is it possible for an American to earn money in 2025 or is it only possible to spend money and slowly let the stress consume you

okay I think I’ve decided:

• I’m going to check out one of the game stores because a review says they have a decent TTRPG selection. maybe I can read some of the books and have conversations with my partner about TTRPG design. not spending $60+ on a book though lol fuck that
• I’ll go to a queer bar just to experience it and if I don’t have fun then I’ll leave

I’m visiting a non-shitty area of the US (or as non-shitty as the US gets) and I’m currently trying to figure out what things I’d want to do while going Outside™, now that I can actually go Outside™, and I’m having some trouble with that

there are game stores but based on the pics they seem to only sell board games and card games and no TTRPG stuff. also I couldn’t afford a new TTRPG book anyway lol they are expensive. I bet at best they only sell D&D and maybe Pathfinder

there are also touristy museums and maybe that’d be worthwhile to do but they seem pretty basic idk

I’ve always wanted to see what a queer bar is like and there are some in this area but I wouldn’t know what to do when I got there lol - I am terrified of talking to anyone. this might be worthwhile though just for the experience

there are arcades but none of them list what games they have so I don’t know how to tell if I’d want to play any of them without paying for the entry fee (or whatever business model they have)

there are also restaurants and bakeries but I don’t want my entire relationship to the outside world to be “eat food”, y’know? I’ve already tried a good number of these and it’s been fun but I want to do other stuff too

it seems like there are a million different things to do Outside™ but they’re all expensive and none of them sound particularly fun compared to what I can do on my computer idk. also 95% of them are aimed at basic white people lol

@mioontje oh that makes sense! I bet my instance is seeing it for the first time

incredibly good pic btw omg 💕

@mioontje ohh fuck definitely 3 🥵

edit: wait I literally just got a notification for this post but it says it was posted 6 months ago what

@Shivaekul @hwll that helps a lot - thank you! I love the idea of saving my cover letters and keeping track of which ones get me interviews, and I also really appreciate the offer to read my cover letters and give me feedback - especially since you have so much experience with this

@hwll also I really hope you’re able to find a job soon! it’s got to be so demoralizing having to apply to jobs for an entire year without any luck

@hwll nono this is really really helpful! especially the part about doing research and writing a cover letter. in the past I tended to go for a “quantity over quality” approach but if quality is what works then I might try that instead!

and I’m glad that there are still tech jobs out there, even though I imagine there’s a ton of competition for them right now

I’ve actually never had a job before - I’ve been trying on-and-off for a long time. I’m really good at programming in scripting languages though (JavaScript, Python, and Lua especially) so I was thinking of being a programmer who does that type of stuff

I can learn really fast though so I could probably do other types of tech work too - though I probably wouldn’t find it as satisfying as programming, depending on what it is (testing might be fun)

anyway thank you for the info! this is great to know. where do you go to find jobs to apply for? do Monster and Indeed still work?

do y’all think there’s any chance of me getting a tech job in 2026? like should I even be spending energy considering that, or should I figure something else out?

ideally I want something remote so that I can use the money to escape my transphobic-ass state, but I don’t know what that would be other than tech work, and the American tech industry is imploding right now

capitalism forces us to compete with each other for the right to survive

and then we hate our fellow workers for out-competing us because capitalism is giving them table scraps instead of us

apparently I was thinking of a hostess club instead of a maid cafe. hostess clubs are more overtly sexual whereas maid cafes can be but are generally more wholesome and moe/cute

they should make a maid cafe that sells bubble tea and call it Boba & Booba

@shijikori that sounds terrible omg. it sounds like what I’ve heard about autistic burnout - although I don’t know if you’re autistic. the way that we’re expected to work is so unfair sometimes and I wish work could be more individualized so that everyone could do it. or ideally I wish that we didn’t have to work in order to justify our existence, but yeah :/

I hope that you’re able to find some solution though - that sounds exhausting and upsetting

@iamada @ShadowJonathan the anti-cheat struggle is so real. I wanted to play Paladins with my partner but she wasn’t able to for a very long time because of their stupid anti-cheat. they only allowed Linux at the very last minute as the game was actively dying :/ but I still had a lot of fun with her in that time at least

and yeah I do think that eventually I’m going to have to switch to Linux, because Windows will have become even worse than it is now and I’ll no longer be able to escape from the enshittification. but I’m putting it off because I’m also waiting for Linux to get better too. at least in my experience with Arch so far, it’s not at a point where I want to be using it every day - it frustrates me a lot