F**k Them— It’s Your Life, Do What YOU Want.
When we were kids our teachers and parents told us we could be whatever we wanted to be if we just set our minds to it…and then our moms would comb or brush our hair the way they wanted us to look, while we stood there like little douches in the clothes they picked out for us to wear, and then they’d walk us out to a bus full of other wannabe-somethings and ship us off to that concentration camp otherwise known as school that was built on an archaic system designed a hundred years before to churn out cookie-cutter factory workers.
As we got older, they continued to tell us we could be whatever we wanted to be, BUT — by high school the Great Oracles of the School System pretty much knew who was going to be what. The molds were already cast, they just had to pour our dumb asses in. They already “knew” who was going to college, and who was going to vocational school, and who was going to rehab, and who was going to war, and who was going to work at the gas station across the street. Yup, by high school you could be whatever you wanted to be, so long as you fit into whatever pigeon hole career direction they created or decided for you and then completed the appropriate bullshit coursework they gave you to ensure your “success” at it.
As a result of this, I ended up with some friends who went to work in factories, others who went on to fight for their country, still others who went on to college, and yeah, I know the guy who works at the gas station across the street from the school — hey, if you ever need some good weed... Years later, really only a small handful, if that, can say they’ve become whatever they wanted to be.
What about me, what did I do? Well, I dropped out in the 10th grade to pursue other, more important endeavors (important to me, that is), including computers and design and software development — and of course, pussy. At the time, there wasn’t much to do with computers being taught in schools yet — I was way ahead of them — but I knew that’s what I wanted to be. I also wasn’t getting much pussy at school — computers weren’t much of a pussy magnet in 1989. I was about ten years too soon for that, but I still did very well for myself.
Yeah, I eventually made it to college, twice, but only found more of the same — people teaching me what they wanted to teach me and what they thought I needed to learn because of what they thought I should become, or was destined to become — or whatever — in their eyes. For some people, most people I guess, that works, just not for me. Bye.
So, what have I learned since then that I may impart upon you here as helpful life- or career advice? Nothing really, except, yeah, you can be whatever you want to be if you set your mind to it, but it’s not necessarily about what you do in school. Like anything else it comes down to two things: WHAT you know and WHO you blow.
And seeing that I’ve never blown anyone, and never intend to, I’ve had to rely solely on WHAT I KNOW to get WHERE I AM — and maybe that’s why I’m not a billionaire today, but even still, I’m who I always wanted to be — I’m whatever I wanted to be — I’m my own boss, business is good, AND I get plenty of pussy…
The moral of the story is: Learn what YOU want to learn to be what YOU want to be, thus living your life on YOUR terms, not their’s. Or as I always say,
“Find your passion, and ride it until the fucking wheels fall off.”
Teaching kids to be whatever “THEY” want them to be — it’s the biggest ripoff of the last 200 years. It robs people — kids — of the lives and careers they may truly enjoy and find fulfilling and rewarding otherwise.
My $0.02 anyway.
— P.
