Fellow Underachiever, You Are Seen

At ConCarolinas I went to a panel to support my friend Joe Compton. It was on the films of Kevin Smith, which while I am a fan, I'm not a 'go to a panel at 10 o'clock at night when there are some lonely beers looking longingly at my lips' fan. But Joe is my brother from another mother, and I wasn't going to dip into that sack of Guinness without him, so to the panel I went.

The moderator, who I won't name, had an incredibly touching moment talking about Clerks 3. I don't recall the exact wording, but the gist of their thought was that the movie really hit them, and hit them hard. They talked about how the movie highlighted folks of around our age that for whom life hadn't turned out right, and how for the first time they felt seen.

That statement really resonated with me. Not because I have seen the movie and agree (I haven't seen it, because I'm a slacker). But that plaintive feeling that something, somewhere along the pathway of our lives went wrong, and no one of authority seemed to really notice or care, that struck a chord.

Because I've spent most of my adult life feeling that way too.

And if you are reading this, I bet so have you.

I am right on the cusp between the generations. I'm just a nudge into Millennial, missing Gen X by a few years. And I think it was with those at the tail end of Gen X that it began (at least in my anecdotal experience), a problem that fully came to blossom by the time my generation came along. We were the children of the baby boomers, a generation that established the great American promise that if you just worked hard and got a degree, you were guaranteed a good job. A house, a wife, and 2.1 kids would promptly follow, if that's what you were in to.

I have this bizarrely vivid memory of being in 5th grade working on a mural, and having this clear vision that when I graduated college I would have a job making 50k a year right out the gate. It seemed so reasonable, just a forgone conclusion (I will firmly acknowledge that I have more than a little privilege here). And sure, in 5th grade you don't have a real clue what that actually means. But nowhere along the way did I see any information that ran counter to that. It was a forgone conclusion: go to college, get a good paying job. The dollar amount was never really spelled out, because it didn't need to be. It would be enough to get that nice house in the 'burbs, not a problem.

But by the time we started coming out of college, that degree had gone from a guaranteed ticket to a good job, to more and more being the bare minimum to get any sort of job that paid better than minimum wage. There had been a bait and switch, and along the way the price of our ticket went through the roof, while instead of being front row seats to the economic dream, we were back in the nosebleeds.

I graduated in December of 2006. In 2007 I got a raise at my first job, to supervisor. I was making 16.88 an hour, around 35k a year pre-tax.

The economy tanked in 2008, and I got laid off.

Now in this, the year of our lord 2023, is the first year since then that I have come to make more than that an 16.88 hour. I am up to around 38k a year pre-tax now.

Was this true for all of us? Of course not. I have a cousin, our class clown in fact, he's something crazy like an ADA, hell he's probably going to be Governor before it's all said and done. But the bulk of the people in my life? Especially so many of the bright ones, the folks that you would think would just be killing it at life? Very few of them are living the life that we were told was coming our way. More and more the bright ones became the broken ones as we've been dashed on life's rocky shores. And only now that we are a decade or two behind schedule are we even getting hints of fixing the cracks. It's only been in the past few years that any significant number of my friends have become established enough to be able to have kids. Some have begun buying houses.

But most of my friends are childless, and rent. And there is nothing wrong with that. But I am guessing, based on my own experience, that they feel in some way like they have failed to achieve what they could have. Because I know I have.

Not to sugar coat things, but I was a really smart kid. Duke TIP student, full ride scholarship, Mensa level test scores (that I was too broke to afford the dues too), the works. I could have done pretty much anything I set my mind to. I got some useless degrees, sure, but any job I've had I've excelled at. If someone gives me a chance, I pretty much rock it. But there just haven't been a lot of chances thrown my way. And I will certainly own the fact that I didn't run around chasing a chance at something better. Because I'm probably the least money focused person I know. But I also didn't have many people in my formative years that I could look to as an example. Everyone in my daily life was struggling. Hell, if it wasn't for the kindness of friends and my parents, there were a couple of times I would have been homeless.

But you know what? I'm ok with it all. Really. I've been an underachiever by most any conventional metric you could use, having only in the past couple of years really gotten back on 'track' (whatever that means?).

Because you know what? We didn't get what we were told was coming our way. But I think all that struggle along the way, it made a lot of us far better people than we would have been otherwise. I know it's true for me. The older I've gotten, the more I've struggled, the more empathic it's made me. I pick up hitchhikers, I give money to panhandlers, I drop money I don't have on folks gofundme's. Because I've been down and out, and it was only because folks rallied around me that got me through. So I try to return the favor. And everyone I know is the same way. We're a damn helpful, kind generation.

Some folks have taken the hurt of broken promises and gone down dark paths, becoming hateful. Sure. I've had former friends take all that anger and turn towards hate, railing against whatever scapegoat they have settled on for why their lives didn't turn out 'right.' But by and large, I look around and see so many people who are so damn good.

We didn't achieve the house in the suburbs and the brood of kids. But so many of us, freed from the expectation of what we knew we weren't going to achieve, we chased our dreams. It took some of us a long time to find them, but when we did, we chased hard. And you know, we may never get there. I may never become a full time writer. But that will be ok. I'm used to things not panning out the way they are 'supposed' to. Because along the way I have met so many people just like me. The amazing people who I sit there and think 'man, I don't get why someone isn't giving them a chance, cause they could rock the whole damn world.'

They are my people. The underachievers, that be it from some force internal or external, haven't gotten to where they want to be. But given the choice between being crabs in a bucket, or a helping hand, they choose helping out every time. I think about my Con family, and how everyone is always struggling to break out and break big, but never pauses for even a second when given a chance to help a fellow creative get their chance.

So yeah. I see you. And I hope you see me, and know that I have your back. We'll get there. Or we won't. But either way we'll be together.

Fellow underachiever, you are loved.