ive cracked again.

And the cannabis laws strike again!

I have a feeling they wouldn’t be freaking out if it wasn’t illegal. It shouldn’t be illegal, and the only reasons for it being so, are illegitimate and fabricated reasons. Adults in this day and age, have had copious opportunities to learn the truth and do something about it… and yet, there are still grown people who think it’s “the devil,” or think that you’ll somehow end up “strung out on heroin” if you enjoy smoking cannabis. This is like infini-facepalm territory. There are not enough facepalms in all of eternity, to account for such outrageous treatment of cannabis enthusiasts!

However: ask yourself if you’d rather be grounded at home, or in jail?

If you were to get caught with an illegal substance in public, you might end up locked up… which might (probably will) cause problems for your future. I mean, unless you’re in colorado or washington or something, but still.

If it was my kid, i’d be like “i don’t want you getting caught with this and ending up in jail, or worse, so you’re only allowed to do it at home, in this safe and familiar environment with minimal risk.”

At least, i tell myself that. I might turn into hitler-dad if i actually had kids. I don’t trust the rest of the world much, so i’d probably have anxiety about my offspring interacting with random, untrustworthy people, unsupervised.

@lorax:

i liked your first comment, but i’m struggling with this one part:

“You don’t need college to have a future.”

While i realize that is technically true… the disparity between the wildly different possible non-college futures, is quite significant.

Anyone who wakes up tomorrow “has a future.” It just might not meet their minimum acceptable quality of life requirements.

I can’t help but be curious about the reasoning behind that seemingly confident statement. I also realize it’s possible you were referring to the same “slim chance” which requires me to say that it’s “technically possible” to do well without college.

“Having a future” and “having an acceptable future,” are two very different things.

I can’t help but “flash back” to a few critical moments in my past, and think “if i had known /this/ was the future i’d have, i would have preferred to die then.”

I’m very interested in discovering effective methods of having an acceptable quality of life, without going to college (if such things exist)… and/or ways to pay for it, without familial help.

I have some rather outlandish ideas of my own, but the “learning curve” is… discouraging.

I’ve been asking people i meet about these types of things for most of my life. No one ever has a real answer. They just start talking ambiguously and being evasively vague. It’s possible that i never encountered anyone who knew wtf they were talking about.

I don’t think an acceptable future is possible without owning a house and having, among other things, a retirement fund.

Ideally, i’m “the last person to say” that money is the most important thing. But what i have learned in life is that all the experiences i find most valuable, are, in fact, not free. Taking care of myself is not free. Transportation is not free. Being “worthy of finding a companion” is not free, because i’m not one of those physically-gifted types, and unless your intelligence can make you plenty of money, then it doesn’t matter… at all, really.

College does seem inherently, deceptively, arbitrary and excessive. It’s a lot of time and money spent on things that aren’t really necessary, but which are required to obtain an official document of completion status, which you wave in front of the gatekeepers to gain “gainful” employment.

But without that document, how might one bypass the experience paradox? How do you get experience, without having prior experience? I suppose that’s what internships are about… but that’s a lot of free work to do to gain admittance to an entry level position, after spending that much time, effort, and money, on a “qualified” document.

Ultimately, most people don’t get to have the special experiences that life is supposed to be all about, which make life “worth living,” if they are broke, or cannot make more money than they actually need.

Future sucks if lacking money. Future sucks of lacking lots of other things, most of which can be solved with money, if not by other means.

However: college doesn’t mean you’ll know what you need to know, to earn “enough” to have a minimally acceptable or better quality of life, in the future.

What i find is that no one is actually teaching “how to make as much money as possible.” Because then everyone would want to do that, and the people already doing it, might lose their edge. Or, the people already doing that, have already established dominance in a way that doesn’t really allow much competition.

Another thing i find is that much of what is taken for granted as “true,” is often still true, but for very different reasons than most seem to realize.

It might seem like it, but i’m not saying you’re wrong.