Low Income, Early 20s, Anti-Wage-Slave Living: Walwen's Journal

[Walwen]

I made the decision that I do not want to work for a little while. I'm just enjoying not-working so much, and I'm making so much progress in my personal life, and most of all my health. And I can afford to do this, I really can.

I enrolled into a local community college and signed up for 7 credit hours, totally online: American Sign Language and Music Theory, both 8 week sessions. Totally fun classes, lol, but they didn't require me to wait to get official copies of my ACT scores. I should have done this like two weeks ago- it's just days away from the session starting and most of the online-only classes were full. I have to really sit down sometime and figure out how many credits I've scraped up over my various forays with college. At this point I'll be happy if I can just get my loose credits rolled up into any 2-year degree, just so that I'll actually have a degree rather than credits that will eventually get too old to be useful.

So that gives me the next 10 weeks or so. So long as I'm taking classes I can keep my family off my back, being worried I'm turning into a NEET. If I like it, I figure I might take up a part-time job and then take a few more classes, maybe some in-person too. Right now I'm donating plasma which nets me at least 60 bucks a week.

It makes me feel a lot better because my granddad is going to have another major surgery in the coming weeks. My family is already making comments to me about how I need to get a job, but they also benefit a lot from me being at home. The best job for me would be to work in the factory that's walking distance from my house and pays very well- but is known for being highly demanding. I figure I eventually will go work in the factory, but I can't imagine starting the job at the same time as my grandfather really needs me at home.

My one big "spendy" hobby is going to Commander format Magic the Gathering nights once per week. It's where I like to spend money with my friends and meet new people. I've been bringing a few valuable cards each week and selling them to the store for credit, and then I buy my snacks or new cards with the credit LOL.
Eventually I'll run out of valuable cards to trade in, but since I quit my job, I have actually been MAKING money each time I go out to have a fun night at the card shop. I'm glad I discovered the joy of actually selling my cards, because I've never really wanted to be a collector and I don't have the room for that.

It would be one thing if I NEEDED to make money, NOW. If I NEEDED to make rent money, if I was on a timer and when it hit 0 I'd be homeless or something- I would get a job right away. But I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of flexibility and freedom, and most of all, I'm aware that this window in my life is likely to end within a few years. I'm only going to get more and more responsibly and it would be more and more complicated to take 10 weeks off to work on my personal development.

Sometimes I mourn the """lost potential""" in that I've had to spend a lot of time and money in my life recovering from my shitty childhood. "Other people don't have to do this." But the older I get, the more I realize that it's either dealing with it now, or dealing with it being even worse later. I can say "it's not fair" until the cows come home, but spending years walking on a stress fracture only made it more complicated to handle, and I really should have thrown in the towel and decided to "waste my time" when it was simpler to do so. However I also know that no one in my life really was willing to let me "waste my time", no one was willing to let me be sick, because I've always had to be the adult.

So, that's the ironic part of it all. It's only now as an adult man, facing my family as an equal, that I'm finally able to go, "No, I'm not doing this and that. I'm not okay and I'm going to spend the next months addressing this." I know they mean well by ignoring everything that's wrong with me, but it doesn't actually work that way and it always leads to giant blow-ups when reality comes a'knocking and my problems don't disappear overnight.

[ertyu]

Would the family be willing to chip in some money if you stay on as a caregiver? If your grandpa needs it, 50-100 dollars per person will be much much less than you would have to pay an actual caregiver. Im thinking this gives you 200 pw to eat, gets them off your back, and gets you the time you want with your grandfather. A friend of mine did this with her grandmother: she quit her minimum wage job and the rest of the family pooled contributions to keep her fed in the meantime. Caring for her dying grandmother was rough in many ways, but I get the sense my friend valued the time they got to have with each other even under the circumstances.

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update! There's real money in Magic The Gathering cards. I remember back in 2000 if you had spend money on MtG cards in 1995, you'd be better off than if you had invested in the stock market.

However it seems unsuitable for work. The people who trade professionally don't look very happy or healthy.

[Walwen]

Like most other things, if you really want to do it as a profession.... it stops being fun and starts being work. For me, it just tickles my financial senses how I can make my hobby nearly self-sustaining by selling the cards to buy new cards LOL.

