You'll Never Make it Big if Your Social Life Sucks

People see success in many different ways. For some people, it's getting rich. For others, success is much simpler – a house, a dog, a wife and kids, etc. But no matter how you perceive your own success, you'll never really get there without a social life that plugs you into your community.

Everyone seems to look up to people who get out of college and move into the city. Where I come from, New York is a big deal. And whenever someone gets a job and moves there, it's like they have already become successful. There's this glow about them that says, "Hey, I'm in NYC, I made it."

It's funny, because most of the people I know who have strolled into the city "living the dream" aren't making that much money. Between rent, taxes, food and entertainment, some of them aren't making anything at all.

The real success for these people is based on their social lives. The fact that they're going out every weekend, meeting enormous amounts of people and feeling a sense of connection that a lot of people not in a large city miss out on.

But that's not to say that you can't make your social life work if you're not in a city. You just have to try a lot harder.

But that's a problem for a lot of people. After a long day, finding the physical and emotional energy to make a social life work can be frustrating. It's a hell of a lot easier to sit on the couch, watch prime time television and go to sleep.

I'm a culprit of this mentality. After a long day of work, I want to sit. I want to be comfortable. And I don't want to be bothered.

Here are things I tell myself to get myself off the sofa. And many days this works:

1. Set up a "day date"

Some people call it a one-way-ticket into the "friend zone." But that's stupid. In fact, some of the best relationships with women I have began in a place other than a nighttime retreat like the bar.

2. Volunteer in your community

More work? Yes, but not really.

If you're going to volunteer, make it something you enjoy doing. And don't volunteer at a place where you're not going to meet new people. For instance, don't volunteer to work with animals.

3. Do work in a social environment

I could work in my apartment all day, but I work in a coffee shop to be around other people. Unfortunately I've found that actually having the guts to start a conversation with a stranger requires a little more work.

Thinking Inside the Box: The Lie

I love my parents with all my hearts, I truly do. If they needed a kidney, liver, right big toenail, left big toenail or swim bladder I'd gladly give them mine. However, all that love doesn't change one simple fact…

They are liars, liars with pants constantly on fire.

The lie they told me was not one of malice, but of ignorance, but it was just as crushing as if they had been plotting from the start to destroy me. It was as though my birth itself had been so traumatizing and painful that they had to conspire on a way to ruin me. The lie is simply this, "You can do anything you want so long as get a college education."

Judging from your shocked silence I assume you may have heard this line too. I actually believe this whole thing to be some sort of conspiracy sprung on our parents that they accepted without question. Forget JFK, Roswell and the like, we need to figure out who is behind this. It seems like everyone of the Boomer generation believed that a college degree would be the magic bullet forever. Heck, back in the 50s my research shows that a diploma got you the high-profile, money-making job as well as a nice house and a sweet car. Of course, my research methods involve watching reruns of Happy Days, but I do feel that to be the most accurate of all known methodologies.

The funny thing is, I never caught on to this little untruth, even as other myths of my childhood fell by the wayside. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were resigned to the fiction pile, and I even learned the harder lessons that life isn't eternal and the good guys don't always win.

That last lesson I actually learned from professional wrestling. Say what you will about the subtext of sweaty men in tights grappling each other, the whole thing is quite a morality play for an 8-year-old. At least the producers knew not to completely shatter my innocence, because the bad guy always had to cheat in order to triumph over the good and virtuous hero, and you still had the feeling he was gonna get his in the end.

Still, even though I learned so much I still stubbornly clung to the belief that all it took was good grades and a college degree and I'd be made in the shade. I don't know why I never caught on, it's not like the signs weren't there.

Obviously I wouldn't be a doctor or a lawyer unless I stayed in school even longer, but I didn't need that. I had the hazy sense of some middle management job that I'd work for 10 years before really climbing the ladder and getting into the upper echelons of a company. I could never see the point of the career center at my university, weren't there tons of jobs out there just waiting for people with a scrap of paper in hand and a turned tassel? C'mon people, the recruiters are just waiting for us young and eager grads. You know, I bet they line the walk out of the auditorium, handing out business cards and pleading for us to call them sometime. After all, twentysomethings with no real full-time job experience and no proven work track record are exactly what they're looking for, right?

As if my naïve ways weren't bad enough, I also assumed it didn't matter what you majored in. I drew this assumption based on the advice of professionals who said it wasn't about the course of study, it was about proving you could do the work and excel in the environment. Whoever these people are should have their credentials revoked, as I had to learn the hard way the only guaranteed work right out of college comes for accountants and engineers, history majors need not apply.

After graduation, seeing as I had no jobs lined up, I moved back home and continued the search. The first few months were met with frustration, but I tried to keep my chin up. Eventually I paid a visit to the dean of my university, who had been a good friend and mentor to me the entire time I was there. After spilling my every frustration to him he looked at me and simply said, "Brad, if you had come to me four years ago and asked me if you could get a job with a history and political science degree I would have said no, it's just not marketable."

And so I was crushed.

The lie had won. It carried me all the way through graduation, making me believe I could really "be whatever I wanted to be" while it sat in the corner snickering and I never once even bothered to ask what was so funny.

Now I dwell in cube purgatory, waiting to be cleansed of the sin of believing in something so false for so long. Hopefully it's not a 1:1 ratio for time served, otherwise I'll be in this box for 20 more years, and I don't think the Ryans are going to let me keep writing this silly little column that long. I may yet make it to where I want to be, but it's going to be due to working hard at what I love, and not to a mystical, magical piece of paper.

So if you're in the same boat as me, staring out over a sea of doldrums wondering where it all went wrong and how you could also buy into a lie for so long then join me in this pledge. Let us promise not to commit the same lie of ignorance and tell our kids that a college degree is a golden ticket.

Instead, let's tell them they need to go to grad school, at least that way they'll have a masters in uselessness rather than a bachelors, and then we'll have something to brag to our friends about.