This is Your Life in the Midwest
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Inspired by this Medium post by @subes01
You wake up at 6:30am not to your alarm but to your constant tossing and turning trying to sleep in high humidity hot summer night. Your window a/c unit broke last month but you don’t have enough money to buy a new one without canceling your Netflix subscription or NFL Sunday Ticket Pass on DirectTV. If you hadn’t woken yourself up it would have been your children who are also up already even after a long night watching Jurassic Park again on TV. You enjoy coming home to your kids every night but wish you could just get out and go to the bar like you used to before the kids came.
You rush to feed your kids cereal for breakfast while you brush your teeth in the kitchen sink. You know you shouldn’t, but you always cave and buy them Capt’n Crunch instead of a healthy option like Frosted Flakes. If you aren’t out the door in 10 minutes the single road out of your suburb backs up and will throw off your entire morning.
You can’t wait until your kids are back in school and can take the 30 minute bus ride to public school instead of driving them. When you drop them off at the summer day camp you reaffirm yourself that moving to the suburbs was a good idea because it’s safer and everyone you know also lives out here. The house took two mortgages to cover the price but you’re sure you’ll get promoted into management in the next few years if you just keep working hard. Besides, the house is almost back to the same price you paid in 2008.
When you get to work you over hear some sales guys talking about going to the lake this weekend. One of them has a house right on the water. They don’t invite you but it’s alright because you have kids and real responsibilities to take care of anyways. You reaffirm yourself you’re in a better situation than them because they still haven’t settled down yet at 24.
You get to your desk and check your emails. There’s a reminder about the monthly HOA meeting is this weekend and you’re finally going to speak up about your neighbor that keeps parking in front of your house.
Before starting your work you down the $2.50 coffee you got from the vending machine in the lobby and check Facebook on your phone because the company blocks it on the computers. You don’t talk to any of your Facebook friends anymore but you still like to stalk their lives. One of your old college friends moved to the west coast and joined a startup. He’s always posting pictures of drinking beer at work and going to fancy restaurants with venture capitalists. You reaffirm yourself that settling down and having a family was the right thing to do. Besides after the next tech bubble you’ll be safe in the Midwest. Only west coast startups with high valuations are going to be affected.
You work for a small subsidy of a large Fortune 500 food processing company. You got the job through an internship in college. It’s been 9 years and you’re on track for management if they would just realize how much better of a fit you are than the other people that got chosen. You write Java code and enjoy programming, you just wish they’d give you permission to upgrade the software from Java 6. You’ve stopped programming in your free time because you’re always so busy.
You’ve been working on a great idea for a new time tracking app that you’ve got all figured out in your head. If you just had some free time you could build it and finally escape the enterprise world.
Just as you log in to Jira to check your current sprint you get an email to report to the meeting room for a quick conference call with the overseas team. The head count has been slowly dwindling in your office but you know you could land a new job any time. You’re a great Java developer.
During the meeting, which it turns out you didn’t need to be in, you dream about what your life would have been like if you left the Midwest after college and moved to Silicon Valley or Seattle. You think about how much money they make out there. Then you remember that money doesn’t buy happiness and you’re content with settling down and having a family. Besides you’d never be able to afford your 3000 sq./ft house if you lived in San Francisco and raising kids in a big city like that is way too dangerous.
It’s 2pm now and the call just ended. You still haven’t eaten lunch but you can’t afford to not get your tickets done again so you skip lunch and work through until the end of the day. Your manager stops by your desk a few times to make sure you’re staying on task. You think she’s a good manager but can’t connect on a personal level with her. She lives downtown in one of those fancy condos and rides the bus to work. You would never ride the bus because that’s for poor people.
You had to stay an hour late after work to finish your sprint tickets and the day camp has called 6 times asking when you’re going to get your kids. Every minute you’re late to get the kids they charge you $5. Your wife couldn’t make it because she works an hour away the other direction. You reassure yourself that the extra work you’re putting in is going to pay off big come review time.
After you get your kids in your 2016 Chrysler Caravan you stop by Burger King because they have a new sandwich you’ve been dying to try and neither you nor your wife feel like cooking since the summer weather has been so hot and humid. A Tesla zips past you in the carpool lane on the highway and you chuckle under your breath. You laugh at how impractical a car like that is. It would never hold up to your commute.
When you get home your wife is there waiting for dinner, she’s watching CNN in the down stairs den. You spread out the food across your granite top kitchen island and can’t wait to eat that delicious burger. There’s a few apps that have gotten popular lately which will deliver the food to your house, but that’s just a waste of money you think. Why would anyone spend money like that when you can just drive there you conclude.
During dinner your kids are watching TV in their rooms while you and your wife watch TV in the living room. You mention coworkers going to the lake and you think it’d be a good idea to get a boat. You can’t really afford one and your driveway is too small anyways. The two of you begin talking about moving to a nicer suburb again. You could even get a bigger garage for the new boat and your camper and atvs you bought 3 years ago but haven’t used much.
Both of you start looking on Zillow at houses in the new suburb being built nearby. It would only add another 20 minutes to both of your commutes and the HOA fee is only a few hundred dollars more per month. You were denied a refinance on your mortgage last month but buying brand new is easier to get approved for.
Dancing with the Stars comes on right as you finish dinner and you grab a few Miller Lites for yourself and your wife. You know you should start working on the time tracking app but you worked hard today and just need to unwind tonight. You’ll start it tomorrow.
While you stare blankly at the TV, you think about how you’re going to afford college tuition for both of your kids. You think about this a lot. After another beer you start to doze off.
Because of some comments I received, I feel the need to state explicitly, this is in fact a satire article based on exaggerated experiences of people I have known over the years.
