Before we leave, ask a few questions.
Somebody once told me people my age should hurry up and die. Even suggested a pillow over the face might help us along.
My answer was, “Fuck you.”
Probably won’t find that in a guide to effective communication. But before you wish an entire generation out of existence, consider whether they might know something you could use.
The world you inherited didn’t arrive fully assembled. People designed it, wired it, manufactured it and figured out what to do when the damn thing stopped working. That work stretches across generations. Mine has knowledge worth passing along. Yours has things to build that we haven’t even imagined.
Before we leave, you might want to ask a few questions.
And let me explain something right up front: I’m not trying to be an asshole. I actually care what happens to you.
My purpose here is to get you to think. Examine what you’ve been told. Ask questions. Consider whether the way you’re living is taking you anywhere you actually want to go.
You may have finished school without much practice making difficult decisions for yourself. Your parents may have loved you without knowing how to prepare you. A television, tablet or phone can keep a kid occupied for hours. It doesn’t replace somebody taking the time to teach that kid how to handle life.
I’ve met young adults who were never taught how to change a tire, manage a bill or have an uncomfortable conversation. I taught my stepson how to change a tire and do a brake job. Somebody has to take the time.
I know what it costs to reach adulthood unprepared.
There’s a story behind the steering wheel.
I drive Uber. People get into my car, and sometimes a ride becomes a conversation about work, relationships, money—or having absolutely no idea what to do next.
But there’s a story behind the steering wheel.
I spent seven years building a business and a product. Sometimes twenty hours a day, seven days a week. I put an enormous amount of my life into getting something real into the world.
From where I stood, we were on the one-yard line.
Then, as I describe it, my business partner shit in my lunch bucket. Decisions in that partnership turned my life upside down. Something I had worked toward for years became something I had to recover from.
That’s my experience of what happened. And whatever I think of it, I still have to deal with the consequences.
Now, approaching sixty-nine, I’m rebuilding.
I still have two companies and another taking shape. I still have ideas, energy and work I want to do. Some days, I feel like I have the energy of a forty-year-old. My calendar occasionally questions that assessment.
Social Security doesn’t cover the life and responsibilities I have. Sitting around in my underwear, drinking beer and watching television isn’t the life I want anyway.
So I work. I build. And right now, I drive.
I also have a wife in another country. We’ve spent years married without being able to live together normally while we work through an immigration process that has kept us apart.
When somebody gets into my car and tells me life is hard, I’m listening from inside my own unfinished business.
I’ve done things right. I’ve done things wrong. I’ve done some things upside down and backwards and paid for the education.
The responsibilities showed up anyway.
Recently, a seventeen-year-old told me his girlfriend was pregnant. She was seventeen too. He worked fast food, and his parents wanted him to move out.
I recognized that intersection.
My girlfriend got pregnant while I was still in high school. She was seventeen. We married three days after I turned nineteen, with a baby already on the way.
I still had two semesters of biology to finish before I could get my diploma. I was working two jobs, about eighty hours a week. My first child attended my high school graduation when she was only a few months old.
By twenty-one, I had two children.
My dad had an eighth-grade education. My mother hadn’t finished high school. There wasn’t a college fund waiting for me or a family history of navigating higher education.
I was unprepared emotionally. Unprepared financially. Unprepared for marriage, fatherhood and keeping a household going.
I was unprepared. And the responsibilities showed up anyway.
One evening, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep with my face in a plate of canned spaghetti.
There’s your glamorous origin story.
The electricity got shut off. The telephone got shut off. The water got shut off. There were eviction notices. Every time I thought I was catching up, another bill arrived.
A repair manual I couldn’t afford to buy.
When my car broke down, I couldn’t afford a mechanic. I called auto parts stores, described the symptoms and hoped somebody experienced could help me figure out what was wrong.
Then I had to learn how to install the part.
Sometimes that meant standing in the store reading a repair manual I couldn’t afford to buy.
That was my classroom.
Over time, I rebuilt engines, installed transmissions, replaced axles and learned bodywork. Each repair started with a problem I couldn’t afford to ignore and something I didn’t yet know how to do.
In my twenties, I worked a regular job, then worked at 7-Eleven until about 1:30 in the morning. I went home, slept a little and reported back to my day job at 7:30.
I also served in the National Guard. There were drills, military obligations and sometimes a two-hundred-mile drive to my duty station.
There were children at home. There were bills on the table. Being exhausted didn’t cancel either one.
Your transcript doesn’t get the final vote.
Eventually, I went to Austin Community College.
First, I had to take high-school-level math all over again because I’d been such a terrible student the first time around. That was where I needed to start, so that’s where I started.
As I progressed into electronics classes, I was working forty hours a week. I arranged to come in an hour or two early so I could leave early enough to attend class.
And because I apparently considered sleep an optional accessory, one semester I took twelve semester hours while working full-time.
Picture this: I’m sitting at a million-dollar wafer tester on the production floor, testing semiconductor wafers, eating a sandwich and doing homework during lunch because class starts at 4:30 that afternoon.
Eventually, I asked my boss, “Am I going to get a raise when I finish my education?”
He said, “No. I’m already paying you as an engineer.”
I’d been learning on the job and taking on the work.
I thought, Then why the hell am I burning myself out like this?
I stopped pursuing the degree. I kept learning.
Over time, I accumulated roughly ninety credit hours at ACC, studying things I was interested in or could use: electronics, home building, residential framing, foundations and more.
