Trapped in the Stoneage

     ​I was born and raised in Seneca, South Carolina. My parents were working class citizens, my dad a project manager at the local power plant and my mom a school teacher for 20 years before becoming a stay-at-home mom. Seneca is about as Baptist a town as you can get in the south outside Slapout, Alabama. 

     These are not the best conditions for accomplishing things that could effect the human race in its entirety. The only people that ever accomplished anything from Seneca, SC were either football players or golfers. The local economy is made up of fast food, doctors offices, Oconee Nuclear Station, the school system, and a manufacturing plant here or there on its last legs before outsourcing puts it out of its misery. 

     I was fortunate enough to travel a lot with my family when I was younger, so I knew of the outside world's fast paced nature and overwhelmingly advanced technology and education system compared to Seneca, SC. This enabled me to at least dream of going somewhere else when college was complete. A majority of the rest of my classmates aren't so lucky. 

I dont know what Im writing about right now. 

     What Im trying to say is that Seneca, bumfuck South Carolina is a terrible place to grow up if you ever want to be anything besides a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or plant manager. This leaves out just about every creative sector of the economy as well as science in its entirety. For someone not satisfied with being one of 4 careers listed above, going to college would have been pretty mind opening if the college I went to wasnt in the next town over of Clemson, SC and that college was not one of the most religious campuses in the NCAA. 

     As an atheist, I was trapped in the stone age of thinking. Almost all creative juices just never trickled down to where the Tigers play. There is no questioning the system, no expression of free thought unless it had to do with whether Jesus physically or metaphorically fed the 5000, no changing how things were done for the last 50 years. If you had a new idea, it was pretty much crushed instantly, if not by the culture, then by the sheer lack of infrastructure to employ it. Finding people that think similarly about life is like finding a needle in a needle stack. When my mother died, that was it. I could see her entire life in my eyes and it wasn't enough for me. I want to accomplish more and be more than what this place is allowing me. 

     Computer science is almost nonexistent. Art is reserved for people that dont want to succeed in life. Travel is for people in the military. These are the real ways people think here and im trapped for another 2 months. Then.......only then........

seriously though, YOLO.