Lovely little delusions

Sometimes reality is just too much to deal with. My life isn't particularly difficult or challenging; rather, it stays stuck in the same place, going nowhere fast. I'm not drowning in debt, facing unemployment, or worrying about getting my next meal; instead, I'm doing the same shit I've been doing for the past 4 years, in the same cubicle, in the same city, and until recently, for the same pay. Yes, reader, I did finally receive a real raise. By "real raise," I mean a 7% increase in purchasing power after adjusting for inflation. Last year's raise brought my purchasing power, in 2010 dollars, back up to exactly where it was when I started in 2007. So after 4 years here, I'm basically grossing just shy of an additional $200 a month more before taxes.

This reality, while enviable to some, often becomes unbearable for me. Due to the standards set by my upper-middle-class upbringing, I feel that by now my life should have amounted to a lot more — more money, bigger house, and one or two children that I could afford to raise. I look at what my father had when he was my age — a charming house in Raleigh's premiere inside-the-beltline neighborhood, two little children, and a nice job that paid for it all and then some. Now that I'm that age, what do I have? An entry-level job with no hope for advancement, a townhouse in a questionable neighborhood, a Ford P.O.S. going on 13 years old, and no hope of ever being able to give my wife the children she wants and the upbringing I want for them. The depressing effect abates slightly when I step back and realize that most people my age are in similar, or equally unappealing, situations. Most of the friends my wife keeps up with are single and working mindless jobs, only one friend of mine is married, and those acquaintances of my wife's who are married with children seem tired and miserable. My own brother is aging like a U.S. President. The American dream appears to have crumbled; jobs are too undependable to make buying a home attractive, banks have tightened up the mortgage market, making homes too hard to get for those who want them, and education and healthcare costs have made child-rearing affordable only for those with six-figure salaries.

Here's where the woulda-coulda-shouldas take root. I could be in a much more favorable situation, even in this shitty economy. I could have chosen a more lucrative career, if only I had the forethought to understand how important it would be later on. When I chose my current career, I figured the money wasn't too important as long as I could earn a comfortable living. I didn't foresee a wife or a house. If only I had a crystal ball and knew who I was going to marry and where she was going to school; I could have chosen a career in law or medicine and met her back in the glorious late 1990s, giving me a few extra years with her in my life and avoiding wasting so many years on two degrees that would never pay big returns. By now, I could be a hotshot lawyer or a young doctor, saving up for a house in the old-money neighborhood, maybe with a kid on the way, whom I'd send to the most exclusive private school in town. If I had a kid right now, he'd grow up in a crowded townhouse and go to god-awful public schools with unrefined middle-class children, either taking the cheesewagon home or getting picked up in his mom's decade-old Toyota.

To cope with my yearning to change the past, present, and future, I turn to little delusions to distract me from the banality of my real life and the unobtainability of the standard of living I grew up with. While going through my routine this morning, I thought to myself, it's October, 1999. I'm at my apartment near the ECU campus with my girlfriend who stays over every night. I'm getting up to go to my pre-med classes. Later on, we'll meet up for lunch on campus, and be back at the apartment about 3:30 and take a little nap or have a little afternoon delight. Then we'll work on homework, have some Ramen noodles or Lean Cuisines for dinner, and have a few beers while we watch Time of Your Life and Ally McBeal.

Yes, now and then I wish I were back in college, in the late '90s when the economy was rock-solid and jobs were hanging from trees. At least back in college, you had something to look forward to. Nothing was forever, and yet the real world still seemed forever away. Every semester offered something new and different, with all-new classes, classmates, and professors, but you still had the comfort of knowing where you were going and what you were doing every day, all with a goal to strive for in the form of a degree and a job or a spot at a professional school. Loathe one of your classes this semester? Well, just tough it out and it'll be over in a few months. Is it cold and rainy outside? Rather stay in your cozy apartment instead of go to class? Blow it off, dude, you get 3 unexcused absences per class, per semester, and there's no supervisor to call with a lame excuse in a fake scratchy voice. Bills? What the hell are those? Those go to Mom and Dad's house. Your only money concern is catching Lean Cuisines on sale so you'll have more for half-price pitchers.

Last week I went on a staff retreat, where I carried my stuff in my old backpack I'd used in high school and college. When I got home that evening, I swear I had a time-travel experience like something out of a Jack Finney novel. Years and years of muscle memory, fallow for so many additional years, snapped back into service instantly as I came in the door, raised my right hand to my shoulder, slid my thumb under the strap, twirled the pack around 180 degrees, and lowered it to the floor, all in one smooth motion as I'd done thousands of times before, and for that quick second of time, my brain thought it was about 3:30 in the afternoon. For that brief flash, I was still in college. I didn't have overdue bills waiting in the mail, I didn't have to make dinner, I hadn't driven home in a piece of shit, and the whole afternoon lay ahead of me to goof off. My God, it was wonderful.

I want so badly to go back and do it all again, only this time, do it right. Pick pre-med or pre-law right out of the gate so I'd be earning six figures by the age of 30, go to school far away enough that I can't go home every weekend, have a few random sex partners before I meet my future wife then and there instead of years later, and get out and fucking live the college life instead of hole up in my dorm/apartment watching TV and getting fat. Hence, I am beginning to cook up plans once again for a "'90s room." A few years back I posted photos of my first, pitiful attempt. If I really want that authentic college-in-the-'90s atmosphere, I have to do better and go for the '90s college apartment bedroom look. I have already moved the old TV, VCR, and CD changer into the guest room and even dug up my autographed photo of Bill Clinton. I need to procure some immature posters, such as the old "Beers of the World" poster, John Belushi as Bluto in his COLLEGE sweatshirt, maybe Kenny McCormick on the toilet, and some sort of scantily-clad nubile female, be it a generic unknown or a '90s celebrity such as Carmen Electra or Jenny McCarthy. I'd also need some empty beer and liquor bottles on display, and even lay out some everyday objects such as my vintage bottle of "Woods" by Abercrombie & Fitch and a Surge bottle. A couple of vintage Playboy or Penthouse issues would be a nice touch. I'd need a cheap desk as well to display my vintage Compaq desktop computer. While this is very different from what my dorm room actually looked like, I am living a fantasy, here, in which my very personality would have been different. I would not have been an overweight dork who shied away from women and was scared to death of getting drunk. I would have been a sort of genius douchebag, who was highly intelligent and secretly liked the X-Files, but still got laid regularly and binge-drank every weekend. I'd go in there, turn on Third Eye Blind or Matchbox Twenty, and drift away into '90s collegiate bliss.