Let’s Organize and Understand Some Thoughts

The only way I know how: tumblr a post.

What’s this about? It’s about what I’m doing. I’m a NEET, which is a Japanese term for someone who is Not Employed, Educated, or in Training. I’ve been a NEET since last summer, so we’ll say six months.

What brought this post about is that my dad has warned me that I’ll need to start job hunting soon, like as soon as my mom gets the “all-clear” that her cancer is “over.”

My completely honest reaction to this: I have no bloody idea why. My parents are determined that I need to get a job so that I’ll be ready if they die or something, or when they retire, which is at least a solid decade from now. 

It’s funny that this came up today because I’d been talking about the very proposition with my friend last night in the midst of a three-hour speech about why he shouldn’t join the military. My speech was mostly about looking at how many options and alternatives there are in life, and always weighing what you want against the consequences of having it. Here’s an example:

The friend in question is currently working at Krispy Kreme to help support his family. The situation: he has his mom, dad, a sixteen year-old sister in high school, and a toddler sister. His mom is working as a house cleaner, and also has to keep watch of the kids. His dad is a useless fatass. His family has a lot of money saved up, which in combination with what they’re making is keeping them afloat.

Brando (friend) was considering joining the military to have more money to send home. However, I know Brando, that he has a problem with authority, a problem with the military, and no desire to be taken away for four years. So I tried to help him lay out his situation as a series of possibilities. 

One possibility is that his dad will finally stop being a noncontributing cunt and get a job to support his family. That or he or his mom get better jobs (he already got a pay raise recently which he’d considered incentive to stay at his job), or even his sixteen year-old sister can start helping out. 

More importantly than anything, his family isn’t *desperate* yet. Brando doesn’t like his job, but no one does, and it’s certainly better than the military. In a worst case scenario, his family bottoms out into hard enough times that he ends up *needing* better work, but until that time comes, he shouldn’t go rushing into things head-first.

So what about when his family is stabilized? His mom wants him to go to college and is trying to “force” him, but as I explained, she simply can’t. He just has to weigh his desire to not go to college (at which he is guaranteed to fail, because he’s like me and can’t make himself give a shit) against his desire not to piss off his mom. But as I explained to him, the worst case scenario there is that his mom kicks him out of the house for not doing as she says. In that case, we will take him in until he can get on his feet. There’s no question that we’d help him out, considering we help plenty of family and friends that we don’t care about nearly as much as we do him. He would be welcome for as long as he needed to be, and I think his mom would eventually be able to come to terms with his decision and let him become his own man. 

Brando wants to practice martial arts. That is his passion. He works out and practices every single day, and once his financial responsibilities aren’t all directed towards his family, he wants to get training in various martial arts and potentially become a fighter. This is all he wants out of life… and something that he won’t be doing if he joins the military.

That huge anecdote out of way, here’s the conclusion I came to last night about the absolute worst case scenario of my life:

-Both of my parents suddenly die, leaving me in charge of my brothers.
-My 19 year-old brother drops out of college, I cut my hair, the two of us get jobs to take care of the youngest. We sell the house and everything in it to have a cash buffer, and move into a much smaller place.
-I end up getting a job at the car dealership where my dad used to work, and climb the ladder for fourteen years, never managing to get around to my creative works.
-I become my dad.

Yes, even if your dad is a super-awesome badass like mine, the worst case scenario in life is always, without question, becoming your dad. That is a natural law.

“But Conrad, how can you be so sure that things will go that smoothly?”

Are you kidding? First of all, of course they’re going to hire the son of their deceased best employee ever. Second, I have already been told once in the past that I was hire-able at one of the dealerships even without a sob story, and even without cutting my hair! Third, I’m a wizard of sales. Two parents who spent the better part of their lives managing retail stores, and you better believe I learned how to do that shit. There’s no reason to believe that, being motivated by having to support my family, I couldn’t be the “second coming” of my dad. 

I’ve thought about all this shit. I’ve given monumental amounts of thought to all these theoretical situations and possibilities, and really none of them even matter, because no matter what happens, I’m prepared to deal with it. I’ve lived under so many different conditions and known so many people who were in so many different situations that I know how to work things out. I’m very confident about this. And what’s the worst that could ever happen? I become homeless and jobless? Cool, I’ll become a vagrant and walk across the country. I die? Sure as hell won’t care about that after it’s happened!

