Thrill Seeking

As someone who drinks, occasionally indulges in illict drugs, and explores some of the more extreme kinks, I can say with some certainty that I do it for a break in the monotony of everyday life.

I live in a small rural community just far enough outside a metropolitan area to make it impossible to do things without a vehicle. I work a minimum wage job, and get less than eight hours per paycheque. I failed out of college because I couldn't juggle a job, family life, and an overload of coursework. I don't have my driver's license because my family did not allow me to take the test, and Drunkscriblerian needs to spend money we don't have to get the car to a point where it'll pass inspection.

I can't get a better job until I have more reliable transportation than the bus system, and I can't get a vehicle until I have a better job. As it is, I'm stuck in a loop for the foreseeable future. On days that I work, I wake up early to catch the bus, spend two or three hours waiting for my shift to start, work my measly five hour shift, wait two more hours until the bus can take me home. On days that I don't work, I wake up early, do a bit of cleaning around the house, then sit on the internet and do nothing. I have a hobby, but it's far more expensive to work on my hobbies than it is to get drunk every so often.

Eventually, I wake up, look at my life, and realize that it's not going anywhere, and it's probably never going to go anywhere. I get the urge to travel, just to see something different, to watch the country go by outside my window, in a vain hope that things will be better elsewhere. But I can't. I can't travel outside the area where I live, because I can't afford it. I can't afford it because I have a terrible job. I can't get a better job because I can't afford transportation. I can't afford transportation because I don't have a better job. The loop continues. It's a cycle I can't break out of, I'm just another number, just a face, just a nobody on the bus. It's enough to make me tear my hair out and scream.

So I drink, I have my sexual deviancies. It's better to have friends over and laugh and drink and have fun and die at 40 than it is to mechanically plod towards an unobtainable goal and throw myself off a bridge at 30.

When I make toast, I hang my head right over the toaster so that when the toast pops up, I'll get a little surprise. Thrills acquired.

@Aon: SORRY SORRY SORRY I DIDN'T MEAN TO OFFEND OR ANYTHING. It's just that, well, I have a friend of mine who surfs, and he's insufferably smug about the whole thing, and that gave me a sort of slant against it. That, and the fact that I tried my hands at that and the constant danger and the reading of the currents and the randomness of the waves and the sheer amount of dedicated time it needs and... well, surfing scares the shit out of me, and I don't find it rewarding or fun at all. I spend more time trying to remain on the spot despite the currents than I do actually riding anything. At least with Rugby or Climbing or Kayak there's a clear everpresent danger that's, y'know, confined, but I've just never seen the appeal of waves, it's just those gigantic maws that go and try to swallow you whole and make you feel like you're in a wash machine.

So "dumb" is an extreme oversimplifications of how I feel about surfing. That, and, well, the general image of the surfer culture turns me off immensely.

@Girlfriend: I can unironically say that this just made me cry a little. I'd go on a rant about lack of public services in the USA, the excessively regressive taxes, the excessive reliance on cars, the bad urbanism that results from that, the wrongness of the social custom of marriage before finishing college and the systematic disadvantage it puts women in, the insufficient size of the minimum wage... but instead I'll ask you: Why not invest some time in politics? Don't you have unions and associations and stuff that could help you improve your situation? Or are they still associated with Dirty Commies and stigmatized as such?

edited 28th Mar '11 2:07:22 PM by Ardiente

I know you didn't mean to offend. I wasn't expecting that to happen at all...

Surfing is certainly scary. Waves are a horrifying thing. While you can learn about their patterns and such they will always have an air of unpredictability and will always have the potential to kill you. Suffering a life threatening experience due to them is part of what led my father to quit. He fucked up and went down, got hit by his board, and knocked his head against a rock. I myself got eaten during one of the few lessons I was a part of and it was probably one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I had no control over anything.

That is part of why it is so beautiful though. It's like an analogy for life. Fun, scary, has certain recognizable patterns but is still random, and likely to destroy you in one freak accident. Is this all incredibly cheesy? Yes. Certainly.

Surf culture's always been very appealing to me because I grew up as a part of it. It's home. The beach and the waxing and the shaka sign and the being caught in a wave and our dorky slang is home. AND THE BON FIRES WITH FOOTBALL GAMES AND FOOD. It's a dorky thing yes, but it is a comforting thing.

"The Soul Surfer expresses himself through his unity with the breaking wave. He borrows the wave's spirit for a short while and uses his body and equipment to translate the essence of the wave's spirit into Art."

This quote pretty much sums up how I've always viewed surfing and always viewed the coolest of surfers.

edited 28th Mar '11 2:10:56 PM by Aondeug

Ah. The togetherness. I have the same thing with socialist movements and mild leftism in general, it's sort of the ambiance of my chidhood family reunions. It brings an air of familiarity, brewed mint black tea and almond biscuits.

Don't stare at me like that, I didn't choose to be raised that way.

EDIT: I also happen to despise football, baseball and soccer, but it's not really the sports themselves, more like the professinal leagues and all the nonsense around them. I still think rugby is cooler than football. But handball is the coolest awesomest ball sport ever.

[[youtube:Uk6T7pXnnG0&feature=related]]

Look at them fly.

I also like Beach Volley because...

edited 28th Mar '11 2:14:31 PM by Ardiente

Beach volley ball's never been a thing I liked because I can't play it at all. That and no one ever wanted to play it on our trips.

@Ardiente: Playing the politics game requires, once again, money. Also, there aren't many unions for minimum wage workers because it's easier to fire workers that complain about work too much and hire someone who's glad to be working again.

This. The job market is a massive Catch 22 here in the states, as it's hard to get in because you need the requisites you only get once you're at the job. Trying to invest in anything requires money, which can even then be tough to do, especially if you need every penny to live.

I'm not in that bad of a situation, but every time I try to invest in myself, or save a little bit, I usually end up having to use it for some other expense or another. There's usually a way out of situations like this, but the risks are incredibly high, and the initial payoffs lacking severely. Yes, you could technically pack up, leave, and find work elsewhere, but that may take a long time to prepare, and there's a lot more unknowns in a different area, which make even the smallest securities available to us more enticing to keep.

I feel dumb now. So there's no escaping the Minimum Wage? You're stuck?

I am using this◊ completely uncommedically. This is the sort of stuff that pisses me off at a very personal level.

edited 28th Mar '11 2:55:01 PM by Ardiente

There's always a way to get out of it, but you'll never hear about it. Those stuck in it are too busy to explain how, or, since they're stuck in it in the first place, don't know how to explain it.

And you'll never hear it from any kind of upper class, since they were never in that position to begin with, and thus can't say anything productive. Just as I saw a politician today say something along the lines of, "Money is not everything," to a cheering crowd, my first thought was, "You know, if he was to work a minimum wage job for 10 years, I can only imagine the enlightening things he'd have to say."

Which is why I tend to like shows like Undercover Boss/Millionaire.

But we're getting off topic now.

The way out seems to rely mostly on massive amounts of good luck.

Maybe if I could find a way to go back to school, it wouldn't be so bad. It's just that I can't get any more loans until I finish a semester of classes paid for out of pocket, which I can't afford. Even an associates degree would give me a marginally better chance of finding a job where growth is possible.