#stuggling millennials

Oh, Joe Biden… Y’know, I haven’t really thought much about that guy except that I thought that he and Obama had a pretty cool relationship and they kind of reminded me of The Men in Black. They just embodied such a badass charisma like that whenever they were together. I dothink that Joe is a bit creepy, though. He has this thing that he does where he leans in uncomfortably close to people to whisper messages into their ears–in public and in front of cameras. But other than that, I thought Joe Biden was a pretty alright guy. However, now because of his recent statement about millennials, I gotta say that whatever respect I had for him has completely flown out of the window. 

“The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no, I have no empathy for it. Give me a break. Because here’s the deal guys, we decided we were gonna change the world. And we did. We did. We finished the civil rights movement in the first stage. The women’s movement came to be. So my message is, get involved. There’s no place to hide. You can go and you can make all the money in the world, but you can’t build a wall high enough to keep the pollution out. You can’t live where—you can’t not be diminished when your sister can’t marry the man or woman, or the woman she loves. You can't—when you have a good friend being profiled, you can’t escape this stuff. And so, there’s an old expression my philosophy professor would always use from Plato, ‘The penalty people face for not being involved in politics is being governed by people worse than themselves.’ It’s wide open. Go out and change it.“

NowVice has already weighed in on this by providing facts to shred this bullshit so I’m not going to state what has already been stated. I’m going to weigh in on this with my own personal experiences. 

He says that my generation tells him about how tough things are and he responds by saying “give me a break.” Yeah…I wish my student loan servicers would give me a break too. I wish I wasn’t in $50K in debt and that I didn’t have to constantly defer on my loans because I need to pay off my credit card debt first. Oh, sorry! Forgot to mention, I’ve accrued credit card debt up the ying-yang over the years because my job as a teacher’s assistant didn’t always pay on time and I drained the little bit of savings I had and maxed out my credit card paying for train-fare to get to this job. Hey, Joe! Did you know that I am in more debt than my struggling single mother who busted her ass for the chance for me to even go to college? And in return for busting my own ass, I got a job at a non-profit that runs out of money to pay their employees because the Republicans in office are cutting funds to arts programs–programs people like you pretend are important to the democratic party. But hey! I at least have better credit than my mother, a Gen Xer but that’s not saying much because while I can say that my credit is ok for someone in so much debt, there’s still the issue of me still living under her roof because I’m not making enough money to live on my own. Yup, I’m 25, have a college degree and I’m still living with my mother because I can’t find a full-time job. You know what my mom was doing when she was my age? I’ll give you a hint, Joe; she wasn’t still living with her mom, a Silent-Generationer who at my age, was also living on her own and had a decent job. So 3 generations of women in America, only one of them has her degree and she’s making the least amount of money. My mother and grandmother went through struggles I can never imagine facing myself–my grandmother immigrating to this country to pursue the American dream, my mother raising two kids on her own in poverty, but the one struggle they will never understand is being a young college grad who can’t find a full-time job and whose debt is 3 times higher than their income. 

So then the next thing he starts talking about is how we finished the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. Really? We finished the civil rights movement? When? Was it when unarmed innocent black men were being shot and killed by the police? Was it when North Carolina instituted that god-awful HB2 bill? Or maybe it was the time when those inmates at Rikers like Kalief Browder were denied their right to due process. Oh and the women’s movement…is that finished too? I mean I can vote but if I get raped and impregnated in certain states, the nearest Planned Parenthood will be too far away for me to travel like it is for many women in red states. So glad I live in NYC and am under my mother’s insurance! Must be so nice being a straight white man and never having to think about your civil rights being violated, right, Joe?

Then he barks at us to stop complaining about things and get involved. Hey Joe, I have been “getting involved” since I was in high school. I was volunteering with a non-profit in my second year, helping to clean parks, rallying for better public education, making an anti-discrimination documentary, delivering food to the elderly with Meals on Wheels and helping out the residents of a women’s shelter. In college, I worked as a mentor for a program that gives scholarships to poor high school students who want to take college level courses helping these students through the college application process to make sure that more poor/low-income kids get into college. I participated in the Million March with Black Lives Matter, I work with kids at a leadership/community service program and I wrote a book to promote LGBTQ POC representation. Is that “involved” enough for you? I even received the President’s Community Service Award (signed by Barack Obama). Or do you just think that me and my generation are all sitting around whining about shit with our thumbs in our asses and not trying to change things?

