One of my cousins (sister of the guy who just had his window shot out) is something of a free spirit. She's been an au pair in a couple European countries and South Africa; worked a couple dead end jobs overseas, got really into acid for some time, studied yoga in Indonesia and is now contemplating a move to the big island of Hawaii with her fiance to open her own yoga retreat. They're there right now, they live in a primitive campground without electricity or running water where they perform some menial tasks to defray the cost of their stay. They have no transportation, and rely on hitchhiking in order to make it to town. My cousin has found a job helping a guy with either autism or Asperger syndrome deal with people, but she has to hitch hike to that job too. Naturally her mother (my godmother) is appalled by all of this; but I suspect in a decade she'll be the most successful person I know and will amuse people with her stories of her days of being wild.
I'm curious if anyone here has ever "Dropped out" like that.
I haven't (in case you thought I was going in that direction). I graduated from college at age 22 with a STEM degree, joined the corporate work force a couple months later and stayed there ever since, with a few months of unemployment.
Army, STEM, work. Don't know if I qualify.
Nope. I have certainly known plenty of people who did stuff like that though.
Sort of. Growing up I worked in the family pottery business. After university, I saved some cash and travelled for six months through SE Asia. Then, I attempted to start up my own sculpture studio, but I could not make it pay. I was no stranger to various hallucinogenic drugs. ;)
Nope, I am a boring nerd. I've studied and worked abroad, but never in deadend backpacker jobs or so.
I've met quite a few people like your cousin. From that I would say that there is an equal chance that she becomes the most successful person you know or that she stays a deadbeat who lives from day to day. I've met quite a few of the latter on backpacking trips all over the world. They keep telling you that's what they want in their mid-30s and you feel a bit boring having a career, an apartment and maybe a family, but wonder if they really want to keep on doing that forever.
I'm too lazy for that.
My cousin dropped out from engineering school and went full hippy (living in a commune and all). He's 35 and I doubt he'll ever amount to anything.
My brother left his job and spent months biking and hiking through the Balkans and Turkey. He has a much better job now.
One of his friends (the one that got him into travelling) has an interesting way of life. He travels like a backpacker for months until he finds some place he likes. Then looks for a job there (he's a software engineer so he can work almost anywhere). Once he's bored of his current home the cycle starts anew.
He's lived in Denmark, Russia, Argentina, Colombia, The Netherlands, Germany ... and visited half the world in the meantime.
It's my retirement plan.
I tend to do a lot of things in life in reverse. :P
That sort of lifestyle does give you a good place to set up monster wargames, so I've never seriously contemplated it.
My days of living wild was May 2000. I had graduated law school, but my articling job didn't start until June (and in another province). I was living in a fraternity house. I hung out with friends, went on a camping trip or two and was generally a bum.
And that's it. I've been working ever since, 16 years and counting. Well, I was inbetween jobs for two months in 2002, but that didn't feel very wild. And I was on paternity leave for three months with Timothy, but with a newborn that didn't exactly feel very wild either.
Quote from: dps on June 07, 2016, 02:25:54 PM
That sort of lifestyle does give you a good place to set up monster wargames, so I've never seriously contemplated it.
:mad:
I generally try to avoid slumming it.
I had a period of about half a year after graduating college when I was experimenting with different things, before getting my first and only job. Mainly different ways of composing resumes and cover letters.
Quote from: DGuller on June 07, 2016, 02:37:54 PM
I had a period of about half a year after graduating college when I was experimenting with different things, before getting my first and only job. Mainly different ways of composing resumes and cover letters.
:lol:
I've done a bit of being "wild" or "finding myself" or whatever you want to call it.
I didn't start a career type job until my mid 20s. Before then I had a reasonable bit of travelling, drinking, going to art school, working generic jobs and so on. That said, that didn't change that much after I started my actual career - in fact I probably traveled more after I got that job by taking extended (sometimes non-paying) vacations. In my student/ low paying job days I did some hitch hiking and Greyhound bus travelling jaunts as well.
Drugs? Not really... I experimented a bit but that was mostly in high school. Didn't seem worth it to me. Booze has remained my drug of choice.
Business degree, civil service, no gap in between.
How about you go fuck yourselves.
I lost my mind and hurt some people.
Going to the US, I guess. I know "going back to college" is actually the opposite of "dropping out", but I had a pretty lucrative gig back then in the Spanish telly, and I quit it to go to the US to shake up things in my life. The course load wasn't all that, so there was plenty of self-discovering, being naively artistic, bohemian parties, and living hand to mouth.
That's about it really, I'm not a wild person. Have plenty of friends that have gone off the grid completely for years, and still landed on their feet.
Damn you folks are some wild ones. :lol:
Bouncing around jobs internationally is living wild?
Well call me Paddy McParty.
And all this time I thought it was the economy
Yeah and then have Raz use that information after 5 years for a personal attack? No way.
Scared of little ol' me? :lol:
No real wild days. I had children at the same time than BB & I am ~10 years younger.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 08, 2016, 08:34:45 AM
Scared of little ol' me? :lol:
And also coming from a man who attacks me about how I had treatment for MDD 6 years ago.
No. Unless not taking college seriously enough (while still graduating) counts.
Well only thing I regret is not dropping acid with Malthus back in the day but otherwise I've lived a full life.
I'm considering going wild.
