When You're 34 And Still Don't Pay Income Taxes

I just turned 34 years old a couple of weeks ago. Something about 34 hit me differently than the three 30 something years prior. I felt as though I had cross over into a threshold of being an adult that could no longer be anything but an adult.

I remember when my mom was 34. Maybe that's what struck me so much about it. When my mom was 34, her and my dad, who was 33, owned a million dollar home, and had 4 kids. My dad had a thriving career in the entertainment industry and my mom lived the life of a privileged housewife, determined to bolster her family's standing in the social hierarchy of West Hills Baseball, a little league baseball field where we'd spent perhaps a majority of our childhoods.

There was an order to the way my parents lived their lives, even if I wasn't a big fan of my role: uncoordinated middle son, warming the bench season after season. My older and younger brothers, from my perspective, were the star pitchers of their respective teams, or at least, better than I was. As tough as it was for me, it seemed that our family and the dynamics we participated in, everything from Passover at Papa's house, to taking the bus to school, to the guy that slept on our couch for a couple of years (my tee ball baseball coach), it all made sense. I felt some safety in the way my parents gave me no say over the goings on of my life, even if I hated many many aspects of it.

My mother and father seemed to know something that I didn't, and I was grateful that they did, or else, it seemed, that the sun might stop spinning, and, as our fourth grade science teacher had explained once, would consume the earth within eight minutes.

I wondered from afar, never asking directly what I might have known deep down: "How does a person make their way in this world? How does dad make enough money to pay for our house and two cars and all of the other trappings of life in a gated community? How did he get to that point? What made him the person for the job he held? And how did he know that he was meant to hold it?"

I spent many lonely recesses out on the playground wondering how I might one day do what he does. When I was 34, a seven year old me wondered, would I know what he knew that allowed him to prop up the lives of 6 people. Would someone teach me these things? I knew I would finish high school one day, and then go to college, but I couldn't figure out where in that time I would learn the type of knowledge one needs in order to make enough money to have a life. I vaguely trusted that I would figure it out along the way, while a certaintude nestled in my gut, assuring me quietly, that it was every bit of difficult and hard to understand as it appeared to a 7 year old me.

My parents taught us never to take money for granted. My father would worry about bankruptcy as he was handing us lunch money, and when I lost a 70 dollar Social Studies book, it was with great pain and suffering that I told my parents. I knew that 70 dollars was a lot of money, and I also knew I would probably lose many more text books along the way to 12th grade. It was a trap from the beginning of the school year. I simply could not keep track of all of my text books. I would frequently be called out by teachers for not having them on me, and I wasn't one for excuses. There was something woefully wrong with me, I knew, every time I lose another text book. I felt so out of control, even back then. My backpack was a always a mess by the second week of school, and I frequently forgot or simply just didn't do my homework. School was hard enough, trying to get along with the other kids, trying not to be picked on for being a social misfit (that was the nickname I earned at Mike Moran's 9th birthday party, and though I may have protested, it didn't seem totally off to me.

When I got to my junior and senior year of high school I found myself reading lots of books, nearly fluent in spanish, and it became clear that I was something of an intellectual. Not the smartest in the bunch, but well spoken, perceptive and sharp. I wasn't an honor student, though I managed to make the top fifth of my class, and scoring a 1300 on my SAT first try. I was somewhat comfortable in my ability to analyze the world before me, yet I was not a focused person. I wrote stories, but I didn't rewrite them. I had inklings of what I might like to study in college, but everything seemed to entice me. That certaintude buried deep in my bosom never left me. I had glimpses of potential career paths, mainly I wanted to be a songwriter or a singer, but I also thought I could be a novelist or a writer for television. That is to say, I thought I could do it, but I did not think I could achieve it.

I barely made it through my Bachelor's degree at the University of Iowa, after a false start halfway through at University of Santa Cruz, I realized I wanted my education to come fully from the traditional midwestern Big 10 school. It felt, perhaps more literary.

I held no internships. I had no extra curriculars to speak of on job applications, and I was a drug addict, through and through. I managed to find a job out of college through family connections at a small game studio in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up.

It was there that the abstractions of missing homework and lost textbooks became a distinct loathing for work on work's terms. I was tasked with maintaining a virtual community for kids, where I had to spell things correctly, update things, be responsible for all of the text on a social network for kids. It was a real job, more or less, and my budding vicodin addiction made keeping up with the work a constant struggle. I would take it so hard anytime I received an email telling me something was mispelled, or certain inputs weren't functioning correctly. I felt incapable of keeping up with the workload, and I had met somebody that gave me the opportunity to quit that job while I figured out what to do. I feared relying on a boyfriend. I hated myself for it. It was like losing those textbooks all over again. I was irresponsible and it was hurting the people that loved me, and I became a magical thinker, thinking I would have a hit record, or be cast in a reality series, or... something along those lines. I became more and more entrenched in relying on my partner and more and more that vision I had at seven years old, of making a living, became my reality. I fell further and further into becoming the person who doesn't pay taxes because he has no income. I gave up my car because I was too afraid of the potential consequences of an accident and unable to pay the insurance. I became completely unable to carry any reasonable amount of responsibility and now I am an irresponsible 34 year old with no tactile career path, still tied to pipe dreams which I haven't given up, but am aware that are far from guaranteed.

I am not without any merits. I'm a creative person and I've recorded dozens of produced self-written songs, made music videos, and produced and designed my own video games. Not everyone can say that. However, I feel behind, distinctly so. I don't have my own bank accounts, I rely on the kindness of my partner to provide for me, which is a constant reminder that I am not the master of my domain and I have not fulfilled the promise of my father, when my mother was 34 years old. Perhaps, I've fulfilled the promise of my mother. But I'm not married, and I don't have kids, and the person within me does not want to be "the wife".

The point of this story is merely to reconcile with the visions my seven year old self had of a the future. He was astute in his understanding of the abstractions of adult life in a capitalist society. Seven year old me was right on the money when he looked out over the playground and thought to himself, "how will I ever make money like dad?"