You could do this all day, finding jobs (many of which are urgently hiring with no experience) near houses those jobs could easily pay for.

But there's a paralyzing fear about actually doing this, even temporarily. What would mom and dad say if you chose to become a postal clerk in small-town Iowa for a few years? What would women say on dates?

The limits of "acceptable success" appear to be so narrow as to be unobtainable, and a belief in a mythical past where our forerunners didn't have to move across the country to find their Mayberry persists in spite of all evidence showing that such a world never really existed.

It is amazing how anxiety about social status can cause people (even very intelligent people) to lose touch with reality and ignore very basic rationality. That anxiety will drive people to re-write history, and to compare themselves to whatever is on TV -- until they are miserable, anguished, and indignant.

Absolutely poisonous mentality. As soon as you shake it off, all of the sudden, everything seems possible and there are literally more fantastic opportunities out there than you can even pursue.