I want to say, “but this is all besides the point,” but it’s not. This *is* the point. The point is that I can deal with whatever happens, and that I don’t think I should be worried about this kind of shit unless it happens. I’m going to bank on the following:

-My parents live long, full lives.
-My dad works at his job until he gets my youngest brother through college, then retires and goes to school.
-Before that happens, I find a way to support myself.

That’s something like an eight year grace period I’ve put my money in. Would he be happy to know that? (Which he now does) No. But that’s okay because I don’t intend to use all eight of those years. Just the ones that I need.

I haven’t explained this stuff to my parents because I refuse to make promises to them or to myself anymore. How many times have I told them about plans that I never went through with? I was supposed to make a movie, then to write a book, then to go to college, etc, etc, and I’ve never accomplished these things. I don’t *want* to have to tell them, “well, right now I’m counting on writing a hit comic/album/story/whatever,” —I want to come to them with a finished product and say, “hey dad, I made this, I’m going to seek an editor, and a publisher, and we’re going to advertise.” I want his investment to be based on my results rather than my promises.

I stabbed myself in the foot like this, though, because in being shady and secretive about my plans, I’ve made it look like I’ve spent the past six months doing absolutely nothing. And I’m not going to pretend that I maximized all of my time and constantly worked towards a goal. I’ve spent plenty of time hanging out with friends, playing video games, watching anime, sitting around bored, etc., but this doesn’t come close to meaning that I haven’t done *anything.*

Here is a list of things which I’ve done in the past six months:

-Released well over 100 songs with my band, Trial of the Golden Witch, with each album being progressively better than the last.
Future potential: We just recorded our first “demo” album, in other words one wherein the guitarists are going to actually *learn the songs* and *record better versions* which can be actually real songs. I also have a friend whom I’ve set to the task of writing a heavy metal album, which pending his results could be awesome. 
I have a friend who is an experienced musician from whom I can learn whatever I need to know about breaking into the industry. 

-Written a plethora of short stories, concepts, poems, etc.
Future potential: I’m always getting better as a writer. I’m getting close to something that I can really be proud of. It’s something I felt I was starting to touch with my Tales From the 7-Eleven series, and I only feel even closer now. My voice as a writer has always been my biggest advantage, but now I feel my *style* as a whole is coming into being.
As soon as I actually finish a book that I feel is worthy and get it edited, I already have a friend who can publish it as an ebook on Amazon, iTunes, etc., immediately.
Additionally, I’ve just recruited an artist friend to try doing a webcomic with me that I’m feeling pretty good about right now.

-Made an assload of videos
Future potential: I keep getting better not only at video editing, but at animation. I’m currently halfway through a *massive* animation work which I think is something stylistically solid and gives me lots of ideas about future works.

 The funny thing here is that my dad is always explaining to people that he considers himself my “benefactor” and that it takes a long time to truly get good at something, yet for all that he says this, he doesn’t seem that confident that I’m succeeding here. 

But that might be my fault. I’m not making it look like I’m doing something, because I make it look like I sit around doing nothing all day and play down whatever work I’m doing. Last week, everyone knew that I was sleeping all day and staying up all night and that I spent two whole days without seeing the sun. Sounds bad. What they didn’t know was that I spent the *entire time that I was awake* on those days working on my animation project. The. Entire. Time. 

Why not say so? Because I wasn’t confident yet that it was going to turn out well, or that I’d actually go through with finishing it. The past three or four days, I haven’t been able to work on it because there’s a clip I need to film and I haven’t had the necessary people around to film it, so I simply don’t have the footage to keep making the video. Uncertainties and glitches like this are why I don’t want to say anything until it’s done.

I am a highly confident person. I’m just not that confident in any individual thing. I believe very strongly that I will, very soon, make a breakthrough in one of my mediums of interest, stand up, say “this is the one,” and start publishing whatever it is. Every day, I feel closer to the precipice of that breakthrough. 

Here are some things that I know. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t even slightly believe that I have the skill set to succeed at school. And I don’t want to get a job, because I don’t want it to destroy my soul, or to throw me off from the amazing chain of events that’s happening right now. I love my life right now. I love the pace at which things are unfolding, and I love that I feel so close to capturing a dream. I have all of the space in the world to do this, and I don’t feel that there’s any good reason to jeopardize this.