Future crashing down

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There are many upsetting things going on with me, and I don't know what, if anything, I can do about them.

1. I am in a major transition professionally. I have decided to leave the GIS/urban planning field for good, due to nearly every available GIS job being a contract position that only lasts a finite amount of time and pays half of what an in-house employee can make. Due to Houston's infamous lack of zoning, there is really no urban planning field to speak of.

In the meantime, I have been studying data science and AI technology. All skills learned in these fields have been self-taught, although data science was learned through a boot camp on Udemy, and I got a prompt engineering certification through GSDC (Global Skill Development Council). I'm worried I won't get my foot in the door in this area due to the informal path taken.

2. I'm afraid of losing the last remaining friend I have with the same interests. We've been friends for over 20 years, but suddenly, my friend has not been online as frequently as in the past. Where we once talked every day, now it's once every 2 months. I'm worried my friend could eventually disappear entirely. The only way I can make more friends with the same interests is to relocate to NYC, San Francisco or Seattle. Even worse, my parents are telling me that nobody over 25 has the same interests (I'm 44).

3. Unless I can move to one of the aforementioned cities, my love life is screwed as well. The problem is that all three of the cities have extremely high costs of living that are only getting higher. Having a partner with the same interests will certainly not happen in Houston. I'm doomed to be in a sexless marriage to a right-wing extremist, if I even meet anyone at all. (Due to a couple of nasty divorces in my family, I don't like the idea of marriage, but people down here don't approve of unmarried couples living together).

4. The election. All the other things I've listed so far in this thread assume that Biden is reelected. If Trump wins, and "Project 2025" is implemented, we could become a theocracy. Many of my interests could be criminalized if that happens, due to them going against Christian nationalist beliefs. Due to strict immigration laws in much of the world, I would be shut out of countries that have far better standards of living.

I can't comment on your job prospects because I don't know anything about your field, but I do know a lot about Houston and it is not like you are describing. Houston is a huge city (the US's 4th largest) and every possible type of person or scene exists here, including unconventional, artistic, left-wing, and whatever else. Houston has the most vibrant and interesting art scene of any city I have lived in. Politically, it's blue, meaning that the majority of Houstonians have voted for Democrats in the recent presidential elections, and all of Houston's mayors have been Democrats since the early 1980s. The people you come in contact with may be right-wing extremists but that is not the norm and not even the majority. Houston already has what you are looking for, you just need to look outside of your current contacts and scene.

You seem to be under the impression that literally everyone in your area is a right wing extremist, which makes it seem like you're pinning your hopes too much on relocating as though you'll be significantly more socially blessed in another town.

Not everyone near you is a Trump cultist, but also the areas with the highest ratios of people you'll find agreeable still have Trump cultists, and further, more people you find hypothetically agreeable won't improve things much if you're unable to approach them.

Might it be (at least partially) that telling yourself that you must relocate is a way of rejecting everyone who's local in advance so you have an excuse to not bother trying to meet any of them?

Based on all the cheating and sex scandals in the rightwingosphere I wouldn't assume they're all in sexless marriages. They like to f**k too, they just expect people to feel guilty about it in some contexts.

As for your parents, they can be dismissed with ok boomer when they say no one your age has the same interests. They're just demonstrating that they don't know what they're talking about.

Houston is probably not the best place for someone in your field, but I wouldn't limit myself to only considering the three cities you named. There's literally hundreds of cities better than Houston if Houston doesn't engage in urban planning and most other cities do.

It's hopeless. I'll never be good enough for a partner or an employer. I'll be stuck in Texas forever, and will probably end up in jail for violating some ridiculous Christian nationalist law if Trump becomes president again.

And I can't stop shooting my mouth off on here. Maybe the world would be much better if I never existed.

I don’t think it’s hopeless. I also don’t think that the world would be better if you never existed.

You might want to think about therapy if you aren’t currently doing it. It could give you a fresh perspective which might help you to progress towards the goals that you have. It can be hard to move forward or even see things clearly when one is struggling with depression or something like that.

I'm not qualified to do anything but GIS or urban planning, but nobody's hiring full-time and permanently. My last two jobs were both contract, and in both cases, they hired more people than they actually needed, and I was let go after two weeks in both cases. The few full-time jobs in Houston I could find specifically wanted someone with oil and gas experience (my experience has been almost entirely in city government)

In Texas, city and county governments, in many cases, are currently only hiring police officers to enforce Abbott's far-right agenda.

In NYC, San Francisco and Seattle, GIS and urban planning job prospects are not much better, and even then, they wouldn't pay enough for me to afford to live there.

National avg. for GIS/urban planning is between $70-80k/year (if you can find an in-house position).

Income needed to live in Seattle is over $200k, $300k+ in NYC, and $350k in San Francisco. This isn't to live comfortably, this is how much you have to make to not live on the streets.

And I am not qualified for the jobs in those cities that pay that much.

Seattle is terrible, don't move here. The nearby cities are a lot better and you get most of the upsides.

The population growth has been managed terribly and the political scene is a mess. The area just can't accommodate the population growth with the incompetent people that are managing it. And a good chunk of the folks moving here bring their dysfunctional views with them, so the city winds up being a worst of both worlds city.

It's not just politics, it's that there are cultural opportinities in NYC, SF and Seattle that would never see the light day in more conservative cities and states.

Imagine trying to build NYC's Museum of Sex or Seattle's Center for Sex-Positive Culture in rural Kansas, or trying to bring the artsy hipster or anarcho-punk subcultures to Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas.

I don't remember whether it's Seattle or Portland, but one of them has a Naked Bike Ride. Houston would never see that due to Abbott and Pals' strict laws against indecent (re: un-Christian) exposure.

The three aforementioned cities have independent film festivals. Houston doesn't even have a theater that shows indie films. The last one (Landmark River Oaks) closed in 2021.