It was on this day, around this time, I said, I no longer could stand living in a place where having an education and having critical thinking skills…is a liability.
As we obviously know now, Illinois is only superficially a Blue State due to Chicago, the smaller cities with universities and pockets of intelligentsia. Throughout the remainder, it should be renamed North Kentucky (all of Indiana is). MAGAt encounters are everywhere you go since many gambled their futures on jerbs the Republicans and Neo-Liberals gladly let the Deep South, Mexico and China take away for tax breaks and slave wages.
Even before Girth Vader hijacked the Fascist Party of Amerika and its Weimaresque ally became a bunch of triangulating pussies admiring St. Reagan, I had to leave as I grew tired of the mind-numbing boredom, the constant feelings of hopelessness, shitty employment opportunities and by then, all the closet friends I gained from 1991-93 had moved to better places, namely Chicago!
So when I was asked by the current job’s HR department to re-write my job description, I made it brutally honest and turned in my two weeks. I couldn’t stand waiting on the Austin offer any longer. Either it was going to happen or not, why not wait it out without the daily soul-crushing commute on I-74 just to deal with an insufferable co-worker asshole named Celli, a notorious bullying, lying sack of shit; and an enabling, inept Boomer boss. Weird I did it since today and a year before I’d be, “What the hell are you thinking! There’s no Plan B stupid!” Not right away. I could’ve found a way to return to university, earn a second or even third degree! Before you ask, I was probably going to weasel a way to have Grandma and/or Grandpa cover it.
It was amazingly satisfying to quit that day! Especially when gossipy Celli ally Renée called my extension to confirm the rumor already going around; she’s another living example on why marijuana is called “dope,” given her idiocy. I had zero fucks to give though! Again, Austin would happen one day or I’d return to my first plan, move back to Milwaukee, or I might even couch surf in Chicago while pounding the pavement on weekdays. I may have been 25 yet I wasn’t going to bum off friends needlessly.
What did I do the rest of the day when I should’ve crapping my pants given student-loan debt, credit card bills and other expenses. I think I investigated how much a U-Haul truck was from Bloomington-Normal to Austin, then a rental car (the smarter choice); both by phone since the Modern Internet was barely a year old. Probably lunch with Christina. The drive home rocked. My grandparents either freaked out, were confused and/or thought I was bluffing. It didn’t sink in with them until they day I packed the rental car to leave.
I wasn’t completely off the hook neither. I had to appear in court the following week in the stupid TSR v. GDW/Gygax lawsuit I wanted nothing to do with. Of all the people to bug for this bullshit, they were scraping the bottom in my opinion. I need to ask my friends Lester and Stvee how they managed to dodge it.
If I could do it all over with the 30 years of experience, and dare I say…wisdom, would I do it just the same? Let’s throw in Austin being a bust.
Yes, in a New York minute. Central IL was and remains a land of the past. The place threw away its future in the Seventies, including Chicago. Too bad it didn’t realize how screwed it was until, I’m going to say around 2000. Without Austin, earning another degree, French! was not a bad idea. Maybe I could’ve learned to be a code monkey over in Urbana for this new-fangled thing called the Internet! I was a (trapped) resident. Or I just packed what I could carry and took my chances in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, New York, Orlando…just not Raleigh-Durham! What I thought I should’ve done shortly after New Year’s 1992-93 while I was nursing a really serious hangover.
Either way, I demonstrated a rare instance of courage and got things rolling.