I discovered that when I had a real problem to solve, I could teach myself what I needed to know. Because I had somewhere to apply it, the knowledge stuck.
A project gives you a powerful reason to learn. The thing sitting in front of you won’t work until you understand something you don’t understand yet.
I never completed a college degree. I went on to build businesses and design products. I hired engineers with bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and PhDs. I hired product designers who taught at a university in London and brand strategists with experience working for Ralph Lauren. Other people invested their money in my ideas.
Their education mattered. I needed their expertise. My responsibility was to bring a direction, ask useful questions and get the right people working toward something we could build.
I designed earphones in China. I traveled to eight countries. On one trip, I went around the world in ten days.
A lot of that happened because I had the audacity to try.
I’d look at something and say, “Well, what the hell? Let’s do it.”
Then came the research, questions, mistakes, corrections and work.
Some professions require a degree and a license. Respect that. If college serves what you want to accomplish, make good use of it.
But if your education got off to a bad start, your high school transcript doesn’t get the final vote on what you can become.
I was a lousy student who had to go back and learn the math. Years later, I was hiring people with advanced degrees to help turn ideas into products.
You can learn what you’re missing.
Experience is worth listening to.
You can also learn from people whose experiences look very different from yours.
I grew up practicing what to do if a nuclear bomb went off. We climbed under school desks while adults tried to prepare us for something nobody wanted to imagine. Sonic booms overhead carried a particular meaning to a child hearing about nuclear war.
My father’s generation carried its own memories of war and deprivation. Those experiences were close enough to touch. I slept in patched military surplus tents with holes in them and wondered what had happened to the people who had used them before me.
We had fears. We had uncertainty. We had reasons to wonder what kind of future we would get.
Your generation has its own circumstances. Housing costs, the job market, technology and the possibility of work changing underneath you deserve serious attention.
Experience can help you face those things. Throwing knowledge away because you dislike the age of the person carrying it is a hell of a waste.
Independence takes preparation.
And parents have a responsibility here too.
Before telling a young person to get out and figure it out, ask what you’ve taught them.
Can they manage money? Find work? Speak to somebody who might hire them? Cook a meal? Maintain a vehicle? Resolve a disagreement? Recognize a bad deal?
Independence takes preparation.
A family can provide somewhere to stand while a young person learns to carry responsibility.
I remember houses with prices that sound almost imaginary today. I also remember the effort it could take to buy one. Saving a down payment took years for some families. Homes were often modest. Some people lived with their parents while they saved.
The financial world I encountered ran on paper, telephone calls, typewriters and waiting. I learned to type with carbon paper between the sheets. Make a mistake, and congratulations—you now had copies of it.
Those memories don’t establish that housing is easy today. They remind me that a price tag never told the whole story of what it took to establish a household.
Family support mattered. It still does.
Several generations sharing a home can give a young family room to get established. Shared expenses. Help with children. Practical knowledge. Relationships between grandparents and grandchildren.
There have to be agreements about contributions, chores, privacy, parenting and respectful behavior. Adults do their share according to their abilities. Nobody gets a lifetime exemption from responsibility because Grandma owns the house.
But cooperation can give a family strength that each person would struggle to find alone.
Two adults can work all day and come home to another shift: dinner, laundry, children, homework, repairs and bills. If one person carries most of that second shift, exhaustion and resentment have fertile ground.
Somebody has to do the work. Families need honest agreements about who does what, and enough flexibility to change those agreements when life changes.
Being capable includes knowing how to cooperate.
Participate in the outcome.
It also includes knowing when your approach isn’t working.
A degree can help. A desk job can be valuable work. But a diploma, a title or looking busy won’t guarantee the life you want. You need to understand what you contribute, keep learning and make decisions based on what your circumstances require.
Sometimes that means taking work you wouldn’t have chosen. Sometimes it means asking for help. Sometimes it means admitting the plan you defended for years needs to change.
I’ve had to do all three.
The chick has to peck its way out of the egg. The seedling has to push toward daylight. Growth encounters resistance.
People need nourishment, guidance and a fighting chance too. We ought to offer those things—and make an effort when we receive them.
I carried consequences from my early decisions through much of my life. I don’t want you to have to buy every lesson at the price I paid.
And if you’re already in the middle of it—broke, overwhelmed, responsible for people you love and wondering how the hell you’re going to manage—I want to offer something you can use.
You can become more capable. You can change a decision, acquire a skill, find support and begin improving your situation. It may take time. But where you are today doesn’t have to be where you stay.
You do have to examine what you’re doing.
Which habits are helping? Which decisions keep making things worse? What are you avoiding? What do you need to learn? Who could help you—and will you actually listen?
If you keep doing the same things you’ve always done, don’t be surprised when you keep getting the same bullshit you’ve always had.
That’s what this Picture Show is for: finding direction, building useful skills, thinking for yourself and taking responsibility for what comes next.
I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll tell you where I screwed up. You’re welcome to question my conclusions.
But I’m going to ask something of you too.
Show up. Tell the truth. Learn something useful. Keep your word. Ask for help before pride makes the problem worse. When you’re able, help somebody else get moving.
You don’t have to have your whole life figured out. You do have to participate in the outcome.
I’m approaching sixty-nine, and I’m still doing that.
Welcome to The Rocky Hardie Picture Show.
—Rocky Hardie