VisualDistortion said:
I'd say if your going to drop out, do it now and ride the rails for a couple of years. The old generation of rail workers is moving on and the new generation of rail workers does not take kindly to train hoppers. They say the trains will be unrideable in four or five years. It's a shame really.
[YOUTUBE]
Great thread!
I dropped out in kind of a weird way. In high school, I was heading toward something related to engineering, but late in high school, I started reading philosophy and listening to some very outlandish or underground music and became somewhat of a freak, punk, straight-edge, activist, philosophical type. I was somewhat of a slacker, but I was generally considered as brighter than most of my peers. I was often reading books during classes that I wasn't interested in (ironically, one of them was chemistry). I left home for college to study English in a town where I had a bunch of punk friends, but I never managed to integrate into the whole college thing and was drifting into a very nihilistic state of mind. I was developing a great disgust for myself and the way I was simply going through the motions and not very well, at that.
I dropped out of college and enlisted in the Marines. I did this in order to break off from my family and to pursue a more rigorous, disciplined, and action-oriented life. I had protested the war in high school before the invasion and took all the apathy and insincerity and ignorance I encountered quite hard, and so I decided to try and experience the war first-hand and reinvent myself in the meantime. When I got out of training, however, I took my first chance to get out of the country and opted to be stationed in Japan (I always had a love for Japan, its traditional culture and the strange impact that the Bomb had on their modern culture). My unit never deployed, and I instead spent my entire career in the Far-East. This is where I gave up my "edge" and was thoroughly introduced to various states of intoxication. This is where I met SWIM.
Eventually, I got caught up in some sort of sting/set-up (essentially entrapment), and got demoted three ranks, thrown in the brig, and eventually discharged (not dishonorable and no criminal record) before I had reached three years in. I don't regret anything of that time and still consider my whole military career and discharge to be the most important and pivotal moment of my life. I spent about two years working in the labor force (factory work, truck driving, construction, and maintenance), got myself an apartment, and had a blast though with occasional difficulties.
Near the end of this time, I got married and finally began to organize my life and take control of my future and endeavors. I began to realize that though I have a certain affinity for manual labor, I could never really mesh with my co-workers (always felt a degree of resentment), possibly because I could never "turn off," I suppose. In the military, I was usually able to engage in fairly interesting conversation, and even when I couldn't, there was still at least a level of comardery. Most people I ever worked with in the labor force were either drones or scumbags...often both. So I decided to go back to school--this time for Chemistry (probably good timing too, considering the economy).
I feel better about my life now than I ever have. School's tough, and I'm still not quite well-adapted to it (never have been). My marriage is great, and we've helped develop a fairly strong community around us (we're building a tribe of sorts). We make and record music, which is something I had already been working on since Japan but have only recently developed into a project of a significant scale. I never had much classical training in music, but I've taught myself to play and maintenance a number of instruments. I'm in better shape than even when I was in the military. I cook and eat well but live relatively meagerly, focusing most of my effort into the quality and sustainability of my various projects.
Truly dropping out and hitting the road has always been enticing for me, but I have deliberately tied myself to a way of life that exploits the possibilities of even the small amount of material wealth available to me. These days, dropping out is something I feel is more appropriate at a considerable age when I have already established a modest estate or a legacy. For now, I wish to maintain an amount of versatility and gather what I can from my current lifestyle before pursuing the sort of sainthood that the road and wilderness have to offer. This is how Indian society idealy operates: You play the game and make the best of it, then, you drop out and pursue enlightenment. After that, you either die, or return as a wild saint of sorts with a whole new life and insight to contribute. This isn't far from how shamans become shamans, in fact, 'shramana' (like Buddha) is thought to be of similar origin to 'shaman.'
