NOTHING but read, watch shows, and go out from time to time, I'd still have TWELVE THOUSAND dollars today, leaving aside arbitrary Biolife and birthday/Christmas cash.

I'm a fool who has to try. I legitimately believe in ideas changing the world and building engines of wealth that aren't just counted monetarily. For as much as I carry on about hating working for people, which is true, or thinking most everything around me is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen if not for what tomorrow will surely bring, I've still done whatever it took to handle business. I'm broke, but I'm not in debt, and with my time I'm always trying to learn.

It's frustrating that I am sometimes spoken to as if I don't understand my circumstances. “Have you ever thought about working as...” “Hey, if you get sick of all your hatred and reading, why don't you become...” “A psychology major, that's so interesting, why didn't you...?” “You know, I have no idea what your plans are, I certainly never asked, but you'd be really good at...”

I hate how things are run. I hate the endless barriers to even live modestly. I hate that no one can seem to see themselves in a future that makes sense or lasts for longer than a year or two at a time. Effort and intelligence need to stand as more than a road to complicit exhaustion. Let every one of my friends run the other experiment and ask them how happy they are and well they're doing.

If I just wanted money, just to sit on it, just to have it, that's what I'd be doing. If my ego or pride still puts me in front of a Steak N Shake grill until 6 am, it's nothing if not pragmatic first. Can we stop fucking pretending I don't know what I'm doing?