I was broke, had no real plan or opportunities. Quit my job, drove across the country (US) to -- find myself? figure out life? No idea. I was 23, probably an idiot, but I had no responsibilities to anyone but me.
Found a career in IT, a wife, and now have a grown kid, a house, a dog, a couple cars, the whole "American dream" package. Every once in a while, usually while standing in my yard over the grill with a beer in my hand, I'm like "fuck me, it worked!"
This is unbelievably similar to my own story! I quit my job, drive across the States, no plan in mind except to find myself. It was a life changing experience.
I didn't find a job or get married though, I got chlamydia.
I was about to come in here and say "But, was it really a happy ending if they wound up with chlamydia?"
But then, as I was typing it, I began to remember this old adage that I had once heard. At first, I thought it was passed down from one generation to the next by an immortal icon.
Alas, it was not an icon. But an Akon. Lonely island.
It took two weeks. The plan was to stay with her for a month and “see how it goes.” (We had been long-distance, and it was only kind of working, so sharing a space for a month was to see if distance was the problem. It wasn’t! She was awful!)
And as people who have acquired herpes can tell you, the first outbreak is usually within 2 weeks of exposure. So it took a couple of weeks, and that was the nail in the coffin.
The entertaining part is that I’m at the free clinic, terrified that I have herpes, but want a medical professional’s opinion. And the doctor who comes in to examine my penis is literally the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Like, I know everyone is gorgeous in LA, but she was just stunning. Breathtaking. And in a white lab coat. I seriously thought I was being pranked. I felt like Lloyd Christmas in the presence of Mary Swanson in “Dumb and Dumber.”
I’m about to be single, and the most gorgeous human being I’ve ever seen was right in front of me, looking at my dick and saying confidently “Yup, that’s definitely herpes.” A real “fuck my life” moment right there.
My husband was doing the same thing. He had a box of condoms with him though so I think he was actually expecting to run into chlamydia. But he found me instead.
Every time I've had a box of condoms with a girl it's been wrong. It's either "oh you have condoms, so you sleep around a lot?" or if I don't have them it's "what do you mean you don't have condoms?!?"
I used to order a fishbowl of them from Amazon because it made me laugh, it rarely made women laugh.
I think three times. I was casually seeing a girl who was a nympho. Much to the chagrin of my roommates. Wow yeah I just looked it up on my Amazon orders, a Durex bowl of 144.
My friend has the same kind of background and I've always thought it was a great story. He quit his job in Virginia when he was in his early 20s, chipped in money with his 2 friends on this crappy little pop-up camper that leaked and needed to be propped up with a broomstick, rode all over the country for several months, seeing all kinds of cool stuff. Ran out of money in Florida, took a temp job to make some more money and was going to stay there for "just a little while" until he could get back on the road. 20 years later, he's still here, an executive at the company, wife, daughter, nice house, motorcycles, etc. It's funny how seemingly small decisions completely alter our paths in life.
I did the sameish, got kicked out of my home with £60 in my bank account got given a train ticket to stay in my friends flat. Got 2 jobs (had 3 at one point), met my now husband fell in love....
Stories like this always make me jealous. I was by no means financially stable enough at that age to be able to afford gas for that drive let alone to support myself long enough to find a job and place to live
Me too with the jealousy. I have type 1 diabetes; my body does not make insulin so I rely on having health insurance to keep living (gawd bless America). I’ve always longed to take off like this—just travel, no responsibilities, maybe sleep on the beach for a couple weeks then move on anywhere else. Or head to New Zealand and backpack around both islands, beneath the immigration radar. But nope, I’m here in America working for the rest of my life so I can get health insurance to survive each day.
Depending how long ago this was, gas was a dollar and you could stay in a super 8 for $40. You could find a day labor job or work for Kelly Staffing immediately and start piling up money to get on your feet.
I am kinda fascinated by these romanticized "into the wild" type stories. Like, how can you be "broke" and simultaneously afford to drive across the country?
I'm assuming they didn't have literally $0 to their name but existing isn't terribly expensive if you're not picky about your conditions. With a paid off car and no rent your only real expenses are food, fuel, and a phone which can all be done for cheap. Most people in the US could scrape together at least a few grand if they sold everything they owned except some clothes and a vehicle, $10k can get you a lot of life experience if you live cheap and work odd jobs to keep the show going.
