My bike stops, I ditch right towards some bushes and roll off the sidewalk into grass. The bluejeans, shoes, and presumably legs of the homeless guy asleep acro

My bike stops, I ditch right towards some bushes and roll off the sidewalk into grass. The bluejeans, shoes, and presumably legs of the homeless guy asleep across the sidewalk are safe, their owner sleepily oblivious to my passing. In the Houston summer, I don't know what he dreams of--maybe of the same thing the homeless lady I saw last month sprawled (high? napping? seizing?) across the light rail platform, maybe of a job, maybe of a society that gives a damn. As it is, I've got to get to my job. My job which has no benefits. My job which pays about half the median salary for developers. My job which is theoretically solving all those "hard problems" that investors and people here on HN bandy about, and yet which curiously never seem to materialize funding despite the amount of public celebration of our company's work. Praise is easier than paying invoices on time, I suppose. Train opens, I get on, I lean over my bike and watch the world slide by. Some other millenials (judging by age) are here with me. Unlike the homeless guy, they still are trying to play their role in the system. Like me, they probably believe in living within their means. They probably have fuckhuge college debts to pay off. They probably have people telling them all day "Get a job", "Work harder", "Be generous to others". If they're entrepreneurial, they get other messages too: "Work on important things", "Screw revenue, acquire investment", "Everybody is getting funded", "Normal jobs are for sissies and cowards and the middle class". They'll keep doing this, as perhaps will I. They'll keep voting for politicians bought and sold so thoroughly that their vote will never register. They'll put in long hours working on solved problems, to impress a boss just as beholden to the system as they. They'll come to work sick because who has time to see a doctor, if the shitty benefits package could afford one anyway. They dream of a better situation, of casting off their chains and maybe fixing the system. Then again, they see through the window as I do the police hustling the poor and crazy and sick and afraid into vans and cars and tanks to God knows where for God knows how long. That's the alternative. That's what happens when you don't mesh in. With no funds, large debt, and yet so much messaging that you can change the world if you just try hard enough, it's a rough place to be. A billboard urges compassion and giving next to a church, telling me to be happy I've got what I have. A few blocks later, another billboard shows off cars I can't afford next to bars that won't let me in. The door opens. It's time to get off.