I'm lucky enough that my friend is a lot more into it all then I am, and so I go by his judgement. Some cards hold their value a lot better than others, and so I usually just ask him what makes sense to sell. If I actually want to play an expensive card, I just proxy it, i.e. print it out on a piece of paper, because my play group is very casual and I have no inclination towards official tournaments.

I don't know if my family would really be willing or even that able to give me an allowance. I think I already get a pretty sweet deal in that I don't pay rent or bills besides my internet and phone, and I'm still on my mother's health insurance. More than that, my family is never really able to save money, and I do have money saved. So it would feel pretty weird to be siphoning off my from my elders, at least in my book.

However, it's possible that my mother might subsidize me taking college classes. At this point I think I would also take payment in food/groceries LOL. I usually grocery shop for my family because neither of them can walk far: I don't think either of them would object to me buying bread and milk on their dollar, if I asked. Asking stuff like this is what makes them think I'm super duper broke and get all worried that I'm running out of money. They just don't get it.

I actually have not told my family I enrolled in the community college yet. My reasoning was that I needed a clear, unbiased head when deciding how many credit hours to take and what classes to take, and about the money. It's a kinda touchy subject since I've dropped out of college and I just did not need my mother's judgements in my ear. Now that I've already signed up for them, I'm pretty sure she'll love my choices though, as my mother herself has taken sign language classes and always tells me that "Piano for non-music majors" was her favorite class.

[ertyu]

it would feel pretty weird to be siphoning off my from my elders

I get it that the suggestion overall might not be so workable in your situation, but in case you implement it or something similar, you might want to reframe it from "siphoning off" to "a win-win situation where I get beer money and they get a huge discount on what they would have paid if they'd had to hire someone, or what they'd have to give up in terms of time/convenience if they had to do it themselves." It doesn't have to be mooching.

Good luck resolving the situation to your satisfaction. The college classes sound fun, enjoy

[Veronica]

If I actually want to play an expensive card, I just proxy it, i.e. print it out on a piece of paper, because my play group is very casual and I have no inclination towards official tournaments.

Absolutely fantastic idea. I've never understood why you have to pay 300 bucks for a piece of cardstock when all the text and art written on it is already available online with high quality. Games should be for everyone.

Go easy on yourself; it sounds like you're trying to slowly assemble a life you actually enjoy in circumstances that demand much of you.
Take it from me, my early twenties also involved a lot of personal sacrifice that I'm only now beginning to claw my way out of, but it's been beyond worth it.

[jacob]

Absolutely fantastic idea. I've never understood why you have to pay 300 bucks for a piece of cardstock when all the text and art written on it is already available online with high quality. Games should be for everyone.

Because [rarity] creates variation in the decks of the players. If every card was freely available, everybody would converge on using the same "most powerful" cards with the same "general strategy". This would in turn change the game itself from playing the cards to playing the man. Traditional card games like poker is good examples of this

Insofar "playing the man" (reading tells) is not possible, the game becomes monotonous because every player looks and acts the same. Here the so-called metagame becomes more important than the game itself. This in turn takes the fun out of it for those players who are mostly interested in the game itself. Conversely, of course, if one is more interested in the metagame---either inventing new deck designs, copying what the best players on youtube are doing, or simply trying to predict which metaphorical rock, paper, or scissor will be popularly chosen next(*)---then having access to all the cards makes more sense.

(*) The Ultra League in Pokemon Go is a good example of this.

[zbigi]

Because [rarity] creates variation in the decks of the players. If every card was freely available, everybody would converge on using the same "most powerful" cards with the same "general strategy". This would in turn change the game itself from playing the cards to playing the man. Traditional card games like poker is good examples of this

That's not the case, at least not for MtG. All competetive players basically have access to all legal cards (they buy or borrow them for the tournaments they want to compete in), and it absolutely doesn't not lead to everyone convering to the same general strategy. Typically, in a given format (a format is a list of cards that you can use to build your decks from) there's at least five strategies ("decks") recognized as tier-1 competetive, often there's ten or more. And, if the format is played long enough, new strong strategies are discovered over time. The aspect of "playing the man" is not a major part of competetive MtG play. The key components are just knowing your deck real well and knowing how to play it against all the other major decks.

[jacob]

The key components are just knowing your deck real well and knowing how to play it against all the other major decks.