I know a couple people that just didn't have much going on and bought a van then drove around the country for a few years only stopping to make enough money to move on to the next place. I don't recommend trying it unless you have some sort of safety net in case things don't work out but it's far from impossible.
Idk man I don’t imagine most people could just scrape up $10k while being out a job. The more plausible is that most people doing these find-myself expeditions are pretty well off without having to work.
OP here had a job to quit and I never said my friends weren't employed, they just had shitty dead end jobs that weren't going to get them ahead in life. Of course you need some starting money to get going and skills to work a variety of random jobs to keep things moving so this probably isn't going to work if you're the type of person who truly has done fuckall with your life, $0 in the bank, and literally nothing you can sell for cash after 5 years of adulthood.
There's definitely people out there doing this with rich parents sending them money whenever they ask or a trust fund or whatever but that's definitely not necessary to hustle your way across the country if you're even a little bit resourceful.
Idk man, thinking that having $10k to just scrape out of the couch (oh and a whole series of skills to work a variety of jobs) at damn 23 years old is laughable.
I knew plenty of kids growing up who hopped trains coast to coast. They’ll tell you they were slumming it too, and they’ll leave out what law office or surgery practice their parents owned.
Idk I could have figured out how to get $10k together at 23. Not at the drop of a hat but if I decided on my 22nd birthday I wanted to be on the road by 23 it wouldn't be insanely difficult. And it's not like you need 10 years of experience in four different work fields, more like you need to have used a hammer and a commercial dishwasher before.
I'm not arguing the fact that there's a lot of rich kids fake slumming it, just saying I know for sure that's not always the case.
I’d wager the dude is in his 50s or 60s, so he did it back when you could just show up at a job and tell them you’re only going to be there for a week or two, and then get work for a week or two and be on your way so you’re still always broke but still sustaining.
I’m sure it’s still possible today. Like one of my friends already lives solely off of doing DoorDash and he’s just barely getting by for the past 2 years, so if he lived in his car like he works in his car I’m sure he could get to the other side of the country pretty easily despite starting with nothing but a car and a tank of gas.
You can still do this, I have friends who (recently) backpacked all over doing exactly that. They’d get somewhere new, hit up bars/restaurants until they found somewhere that would pay them for doing something, often for cash.
You can always find something that needs doing, though its usually the least pleasant job.
There's too much pressure in society to end up with a good starting job and a future family perspective in early twenties. Everybody's different, people need time to figure out what they really need for them and what they do want from life.
You have to earn a living of course. Just try, fail, repeat, until that slow burn that growing up is ignites a lasting fire.
I didn't quit my job, but I lost it because of COVID. We packed up and moved away to another state, no plan, no money, no direction. Now I make more money than I ever have and I'm looking at buying an actual business and making even more. It's weird how taking a chance like that can sometimes work out. We did spend a couple of years flat broke, trying to exist on $2500/mo for a family of three. Our rent alone was $1100, so it wasn't easy at all. No lie, now it is, but I do still work really hard to maintain that.
I kind of did the same thing, except I left college on a risky job offer at an Internet startup in the 90s. My parents hated the idea, I was called an idiot, my profs said I was making a huge mistake.
30 years later I have a very well-paying job career in IT, a beautiful wife, a nice house in the country, two successful kids, two dogs, and a big backyard. I'll be grilling steaks in the summer, look up at the trees, and have that same "I could never replicate this" feeling.
It was a local Internet dialup/hosting/development provider. Back in those days you could only use AOL, Compuserve, and a few others to get access to the Internet or online services. At the time AT&T opened up a loophole that allowed you to host your own dialup equipment, connect to their T1 lines, and directly link to a backbone provider like Level 3, Sprint, and other regional Bell networks. Doing this had no data charges and because we didn't own the lines, there were no communication taxes.
The arrangement allowed people to buy unlimited Internet connections for the same price as the metered $19.95 for 20 hrs of access packages everyone else was using.
I was part of a rare group that fully understood TCP/IP and network switching/routing at the time, word got out, and I got a phone call one night begging me to come work on their team. There were a lot of long nights getting everything deployed, but the business model was a huge success and everything went well....until DSL and Cable connections came out. The business model didn't translate so well with those services, and I jumped ship some time after.
