This is your life from a suit

You graduate from college, looking forward to becoming a fully capable and successful professional. You’re hired into Big Corp as an entry-level minion, but your wages are “competitive” – besides, it’s not like you have any debts. All your money goes towards drinking, partying, hanging out with friends. Life is good.

Then, you realize you’ll need an appropriate car. If you had a car in college, it now looks like a banana shoe. It’s a bit too broken down / rusty / old / ugly. In any case, it doesn’t represent you as a young professional. If you didn’t have a car in college, hey! NOW it’s the time to get one! WTF were you waiting for. You buy a car. Economy class, but nice. Life is good.

Now that you’ve learned the ropes at work, you start working hard – and partying harder. You party with the few college friends who stayed in touch with you, you party with your colleagues, you party with friends of friends, hell you party alone! And then you meet someone, start dating. Suddenly, having this salary is great, but you start wishing for more. You wanna take her/him places, go eat at swanky restaurants, live the life! For the moment being, however, you’re thankful you have someone to cuddle with. Life is good.

You’re becoming a go-getter at work. You get a raise, you save some money, and before you know it, you just got married! That nice raise got you a new mortgage and a few more bills to pay. At least you’ve got your own place. You come home a bit too swamped to do anything other than cuddle in front of the TV with your S.O., but that’s okay. You’re an adult now. Parties are a thing of the past. You’ve got decent wine and cases of premium beer in the fridge. You need nothing out of home. Life is good.

Suddenly, you become one of the honchos at work. Not the big ones, but definitely a stable fixture in the office. You now have a nice salary, but the hours are killing ya! You start getting home later and later each night. Seeing your spouse awake is a luxury. Spending time with them is a thing of the weekends (unless you have to go to the office to catch up with “the proposal you have to hand in first hand on Monday”). Maybe by some sort of miracle you become a parent. You have a little mini-me to raise now. You look forward to trips to the park, ice cream cones, laughter, maybe setting up a swing set in the backyard. Life is good.

…and then you realize your spouse is miserably unhappy ‘cuz you’re barely ever there. Your kid grows up into a nasty brat before you even have time to pay attention. Your spouse files for divorce, takes away half of what you earned, and now you have to suffer your nasty kid once every two weeks. You have to rent a dingy little apartment to be able to afford living alone … worst case scenario: you have to move back with mom. You’re back to square one. Fuck your life.

… and then you meet a cute little coworker who shakes her ass just the right way. Skip all the romantic nonsense, go straight to living together, rinse, repeat… or maybe skip all the commitment nonsense, live like a teenager forever. In any case, your life fucking SUCKS.

That’s why I don’t wear a suit to work.

(this was something I thought up yesterday as I talked to a good friend about the correlation of time vs money. We realized that you either have the money to get all the nice things you’ve always wanted, or you have the time to enjoy the things you have. You can’t have both.)