The fact that there is a set of "major decks" suggests that a metagame is in effect. Compare, e.g. to Street Fighter. There's a finite set of characters. You pick 1 or 2 and train against the other N for a total of (1-2)xN different variations of a game as opposed to a nearly infinite variety of people had to play with the cards they owned. This is maybe easier to explain with the Pokemon Go battle league in which you pick a tuple of 3 pokemons to defeat their 3 pokemons. The game itself is fairly simple, so it comes down which 3 you show up with. There are ~1000 different pokemons, but good players show up with the same 10-15 pokemons, so you basically just have to memorize those. The metagame is all about running sims to figure out which tuples have a 5% edge... If you don't pick one of those, you're starting at a disadvantage.

Anyhoo ... my point was that the card rarity is part of the game. As such nerfing it changes the game.

[Walwen]

See what I mean? Magic is a great hobby- there's always something to talk about

There are many formats for Magic. The "standard" format rotates every few years, i.e., you can only pick from the newest cards. The idea is to keep things new, in reality, I couldn't tell you, because "standard" magic is far from the most popular.

Commander magic is by far the most popular format and has been the most popular for some years now. You pick a certain card as your commander, and the rest of the deck is restricted to the color types of the commander, and is themed around supporting them. It's generally pretty gimmicky and there's thousands of options to choose from.

The goal, at least with my playgroup, isn't really to win: it's to have fun and enjoy playing. My only commander deck right now is Kadira, Caller of the Small. What she does (explained in non-magic terms) is produce an exponential amount of bunnies each time she attacks. Can my army of bunnies beat other people's epic dragons and wizards and stuff? Usually not. But it's fun to see just how many bunnies I can make. And sometimes the stars align and I get a good combo: say, a spell that turns all my bunnies into giant bunnies big enough to kill everyone at the table in one swing- and that's a lot of fun obviously.

The standard number of players for Commander is 4, but I typically play with 5, 6, 7, or even 8 people! So, politics also come into play. Many times I've let myself die or refused to kill someone because the alternatives are more fun, for instance when I know someone is about to be able to do some big epic combo. You could very easily go online and pick out a highly optimized competitive commander deck (known as cEDH- basically a different format entirely) and theoretically it would dominate easily. In practice? Everyone else at the table is going to want to kill you! Or worse, they will concede or let themselves be defeated early-on in order to start a new game... without you.

The first thing you do when you approach a table to start a game of commander is talk about what decks everyone is going to play. People often ask "What power level is your deck" and the meme is that everyone's deck is a "7" or "not too competitive but not just plain stupid." However, I have played with people who play plain-stupid decks, usually because it's some sort of meme, or it's highly, highly specialized for some alternative goal. For instance, there are cards that basically force players into alliances, and make it so that when that player draws a card, you draw a card. So I know a guy who plays a deck where the entire goal is to make the entire table have this effect with one another, so everyone is drawing cards constantly- this makes the game go faster and can be a lot of fun, but it doesn't really have a "win-condition" for the guy playing it. He often plays this deck toward the end of the night, so that we can make sure we can finish in time to go home.

Since I play a deck that might create 100 creatures in one turn, it would be very easy for someone to play a deck with cards like, "For every creature you make, lose 1 life", because then I would instantly die. But in practice, because the goal is to enjoy playing together, when I tell people I'm playing a "token spam" deck, (in my play group) that means they're going to pick something that doesn't do that. Because otherwise I'm just screwed and can't really play the game and I might as well just.... go play with someone else at that point. (Or play a different deck- but I only have the one, although sometimes I borrow my friends.)

If someone rocked up with a deck all blinged out with super expensive cards, they'd probably be seen as kinda a loser. It would be saying that you need to spend money to have fun and the only fun in your deck is the big price tags on the cards. You would also have to actively have to try to make a deck that expensive, because any sensible commander deck will still have a lot of common, heavily reprinted cards.
Also, if someone rocked up with a deck made entirely out of super expensive cards that they proxied i.e. made themselves.... they'd be doubly seen as a loser. Because same thing: the fun isn't in the cards being expensive.... It's like in a video game if someone cheats to construct their entire house out of diamond blocks and gold. That's not impressive- it's what little kids do. It would show that they have no idea how to actually play the game and the only thing they're seeing is the expense of cards.