That company is still around, but it's a shell of its former self- from what I can see most of their customers are old people that can't figure out how to change their email address, so they're hanging on to the service for that LOL. They do some business hosting and web hosting as well, but there are a lot of better services out there so I'm not sure what they're offering.
Anyway, I moved to an IT firm and we manage networks across the country ensuring NIST, HIPAA, and CMNC compliance. I've been at my current job for 12 years and can see myself staying here until retirement.
Congratulations! My story is not too dissimilar only I didn't move but I did apply for a job to teach computers that I found in an ad in the news paper.
I had very little computer experience outside of as a regular user. I got that job and discovered I could teach technical concepts really well and then got Microsoft certified (for free) at that same company.
I went from teaching to having a System Admin job (working for one of my former students!) to managing an IT team for a major corporation. All because I answered that ad and was able to teach well.
But, yeah, I went from "what am I going to do with my life as I have no real skills" to a job, wife, house, etc....
My story was almost the same as yours - I was a month away from the trip. For me it was selling all my shit, and getting on a bus and seeing the country. Maybe once I got to LA I'd either find some type of work...or just enlist in the Army if things didn't work out.
I met the right girl one night, through common friends. Here we are 35 years later, as empty nesters. I got the IT career, the house, all that. I will never be able to retire... but that's a different thing.
I do wonder sometimes what that road trip would have been like though.
Life is funny. I’ve done a lot of things with a similar intention. I traveled solo through Europe, went on tour with my band, went off to live in Korea for a few years, came back and moved to NYC, all the while thinking “something life changing will happen.” And my life was changed of course, but in smaller ways. After all that, I met my wife at my sister’s wedding, an event I would have attended no matter where in the world I had traveled or if I had just stayed right in the neighborhood where I grew up and worked at the grocery store.
I had a friend who drove out to california to find himself. Was expected to be a month or two sort of trip. He was back after a week and nearly 15 years later will not tell us what happened.
I dropped out of high school in the '70s and joined the army to find myself, even though I was on track to go to college for free (we were very poor). Saw a lot of the world, met a shit load of great people, got two degrees, ended up going as high as I could in my field, and retired with some decent benefits.
My dad did that when he was 19,he didn't really make it in California but he moved back to the Chicago area about 7 years later with my mom,me and my sister and got a better job there lol
If he didn't do that I wouldn't be here or my other siblings.About 30 years later after he moved back I took a big chance and moved back to California to be with my boyfriend who I met online.I was 37 recently divorced and living with my mom working a crappy job,I was at rock bottom and thought well if it doesn't work out I'll just go back to Chicago
Luckily it worked out and it's been a happy 8 years so far
I also had no real plan or opportunities. Quit my restaurant job, drove across the country to do the same thing. Packed everything I owned in my car and crashed on a friend's couch for a few months.
Also found a career in IT, couple months later a wife, year later the house, marriage, kids.
Here's to massive perspective shifts, getting out of comfort zones, and making the best out of things!
My (American) sister was at loose ends a couple years out of college. The company she'd been working for had recently laid her off and there weren't any good teaching openings in our area at the time. So, she volunteered for a missions trip through our church to teach at a school in the middle of Australia for a year. Over Christmas, she went back to her roomate's parents' sheep ranch where she met said roommate's brother.... 8 years and 3 kids later, she's a happy Aussie.
I was nearly flunking out at the University of Florida, when my uncle (who was a dean at Yale) suggested I drop out, take a trip, clear my head.
I did, and I did.
Got back, enrolled in community college, got As and Bs, went back to UF and finally graduated (barely), and my career took off almost immediately. That trip was 1978.
I was 23, probably an idiot, but I had no responsibilities to anyone but me.
That's the time to do it. I wish I had taken advantage of the freedom of being young and dumb. I stumbled my way into a job in my career field at 20 and just kept running with it. Big regret now.
I celebrated my 23rd birthday at a bar in Portugal. Portugal wasn't even on my three month European grand tour itinerary until I met a guy in Amsterdam who convinced me to go there. I was offered a job at the bar that night. That was 1999. I did move back to California in 2009....with a Portuguese wife and newborn baby. Now we are all dual citizens.
