What's The Point?

In the previous two generations, if you got a university degree you almost guaranteed a fairly solid living. If you went out of your way to engage in a good side hustle or two, you could even make it big and enjoy a very nice life. Today, it’s not the case though. It’s become pointless to study hard and invest so many hours to get a degree. For example, for those of us that did engineering degrees, something like 25% percent in Canada are underemployed and only another 25% actually work engineering jobs. What a waste. What’s the point if I was going to end up working some soul sucking corporate job I could care less about anyway that I could have done with just going to a community college. It would have been cheaper and far more time efficient.

I did electrical engineering at the top program in Canada and have not used one iota of what I learned save for my co-op job which didn’t even materialize into employment post-graduation. Today, I work in banking, in a job that’s not remotely technical, not that I would want a technical job. Truth is, I don’t really care to have a “successful career” as our parents understand it. I never cared for engineering. I didn't go into it for the right reasons. I was pushed into it without realizing at the time that my true talent was in writing poems, songs and stories. I was good at math so off I went to do a degree I had zero interest in even then. Nothing has changed since. I never wear my iron ring. I neither know nor care where my mother put it. It’s immaterial to me, a trivial matter. In fact, I had it made to the size of my middle finger rather than my pinky as is the tradition. Such was my contempt for the degree, and for myself frankly. My degree is there somewhere. I may choose to burn it. I may choose to simply discard it. I have yet to decide, but even looking at it bothers me.

Even in my current career path in banking, there is a latent feeling of futility and dissatisfaction. I don’t care for the project management profession either. I may be decent at it, but it’ll always inevitably be me having to expend energy to get into character in order to do a socially demanding job that I only ever took up because I needed to make money. It’s so annoying depending on other people for the sustenance of your own career and reputation also. I want to get out as soon as possible. Ultimately, I’d be happy with a dead end job, provided that it can be done fully remotely and pays the bills. I don’t need anything else. Then I can move to some cheaper jurisdiction and only come to Toronto when I feel like it rather than watching the city deteriorate further through crime and unaffordability. I’ve had enough.

I’d love to be able to throw more of myself into writing which is what I actually enjoy. I know the talent is there, but it’s frustrating knowing that few will ever bother to even read my work. I’ve published two books now and all I have to show is money lost and being relegated to an afterthought by my own publisher. I doubt they will read this so all’s well. In fact, I doubt anyone at all will read this. Hardly anyone even comes to this blog anyway. Maybe in a hundred years I’ll be respected, even famous for my craft, but what good will it be then?

So in the end I live in a country where attempting to be successful is pointless. I’ll never own my own home. It’s too expensive here. It’s best to let it all rot. My peers in China are right. Just let it rot. At least there’s some freedom in this. My writing can be more subversive, more confrontational. After all, there’s no hope of commercial success when even my own publisher doesn’t believe in me anymore. As for career success, why bother with an MBA, a master’s degree or certifications or whatever else they tell you to do to enhance your career. Why bother with clean living and being a good boy also. Some good that did me. I might as well enjoy myself and have a drink or two or ten, with a side of who knows what else.

And why bother with trying to find love. If I’m invisible now at the peak of my looks, creative output, fitness, and even finances, why bother? I may as well enjoy the time to myself and use my savings to travel, party and indulge myself the way I never got to in my 20s. I don’t care anymore. Lust is preferable to love. One night is cheaper than a lifetime, even when paid for. There’s no sense in trying to be upright in today's Canada, no sense in trying to separate from the crowd. Might as well be just another loser, and actually have a bit of fun for a change. At least in that, I can separate myself from the other corporate drones I graduated with that actually thought they were going to change the world.