My shitty Midwest city needed a co-signer for me to move into an apartment, even with a roommate. My parents refused, so I recruited a friend, rented a car and drove 2,000 miles away to a beach where I didn’t need a co-signer or shoes, for that matter. Had some rough times, but never looked back.

First apartment was a one bedroom in a famous SoCal beach that would drop in price by $100 in the winter because I guess demand would decrease. My roommate and I would alternate between taking the bedroom and the living room. There was a shitty, bulging waterbed in the bedroom that the previous tenant just left. It felt luxurious.

I could hear the water crashing all day and night, I never even needed a fan for cooling due to the breeze, and I could see the ocean (just a sliver) out the bedroom window. The living room window was above a dumpster, though, and some player in the building would always argue and break up with his girlfriends by that dumpster. We eventually nicknamed that dumpster the Dumpster of Love.

I worked shitty temp jobs for a while because I could type fast, but I kept working myself out of a job. I learned pretty hard that corporate America is about looking busy and not actually getting anything done. I routinely finished 3-day temp assignments before lunch and would get dismissed with only 4 hours pay for my trouble.

Eventually I had a friend who was working on a film production for a low budget company. They blew up cars and shit and were pretty popular overseas. My friend invited me to come to set and work for free for a week with the promise that they’d hire me for their next film. I had nothing better to do, so I gave them a week. I worked on bad movies with them for the next several years nonstop, getting paid, though. My friend quit after that first one.

A lot of this stuff says I’m either stupid or I was exploited or both. But I’m not mad. I still think it was much easier for my generation than the ones that followed. Also, everyone living a life worth living learns as they go, imo.