He then says “You can go and you can make all the money in the world, but you can’t build a wall high enough to keep the pollution out.” I have no clue what the fuck he’s talking about when he says this. The last time I checked, us millennials were against building walls but whatever. And we can’t build walls to keep out pollution anyway so…? And unless we’re all Mark Zuckerberg, on what planet are we making all the money in the world?

And then lastly, you claim that we’re not involved in politics. Biden, I have been voting in elections since I was old enough to cast a ballot. I voted in the last presidential election as well as the last couple of mayoral elections. Don’t tell me that I don’t get involved in politics. 

So Biden, don’t pass judgement on my entire generation when you clearly don’t know shit about us. And how much of a hypocrite are you for complaining about us complaining? What are you actively doing to help out millennials? You’re a fucking politician–a civil servant who has the power and responsibility to serve your people and you’re out here complaining about a group of people who you don’t know anything about instead of asking us what it is we need. Good job, Biden, you just lost our support. And I’m going to make this known to all millennials so that they can see who you really are. Wasn’t going to vote for you anyway. Bernie Sanders all the way!

So I keep seeing my Facebook friends posting subjective statuses as if they’re objective about 2017 as if the things they’re posting about apply to everyone and I know that they don’t but still…I don’t think they understand that not everyone had the same year they did. 2017 might have been fantastic for some people but for others, it wasn’t. So, my 2017 was pretty terrible. How? Why?

1. Donald Trump’s Inauguration! Yet another reminder of how shitty this country can be. Congrats, America! You voted for a rapist who believes that Climate Change is a Chinese hoax, who wants to go to war with North Korea, is racist, hates Muslims, wants to make the poor poorer, the rich richer and wants to outsource more jobs to other countries than any other president and wants to build a wall that Mexicans can just fly over on a plane. Congratu-fucking-lations…

2. I lost 2 jobs! Funding for the arts has been getting cut so much because Republicans hold the majority of the house and senate that arts programs like the ones I work for don’t have enough funds to pay their employees. So, one of my jobs on 4 occasions since 2017 started couldn’t pay us on time. And I drained my savings account and nearly maxed out my credit cards trying to get to work and feed myself while I was working for this organization and I decided that it wasn’t worth it to go into so much debt anymore and I had to quit. The other arts organization I was working for laid me off without even telling me. So luckily, and I use that word lightly, I got a job at the community service program I was in while in high school which leads to my next one…

3. Got a new job and I hate it! Working over the summer at this place was a fucking nightmare. It was my first summer camp job. There was so much shit to do and know. I was managing a group of 6th graders and the guy I was working with was an insubordinate asshole who gave me an attitude whenever I asked him to do anything. He kept breaking rules, he would leave me to do all the planning for each day when we were supposed to be planning things together, he did inappropriate things with the kids and whenever I pulled him aside to talk to him about these things in private, he started raising his voice at me like he doesn’t know how to have a private conversation. I talked to my boss about him multiple times and she didn’t do much. He didn’t change. Oh, and he ever yelled at her once too. I was so stressed at this job that I had a panic attack after work and had to be taken to the hospital. And when I texted this guy to tell him that I wasn’t going to be in that day and told him where to find everything we needed for a field trip, he yet again gave me an attitude. What fucking human being hears from their co-worker that they had to go to the hospital for a panic attack and responds with “oh, that’s your job?” I was so fucking livid. And eventually, when one of the kids’ parents called to complain about him touching her daughter inappropriately, he quit. Wow, child molester in the making…fucking creep. So I still work at this place but with less hours because it’s just an after-school program now. The kids that I work with are the worst group of kids I have ever had to work with in my 7 years of working with kids. They make racist and homophobic comments all the time (try hearing these things when you’re black and gay), they start physical altercations with each other, they’re blatantly disrespectful to staff, one girl even called my co-worker/friend a racial slur. There’s not enough time in the day to get our work done and me and one of the other staff are always having to stay late to get things done and we don’t get paid for the extra hours that we stay. I really want to quit this job and I don’t wanna work with kids anymore. It’s grating on my mental health. If I can’t get a job in my field (animation, comics or other commercial arts) then I rather just work in an office somewhere as a data clerk because I spent 3 years in college doing that as a work-study job. But apparently, I’m not qualified to do that either. No one wants me to do anything other than working with kids. 