Quote from: Savonarola on June 07, 2016, 12:33:39 PM
One of my cousins (sister of the guy who just had his window shot out) is something of a free spirit. She's been an au pair in a couple European countries and South Africa; worked a couple dead end jobs overseas, got really into acid for some time, studied yoga in Indonesia and is now contemplating a move to the big island of Hawaii with her fiance to open her own yoga retreat. They're there right now, they live in a primitive campground without electricity or running water where they perform some menial tasks to defray the cost of their stay. They have no transportation, and rely on hitchhiking in order to make it to town. My cousin has found a job helping a guy with either autism or Asperger syndrome deal with people, but she has to hitch hike to that job too. Naturally her mother (my godmother) is appalled by all of this; but I suspect in a decade she'll be the most successful person I know and will amuse people with her stories of her days of being wild.
I'm curious if anyone here has ever "Dropped out" like that.
I haven't (in case you thought I was going in that direction). I graduated from college at age 22 with a STEM degree, joined the corporate work force a couple months later and stayed there ever since, with a few months of unemployment.
I plan to "drop out" after I get rich and middle-aged. If not, oh well.
For other people making the choice young, it should depend on your obligations. My parents are my dependents, so it would have been evil for me to go wild and let them toil in poverty for several more years.
I dropped out of college, moved into a long term motel with cheap weekly rates because I couldn't get an apartment, and worked crappy restaurant jobs, trolling a certain internet forum in my downtime.
I was never adventurous, or perhaps brave enough. Even in my younger days when such adventurism is more doable I was looking for a career and steady jobs and growth, that sort of thing. I do know of people who did do a lot of moving around in their younger days, and they're seen and done a lot which I think is hugely beneficial.
Quote from: 11B4V on June 07, 2016, 09:07:51 PM
Damn you folks are some wild ones. :lol:
:lol:
... only when compared to the likes of Mono
I'm still wild.
Quote from: Tyr on June 08, 2016, 12:49:41 AM
Bouncing around jobs internationally is living wild?
Well call me Paddy McParty.
And all this time I thought it was the economy
Yeah, you're the Geordie Jack Kerouac.
And every time I heard a person talk French, it didn't matter if it was Swiss-French, Belgian-French, French-French or Canadian-French, I'd die a little each time inside - until the whole world became a void, a wasteland, an empty shell of the world. Here among the wretched streets in this wretched Swiss town, where no one ever gave a thought to anything but money or chocolate every day had become a living nightmare with their language, that awful, awful language echoing everywhere, in every building or bar, around every corner, on every bus in every station, everywhere. :P ;)
I've never been a wild guy, but compared to this lot... I definitely ended up in some weird and semi-dangerous situations, and let my hair down a little more between ages 17 and 24, certainly. Suffice to say: I inhaled. (And not just pot.) But I'm reluctant to get into the specifics.
I don't understand the question.
I was too poor and too isolated to be "wild" as a kid. Something tells me my midlife crisis is going to be EPIC.
Oh, plenty of poor and isolated youngsters manage to get into heaps of trouble, believe me.
I signed up to Languish around 2004 so I could unleash my wild side that wouldn't be accepted in the real world.
Quote from: Maladict on June 09, 2016, 03:24:40 AM
I signed up to Languish around 2004 so I could unleash my wild side that wouldn't be accepted in the real world.
And then decided to hang out on the wall? :unsure:
Quote from: garbon on June 09, 2016, 03:28:10 AM
Quote from: Maladict on June 09, 2016, 03:24:40 AM
I signed up to Languish around 2004 so I could unleash my wild side that wouldn't be accepted in the real world.
And then decided to hang out on the wall? :unsure:
The wall?
Hang out on the wall i.e be a wallflower, originally a person who was too timid to enter the dance floor and instead lined the walls observing the action; here, that would essentially mean you lurk.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on June 09, 2016, 03:44:52 AM
Hang out on the wall i.e be a wallflower, originally a person who was too timid to enter the dance floor and instead lined the walls observing the action; here, that would essentially mean you lurk.
Oh right. Kind of worrying that someone would think I was being serious. :(
Quote from: Savonarola on June 07, 2016, 12:33:39 PM
One of my cousins (sister of the guy who just had his window shot out) is something of a free spirit. She's been an au pair in a couple European countries and South Africa; worked a couple dead end jobs overseas, got really into acid for some time, studied yoga in Indonesia and is now contemplating a move to the big island of Hawaii with her fiance to open her own yoga retreat. They're there right now, they live in a primitive campground without electricity or running water where they perform some menial tasks to defray the cost of their stay. They have no transportation, and rely on hitchhiking in order to make it to town. My cousin has found a job helping a guy with either autism or Asperger syndrome deal with people, but she has to hitch hike to that job too. Naturally her mother (my godmother) is appalled by all of this; but I suspect in a decade she'll be the most successful person I know and will amuse people with her stories of her days of being wild.
I caught up with her during my last trip to Detroit. She and her fiance got married; she's still teaching yoga and working a couple dead end jobs. Her husband doesn't have his green card yet; but they bought an acre on the big island (not on the The Bishop Estate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernice_Pauahi_Bishop), so they own it outright) where he spends his time "Growing things" ( ;) ;).)
The primitive campground they were first living was dubbed a "Hedonostel" by the inhabitants. There current location is still pretty ramshackle, and nearby the hedonostel. They had to have a friend stay at their place while they were back in Michigan otherwise everything would have been stolen.