I gave up college to go strike it rich in the software industry by writing software for this startup company, that like many software companies of its kind, promised endless streams of money and happiness in exchange for my ‘20s. Back then, it all seemed like a good idea. It was an amazing time to know how to write software. Actually, it was like, if you knew anything at all about computers, suddenly you were invincible – you’d live forever – and if you didn’t live forever, they’d give you so many benefits and stock options that your grandchildren would be able to start prestigious foundations with all of the leftover dough.
Unfortunately, when it came to these benefits and stock option things, none of us had any idea what the hell they were. We understood them in this vague, superficial sense. But that was limited to the fact that we knew they were good. None of us had any idea that if the company went under, so did any prospect of leading a normal life.

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A year or so after the company I had been working for went under, I had been unemployed for so long that I had forgotten when exactly people bothered with working in the first place. Money was a factor, I suppose, but other than that, the whole routine just sounded sort of insane to begin with. I considered going back to college, but that was impossible. When I dropped out, I was so proud, so self-righteous. I acted as if I was the only one who knew the true way, that everyone else who was turning in their homework assignments and showing up for class, while I was out globetrotting had been duped.

When you’ve got no cash, you end up spending a lot of time alone. You end up a sort of philosopher of the unemployed. Not so much because you want to be, but because you spend all day wandering around town, and since you have no money, you end up going to very philosophical places, like the park, or the public library.

Most days, the public library is way too much to handle. I have very fond memories of public libraries from when I was little. But what used to be the public library has been replaced by a sort of modern day flophouse. A flophouse with computers. At the new public library, there’s no books in sight anywhere. To be fair, they do have books, but you’ll never find them. They are tucked away somewhere, I’m sure, but to find them you need a computer, but the computer, which, while everywhere, at the same time is nowhere.

When the library opens in the morning, every derelict in town is waiting outside. And as soon as the doors are unlocked, they make for the computers. Before the librarians even get the lights on, every computer is taken.

I wouldn’t mind so much if they were actually engaged in some sort of library-like behavior. But instead of looking up books, or typing papers, they play solitaire for example, and chat on the internet until the library closes. But what I want to know is, who the hell are they talking to?

I suppose, if I got up earlier, say before noon, I could make it to the library and beat the rush – but why bother? I’m just not motivated enough to beat a bunch of derelicts to the computers at the public library.

So most days, I went to the park.

When you visit the park on a daily basis, you begin go to realize a few things about America. Namely, we couldn’t care less about parks.

Our parks are really just for show. They’re almost a sort of obligatory protocol. When they play out cities, the parks seem like some sort of afterthought.

I imagine it goes like this: When the architect submits the final plans for the city, someone says, 'Hey shouldn’t there be a park somewhere?' as if he’d forgotten to put a towel rack in a bathroom or something. Then, I imagine, there’s a lot of forehead slapping around the room and lots of 'How could we be so stupid?' sorts of remarks, and then, they move a landfill or two out of the way, thrown down a bench, and whamo, there you go, park.

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Besides unemployed people, the only things that bother to visit the parks are the birds. Birds and unemployed people at the park – what could be more poetic? Some of the other unemployed people pretend like they’re not actually unemployed. They’ll run, or pretend to read a book. I admire their efforts, but mostly I think it’s sad. I mean, what gainfully employed person has the time to go for a run at 2:30 on a Monday afternoon? They’re not fooling anyone with that routine. Not even the birds seem to buy it.

The birds seem to be there just because this is the only part of the city where they won’t be run over, or accosted – and I can relate to this. Mostly, the birds are like this great lesson to us all, I think.

Sometimes, probably when I get deliriously hungry, I have these revelations about it all. For example, I was certain that none of the birds were gainfully employed. And I doubt any of them had ever held down a respectable job. A park philosopher like myself sees this as a sort of insight. If the birds are so free, then can’t we all be free? Think about it: I’ve spent a lot of time watching the birds at the park, and this is basically what happens in the day of the life of a bird:

6:00 AM Bird gets up, kicks around in the grass for some food, and then flies off to goof around town.

12:00 PM Bird comes back from goofing around town and checks out all the girl birds at the park.

12:15 PM If all went well at 12:00, then boy bird takes girl bird back to his tree, and they have birdie sex.

It’s not terribly complicated.

I’ve tried to find some evidence of other things happening in the day of the life of a bird, but I’ve had no luck on the front. Just not much else happens. I’ve had yet to see a bird: working out, stressing about a job, having a job, buying, selling or trading anything, worrying that they should go back to college, cooking dinner, worrying that they don’t have anything to cook for dinner, checking their email at the public library, or having to worry about not being able to find books at the public library, on account of all the other birds hogging up the computers. And as far as I can tell, birds do not have heart attacks.

Someone, I figure, should have written a book about this a long time ago. A good title would be something like, 'Work is for the Birds: A Modern Guide to Employment and Achievement in America.' That, would sell. Particularly to people like me. I’d even write it, that is, if I could find someone crazy enough to let me publish any sort of employment guide whatsoever. These days, 'Unemployed Ex-programmer' just doesn’t carry the sort of clout it used to, I suppose. And in our modern age of respectability, clout is all there is.

Take for example, a guy like Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was a total reprobate, and they still let him write a number of rather thick books. Here’s a guy who, when getting his degree, tells his instructors to all get bent, leaves the university without a degree, and then proceeds to obliterate the foundations of modern philosophy. What gusto!

Granted, the parallels between his life and mine aren’t so straightforward – for example, Wittgenstein was the son of an immensely wealthy dignitary whereas I am the unemployed son of an alcoholic bus driver. But no matter. There’s other ways I relate to him. I relate to him in my day to day thoughts. Wittgenstein once said:

'When I sat down on this chair, of course I believed it would bear me. I had no thought of its possibly collapsing.'

I just happen to have that thought everyday when I come to the park!

Just substitute 'park bench' for 'chair' and there you go, I think that everyday!

Or how about this one, which I’m sure every laid-off dot-com worker can relate to:

'I watch a slow match burning, in high excitement follow the progress of the burning and its approach to the explosive. Perhaps I don’t think anything at all or have a multitude of disconnected thoughts.'

That reminds me what it was like during the final days before my company blew up. The employees would all walk around like zombies, not knowing if they were dead yet. I used to wonder what everyone else was thinking; everyone in the place must have been thinking that.

Wittgenstein: Here was a man with vision! And he did it all without a college degree!

Sometimes, when I go on about Wittgenstein, people act surprised that a college dropout like myself has ever read Wittgenstein.

They are usually these well-breed, well-to-do sorts of people. If you mention anything other than the requisite work, beer, women stuff, they look at you as if you’re cute or something. Like you’re a really smart monkey. I didn’t go to college, how could I possibly know anything about Wittgenstein? They act as if they keep his books locked away in some vault, guarded by a security guard, who checks for student IDs at the door.

When you tell these people that Wittgenstein was a college dropout himself, they seem totally un-phased by the irony of it all. It’s as if somehow dropping out meant something different back then, or like intellectual inflation had somehow changed the value of a degree since then.

That was then, this is now. And now, if you drop out of college, people make you feel as if you got kicked out of day-care and took to a life of smoking crack.

Even in the 60s it was different. Back then, dropping out was so cool, that they even had a catch phrase for it. In the 60s it was all, 'Tune in, drop out.' But my generation is the 'It’s cool to stay in school' generation, which is both lame, and grammatically uninteresting.

So maybe that’s why those of us who do drop out get so very little press coverage – we need a better slogan. And maybe I’ll get on that, just as soon as I finish this next beer.n