I don’t have many friends, but I try to look out for the ones I do. Most of my life has been an uphill struggle, and while the top of the mountain isn’t as tall as the dreams of my youth, it has a pleasant view, and I can see myself being happy here for a very long time (if I let myself be). It’s lonely up here, though, and as much as I’d like to bring my friends with me. My work often feels like I’m saving the world, yet I cannot save my friends from themselves…
“Hey, hey, I saved the world today!
…And everybody’s happy now,
The bad thing’s gone away!
And everybody’s happy now,
The good thing’s here to stay!”
– Eurythmics, I Saved the World Today
It seems that life is just harder for some people, even for simple things like keeping a job or even an appointment. They mean well, but have proven time and again to be utterly unreliable. I’ve given this problem a lot of thought, trying to understand why some people make it, and others don’t. What follows are my reflections on this…
Safety Nets
About 20 years ago, I was completing the last year of my undergrad. I’d quit my internship for my first big-boy job, working for a local telephone division in enterprise support. I’d get up around 7 or 8 pm, eat something, then head to the office to start my shift at 10 pm. I’d work until 7 am, drive 40 minutes to school for my 8 am capstone courses, then on to my second job working at the library, and finally, home sometime early afternoon to try to sleep, then do it all over again the next day.
I did this because I had to support my wife and myself. There were no safety nets, and no one to turn to for help. My mother and father separated when I was 10, my eldest brother left home when I was 13, and my parents officially divorced when I was 15. I wasn’t particularly close to my other siblings, and I left home the first chance I got, and never looked back. I had to learn self-reliance because I had no choice. I had no one else to look to but myself. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had smart, capable friends in their late 20s, even 30s or 40s, who couldn’t keep a job at a fast-food restaurant for more than 2-3 months at a time, let alone pursue any career. Most of them lived with a parent, sibling, or friend. Hell, I’ve taken in many friends to help them get back on their feet, and it almost always ended the friendship. Easy come, easy go, I suppose… people tend to take things for granted when they don’t have to struggle for them.
They give themselves permission to fail, reasoning that someone will always be there to help them. They may not be proud of it, but that blow to their pride isn’t a sufficient deterrent, or they just refuse to accept responsibility…
It’s Always Someone (or Something) Else’s Fault
A common trait among my friends who suffer from this is a tendency to deflect responsibility onto someone or something else… This is normal for children, but I expect better from grown-ass men…
Yes, sometimes, somebody might have it in for you. Yes, the odds aren’t in your favor, and things are harder than they have to be, but that’s life! The trick is to accept the hand you’ve been dealt, and make the most of it! But what does that look like?
For me, it was turtling up, buckling down, and making do with what I had for years on end. I didn’t go out. I lived modestly. I didn’t take vacations. I didn’t travel. I stayed at home, and my computer was my sole source of entertainment. But not these guys!
I have a friend we’ll call “Cap’n Fazoli”. He had aspirations of doing contractor work as a side hustle and needed a work truck. Around here, that shouldn’t cost more than $3-5k if you know what to look for. It doesn’t have to look good; it just needs to run.
Instead, he found his “Dream Truck” (a late-70s show vehicle) and paid about $10,000 for it (borrowed from his parents, of course). It wasn’t long before the cracks started to show (oil leaks, wiring problems, etc.. It became apparent that it would need a lot of work and was never intended to be a daily driver, let alone a proper work truck.
Now he’s saddled with a $400/month payment (about a quarter of his paycheck). He complains about money trouble but continues to spend cash he doesn’t have on things like guns (bought an $800 pistol), going out to eat, and frequent vacations, even though he hasn’t been in his job long enough to have PTO to use.
Fazoli blames his wife, who, admittedly, he should never have married. She’s mentally unstable and suffers from frequent crash-outs. These episodes seem to be limited to her interactions with him (and other social situations like work), leading me to believe that this is how she’s learned to manipulate him into getting her way…
I have to remind myself that he alone is responsible for his own situation, and he alone has the power to change it. All I can do is try to be there for him when he needs someone to talk to, and encourage him to work it out for himself.
I did manage to get him a job working for a municipal government, so if he can stick with it for 5-10+ years, he’ll have a nice safety net. He’s just now finished his 6-month probationary period, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
Some People Aren’t Ready for Help
“It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. I spoke of myself as ‘responsible’ for this group; that was verbal shorthand. The most I can do, or you, or any leader-is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold, 1964
The last point/realization is the most devastating: Some people aren’t going to make it, and there’s nothing you can do to help them. Porkbun was one of them. Porkbun was a big, friendly doofus, touched with the ’tism. Now that I think about it, conversations with him were a lot like conversations with generative AI; he was overly eager, enthusiastic, could repeat facts he’d learned, but utterly dependent on being told what to do and how to do it. No imagination.
There came an opportunity at my side hustle to bring on someone to handle the low-hanging fruit. They didn’t have to be particularly bright, and the position wasn’t well-paid, but it was just perfect for someone who needed help breaking into the industry. I arranged a call with the CEO, and everything went well, but then he had to go and shoot himself in the foot.
I made the mistake of having a side channel conversation with him in Discord, which he took out of context and shared with his mother. Mother Porkbun then insisted the whole thing was a scam, which utterly baffled me. I spent about an hour on the phone with him, explaining that, for that to be true, it would have been a long con to put Victor Lustig to shame!
I patiently explained that, over the course of several years, I had helped him with job applications, reviewed job postings with him and explained the particulars, helped him with his resume, and even hosted his website, which was intended to be a portfolio of his work that he could share with prospective employers.
It was then that I realized that I was not dealing with a 28-year-old man, but rather a child – incapable of making his own decisions. So I rescinded the offer, citing that I didn’t think he was ready, and withdrew all personal association with him.
I asked if he had any interest in keeping his website, and although he’d only logged in 7 times over the 3 years I’d hosted it for him, he insisted he did, so I backed it up and helped him transfer it to his own provider. With that, I washed my hands of him.
I don’t blame Porkbun – he couldn’t help what he was. The fault lay with me for not recognizing his limitations. One day, I’ll learn to mind my own goddamn business…