I started off with a lot of proxied cards in my deck. In fact, my commander- the card the entire deck is based on- was just a piece of paper! I replaced them with legit copies when the card had "proven itself" and I decided I wanted to really own it. My friend traded some of his less-rare cards in for a much more valuable card, even though he doesn't play it, because he enjoys the history of that specific card even if it "isn't that good anymore." He wanted it for sentimental reasons and USED to proxy it in a deck he doesn't have anymore. And he just enjoys showing it to people, because a lot of people have never seen one. It's the same way, for instance, with the Power Nine- the most powerful cards from the very beginning of the game. I understand that it's just a piece of paper with some history behind it, but I would still kinda quiver in my boots to see a set of the Power Nine IRL, knowing what they're worth and how rare they are and what they mean. They're also definitely all mega-banned in most forms of Magic.

That's all from the POV of Commander magic. If you're playing a sealed Draft, where people open packs and build decks from previously unseen cards, then the rarity system makes sense to add variety.


In, uh, blog news.

It's something I don't want to overshare too much on, but I'm already pretty happy with all the medical progress I've been able to make since quitting my job. My eventual goal weight is 160lbs but I think that will take a few years: but just in the past month I've gained 5lbs. I started creatine and collagen and tracking macros better. Yes, I was the type of cook who LOST weight rather than got fatter... On my feet all day long running around, tasting things, but never eating a meal... Since the age of 13 I have gone between 115 and 130lbs at five foot 7. Right now my body fat is roughly around 15-20%- I don't have any super accurate way to tell. Any weight above 130 is almost impossible for me to hold onto long-term because whenever I start being very physical, I just get super duper lean. I think it's almost inevitable I'll start dipping down again, because I just always seem to have about 15lbs of fat that is eager to go, but hopefully then the muscle newbie gains will kick in... right? It gets mentally/socially hard sometimes, because whenever I work out for a few weeks, it's not even that I want people to compliment me. It's that I feel insulted when people start getting worried about me, because I look horrible and prepubescent when I'm <120lbs, and my clothes all start falling off. It does bad things for my self-esteem. I must hold very little visceral fat, which is healthy- but it's always distressing to get so stick-thin so fast. I have small frame: 15 pounds is a lot when you only weighed 130. I just look at my arms and legs and go, holy shit, I'm so small.

High protein this, high protein that- but protein has so few calories and is so sating. I'm working on it, okay???? Hahaha.

[Quadalupe]

Did... did you just use MTG as some kind of metaphor for moving beyond WL5 (optimizing one axis)? Brilliant! Also an apt description of finite vs infinite games.

I have a similar story. One game night, we were playing a game called Bang! One player is the sheriff (who is publicly known) and the other players are either deputies or bandits (but don't know the role of other people). Part of the game is figuring out who is what role and feinting to be a deputy if you are a bandit. However, at some point, John, who was the sherrif said: 'if you take this item and don't shoot Mary, I'll consider you a bandit'. So he was trying to explicitely dictate what other people should do. This did not went over well (maybe because we were partially LARPING as cool independent cowboys). When John tried to do the same trick in the next game, people did not play along. In fact, one of the deputies killed him because 'he'd rather lose as a free player than win as a puppet'. John stopt trying to control other people's actions after that.

Anyway, vis à vis Magic: since Magic is Turing complete, you can do completely insane plays. Part of the fun is to discover (together!) what kind of cool plays you can make. At this point, playing magic becomes more of an elaborate dance than a game you want to win. 'O shame man, you didn't get to play your 9/9 dragon from the graveyard? Let's play again and see if we can make it happen this time'

[Walwen]

Uh, yeah, I, totally intended any metaphor..... totally...


At my mother's university, an entry level administrative position opened up. It's not just a matter of nepotism, I swear- apparently no one ever applies for this job or wants this job because it's not work from home and other factors. It comes with full university benefits (gym, university clinic, tuition assistance, etc) and you get a full month off in the summer. My mother has clearly told her work friends of her jobless son, and they've winkwinknudgenudged that I should apply- they haven't even listed it yet.


I just don't think I can turn it down. The pay is better than what I made busting my ass as a cook, and it's hard to find a job with such benefits otherwise. There are two hard parts. I still don't drive, so this means I'll have a lot, lot more interaction with my mom. The other hard part is that it's a very liberal institution and I've made myself clear in the past that I'd rather quit a job than go against my views. My mother constantly tells me stories of the evil Christian Karens who are righteously squashed down, but that's just my mom's point of view.