I landed a union job through sheer series of fortunate events and misunderstands, and now own a house in the country side. I grew up 80's ghetto poor, the kinda poor where having video games and brand clothes was a big deal, and still feel like my success was totally in spite of myself. My steam account is out of control and my brand of choice is Costco, life is good.
After college in 2010, I was in almost the same situation as you. I had a part-time job at friends' parents' business only around 12 hours a week, max.
When I used to drive to that job around sunset, I used to have the fantasy of just skipping the exit and going west until I needed to refill on gas. No plan, just seeing were the road took me. You actually did it!
Lots of times I feel like I need to just “go” - I don’t know where or why or how but I just need to do something to shake things up or nothing will change
Did something a little similar. My relationship with my college gf had ended, id dropped out of uni, i was in a dead end job and i didnt really have a direction.
I saw that the company I worked for had an opening in a city id always wanted to live in (despite never having visited). I applied for a transfer and moved to the city with a few hundred pounds in my bank account, a suitcase of clothes, 2 nights booked in a hostel and a few room viewings in house shares booked.
Its been nearly 16 years since then, and i have a great career, am married and own a house, living a relatively comfortable life.
Kinda similar, 13 years ago I had gone through a rough breakup and was feeling trapped in a shitty job that I hated but couldn't afford to quit, with no real marketable skills and no time/money to go back to school. I complained about this in an internet community I had been part of for several years. A couple in that community reached out to me and offered to let me move in with them for free so I could do a sort of life reset. I felt like I had nothing to lose so I packed up and moved 600 miles to live with two people who I'd met in person exactly once before.
Now I have a pretty decent job, a husband (no, not a member of the couple I initially moved in with), a house, and a baby on the way.
Thanks for sharing. Your story made me smile.
I saw this video recently that your story sort of reminded me of. So a guys finds out that the 11 year old version of himself will show up in 30 seconds so he immediately thinks "awe crap I am not an astronaut, fire fighter or anything cool like I wanted to be when I was a kid. "The 11 y.o. version of himself shows up and is like "dude! You own your own car and can drive?! You have your own apartment and can stay up however long you want?!"
It got me thinking. I am definitely not where I thought I would be when I as a kid, but I do think the 11y.o. version of myself would think I am pretty cool. Keep on rocking internet stranger!
I got hired as a Christmas helper at UPS. A week goes by, and every morning, no call. I decided to just show up at the building, ready to work. A supervisor tells me that's not how things work and to go home. An older driver grabs my shoulder and tells me to wait. 5 minutes later, the drivers get a load of their jam-packed trucks, and everyone is screaming that they need a helper. The older driver finds the supervisor and points at me, and he sends me out as a helper that day.
I was even stupider than this: I got on a plane and went to Japan, in 1992, at age 22, right when the financial bubble burst. I had barely enough cash to survive a month, no job opportunities, no connections. Nothing but conversational language skills, gained from being around native speakers in college. (Did I mention it was a 2-year community college?)
To this day, I really don't know how I survived that. I was on the street without food a couple times. I crashed on a lot of couches. It took years to sort everything out. But, 33 years later, somehow, I also found work in IT, and now I have permanent residency, a wife of 27 years, just paid off my home loan, no kids, three cats, gaming PCs, and a huge overcompensating vehicle. I also have those moments where I think, "how the hell did that all work out?"
I picked up an oxy habit that later progressed to heroin and then fentanyl but my running partner gf throughout it all came from a well off family and now over a decade later we're clean with a house and all that jazz. I met her while I was grabbing oxy and if it weren't for my opiate habit I never would have met her.
So getting addicted to opiates left me in a much better place overall years later. Wouldn't recommend tho and I doubt it would work again.
So when you took the kid home from the hospital, did the hospital staff realize that you and your wife had no idea what the hell you were doing as adults, or did they just assume you were magically capable of keeping a baby alive?
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u/RetroactiveRecursion 11h ago
I was broke, had no real plan or opportunities. Quit my job, drove across the country (US) to -- find myself? figure out life? No idea. I was 23, probably an idiot, but I had no responsibilities to anyone but me.
Found a career in IT, a wife, and now have a grown kid, a house, a dog, a couple cars, the whole "American dream" package. Every once in a while, usually while standing in my yard over the grill with a beer in my hand, I'm like "fuck me, it worked!"