4. I’ve gone into more debt this year! Yay! $600 from going to the hospital for a panic attack, about $450 from credit card debt from my jobs not paying me on time and whatever interest I have accrued from my deferred student loans plus the $50K in loans that I owe. I’m trying to save up to move out because my living situation has become more crowded. I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, mom, her boyfriend and my brother. My brother sleeps in the living room which is attached to the kitchen which means that when he goes to sleep, we can’t go out into the kitchen to get food or throw trash out and it’s really fucking annoying. Also, I have to share a bathroom with 4 other people and I have a disease (hypothyroidism) that causes gastro-intestinal issues and I’m also a girl so that means that often I can’t get into the bathroom when I really need to. My girlfriend and I applied for a low-income housing lottery and I really hope that we get called. I’m scraping by with what I make at my job and I have to help my mom with rent and bills and it’s just really difficult trying to pay any debt off and save money. Like wow, I live in a country where poor/low-income college grads may have to go on welfare to survive and can’t get a break with student loans and the fucking president wants to help out the rich people and screw the poor over more. Oh, and fuck Betsy Devos for wanting to make life harder for people like me. 

5. I lost one of my closest friends. I had a friend in college who I was very close to. She was always there for me when I needed her, she helped me with my assignments, we hung out with each other outside of school and we always confided in each other. I got to meet her family and even after graduation and she had to move back to Florida, we still kept in contact. She was supposed to come back to NYC with her mom but she was having some family issues and had to stay. I haven’t heard from her since 2016 in November. I’ve been trying to contact her ever since. I called, texted, e-mailed, I’ve messaged her brothers on Facebook with no response, I contacted her friend and asked if she’s heard from her and she hasn’t…I’m pretty worried. For all I know she could be dead or her family could have been deported since Trump has ramped up ICE’s tyranny. I miss the hell out of her. I just really want to hear her voice. If I had the money, I’d go to Florida and try to look her up. I was thinking of sending a letter to her address to see if anyone replies to it. 

Despite how terrible this year has been for me, here are are a couple of positive things that have come out of it. 

1. I made 3 years with my girlfriend and we’ve been talking about getting married in the future. Which means that when we have the money and our own place, we’ll most likely get engaged which I’m really excited for. We’ve been through a lot together, good and bad and we’ve always remained by each other. I feel like she’s the girl of my dreams; she’s everything that I want in a girl. She’s sweet, nerdy, affectionate, sensitive, open-minded, we have so much in common and we want the same things out of our relationship. We both want to move to California someday, travel, adopt kids, have pets and have the lives that we’ve always wanted for ourselves growing up. I hope that our relationship remains as great as it is now. 

2. I may, someday soon, actually get to live out my dream of being a filmmaker! When I was in high school, I was taking a comic book illustration class with Ivan Velez Jr. a former writer for Marvel and DC comics and ever since, we’ve remained in contact. A few months ago, he contacted me and some of his other former students and said that he wants to work on a film project with us and that he has connections with Netflix! I’m not going to get my hopes up because this is a really big chance and a lot of things can change or possibly go wrong but so far, it seems like things are going well. I can’t talk about what we’ve been planning but he has to speak to his Netflix connect and see if we can get funding for this project before anything else happens. But yeah, I’m super excited! He says that we might be able to start filming as soon as later this year if we get the funding. I already worked on a script for the short film I want to make and I have other things planned for this story as well. It’s funny, I was just ranting about how disappointed I am with some films I’ve been seeing and not too much later, he contacts me. So I’m hoping it works out!

So I hope that all my fellow struggling millennials and non-millennials have had a better 2017 than me and that your 2018 comes with more hopes and positive life changes. Hope everyone can take better care of themselves and keep fighting though things are really difficult and seem hopeless. 

Happy New Year!

Please reblog if you’ve had a tough year and let me know about it so we and all the other struggling millennials out there know that we’re not alone!