To give a specific example that actually came up today, I don't read fortunes for myself. I bought some Chinese food and it came with a fortune cookie, so I gave it away to my friend's kid. I also almost always won't wear any sort of promotional emblems unless it's a uniform. None of these are big things, but I'm resolute about them, and that can be hard for people to understand. I.e. "you're homophobic because the rest of the office is wearing pride flag pins, why would you refuse to wear one?" At my old job, one of my coworkers bought a bunch of pride flag decor with her own money and asked me to put it up in the building- and I declined. That's the type of thing that worries me, because in my mom's power fantasies, you should be basically excommunicated and everyone should hate you forever for that. But in reality that's just her- I can't really say if the offices are that way.

[loutfard]

At my mother's university, an entry level administrative position opened up. It's not just a matter of nepotism,
...
I just don't think I can turn it down.
...
There are two hard parts. I still don't drive, so this means I'll have a lot, lot more interaction with my mom. The other hard part is that it's a very liberal institution and I've made myself clear in the past that I'd rather quit a job than go against my views.
...

The mom thing can be super difficult at age 21. Do I understand you correctly the commute is to be shared with your mother? Can you get to the campus in any other way than by car?

In a free country, the political views of your coworkers should not be too much of a problem. The main gauge for a healthy work environment is mutual respect between you, your coworkers and your bosses. Is respectful communication flowing? Then you'll usually be ok.

At my old job, one of my coworkers bought a bunch of pride flag decor with her own money and asked me to put it up in the building- and I declined. That's the type of thing that worries me,

Learning to communicate more effectively will smoothen this kind of situation a lot. You're well within your rights to want to limit yourself to doing your job well. The challenge is how to communicate that. Unless of course you end up in the extremely rare situation where most all of your colleagues are absolute dorks.

because in my mom's power fantasies, you should be basically excommunicated and everyone should hate you forever for that. But in reality that's just her- I can't really say if the offices are that way.

You're 21. Give yourself time to grow towards fully independent adulthood not just financially, but also mentally. As a personal anecdote, some aspects of full mental independence from my parents took me until my late twenties. Rereading your writings, living independently might do wonders for that.

Have you considered taking the university job and moving out of your grandfather's place to somewhere closer to campus?

[Scott 2]

The university job sounds like a good opportunity. You're smart enough to solve the problems.

[Walwen]

I live in part of town with no bus access and along the interstate so walking into town isn't really feasible.

I sure wish I could move out, but my granddad is so bad off that if I didn't live with him he'd likely have to go to a nursing home. I also want to inherit this house, and living in it is going to be the best way to stake my claim.
The money is also not that good and housing is not cheap. At 19 I had my little studio apartment near the university- it was not fun at all.

Tomorrow I'm going to go buy some interview clothes. I'm pretty rough on my clothes and own very little, and I'm picky.

I still haven't told my family I enrolled in two classes. I dunno why.

[Scott 2]

my granddad is so bad off that if I didn't live with him he'd likely have to go to a nursing home

I want to call out your value as a caretaker. Nursing care is tremendously expensive and disruptive, even the most basic tiers. This might feel like "family obligation" but it's a big contribution.

[Veronica]

The other hard part is that it's a very liberal institution and I've made myself clear in the past that I'd rather quit a job than go against my views. My mother constantly tells me stories of the evil Christian Karens who are righteously squashed down, but that's just my mom's point of view.

Don't ever let this stop you from an otherwise good opportunity.

I am currently working one of the best jobs I have ever had, and its at a place that is so controversial and opposed to my views that they have been headline news almost once a week every week for the past 3 months.

I never talk about my views or politics because frankly, that's not what I'm there to do. I think many others appreciate that.
They want to pay somebody to fill a role, you need a role to fill. Don't let one or two negative aspects discourage you from pursuing a better opportunity.
You can always move again later if it becomes unbearable, and you'll have a better chance of that move being upwards as well.

[Frita]

Congrats on your interview! Remember that you are also interviewing them to see if they are a good fit for you. Most universities are siloed, so culture will vary from department to department. Do you have additional contacts beside your mom to research the players? Ideally, you could speak to the person you’re replacing, know why they are leaving, and where they are going.

Just throwing out a question to ponder, is part of you caring for your grandfather out of obligation, something you “should” do and for which you are making self-sacrificing accommodations? If so, is there a way to restructure so that it is more of a collaborative (win-win) process? (Caregivers make $20-$30/hour here and positions are always open.)

[Walwen]

Hello everyone: just another more general update. The timeline has become neater, so to speak.

The position is basically guaranteed for me and I will admit it is kinda a nepotism thing. However it does not start until August. If for some reason this specific position doesn't work out, there are a few other positions where I "wink wink nudge nudge" have good chances within the university due to my mom being the networking sort, but these positions also all start with the school year.

My two online college classes started and I still have not told my family I enrolled. However, I DID tell the people I play cards with about this. Like all damn dirty liars, I have run into an issue: I have been trying to get my mom to come play cards and she finally plans on coming this week, and I think it's quite likely my friends will go, "How are your classes going?" So now not only do I need to explain that I am taking classes, but I need to explain why I felt the need to hide this selectively from my family but not my friends LOL.

My grandfather's surgery is early next month, and he is pissed because he is in a lot of pain and wants it now. The thing is, is that after his surgery I'll likely have less work, not more. Because he'll be in the hospital for a while: the last two times, he stayed about a month each. Visiting for an hour a day is a lot easier than being called away dozens of times in a day.

My mother is still worried about me being broke. She keeps buying me food- basically anytime I go over to her house (she's on summer break now) she offers to go get food. I know my mom basically eats fast food daily anyways, but it really is odd how she thinks of it almost like a right. It's just really funny and I think a good indicator of class. My family thinks I must be awfully poor and suffering in some way because I don't purchase fast food. She doesn't want me to "live like a broke person" and the solution is to take me out for fast food. I have even seen her basically argue with me that we need to go to places with status. I.e. I will say "Just McDonalds is fine" and she'll say "No you need to try out the new coffee shop your sister and all my coworkers say is good." It's a kinda obtuse thing but I promise I'm not making it up: the message is "You need to get a job so you can afford this type of lifestyle that I think is the correct level of status for you. Isn't this life good? Shouldn't you be trying to attain this lifestyle?" She doesn't want me to be a McDonald's person, she wants me to be an indie college campus coffeeshop person.

I still have more money than my mother. For instance, she got her card stolen a few days ago, and the mere act of someone charging 400 dollars to her sole debit card overdrew her account, which is how she was alerted to the fact it was stolen. She told me this all openly as proof that she was wise with money because "I don't keep much in my checking so that it can't get stolen." She puts everything on credit cards usually, and then just kinda.... pays... the minimum balances.... She really thinks of a credit limit as being money that she owns. It's just fucked up to be a professor and to be pulling in 4,000 dollar paychecks, yet after years she still lives with her balance hitting 0 between paychecks. I would roughly estimate my mom's in something like 30k of debt. Not "healthy mortgage debt", we're talking credit cards, payday loans, and like how my grandfather gave her the inheritance money after her house flooded and she promised to pay it back (I am not going to get an inheritance, am I?)


I have also been suffering from what I'd call a loss of romanticism, or a sort of identity crisis due to the loss of my role in my job. "Anti-Wage-Slave" living is still important to me, and what better time to prove that to yourself than when you're not working? But what am I really doing? Piddling around taking a few classes, waiting for my family members to die so I can enlist? Is the point of life really to just work until you can not work, and then when you're not working you're not doing much at all?

I've been working a lot on hobbies, skills, little projects, going out with friends- but it feels kinda aimless to me. I want a REAL EPIC QUEST. I want a mysterious stranger to ride into town dressed in all black and make me go on an adventure. In terms of my art, I have plans for big projects, but I understand that I simply don't have the skill level to achieve what I want. Before I can even start on what I actually want to do, I need to grind out the boring low-level skills involved. And at least I'm actually working on it, right? But it's BORING! And UNFULFILLING!

The grind was a lot easier to romanticize when it actually made me tired in the day, and when I had coworkers who were in it with me. My hobbies make me mentally tired- after a few pages of still life studies, I feel burnt out- but it's not the same as slaving over a giant flattop grill. And I can stop at any time, and I have no super strong external motivation. I don't feel like I MUST FULFILL MY DESTINY toward any specific goal. At work I often said, "Worky worky, makey money" as a little mantra to motivate myself. What do I say at my house? Nothing else rhythms that well! So I've been lost. I just tell myself there's no better age for feeling lost than 21.