For a drifter, I really hate sleeping outdoors particularly in the summer.  The bugs are loud as hell. The ground gets damp in the morning. You can’t tell the newly homeless from the experienced hippie. You smell like ass as does your surrounding environment. I’m going over to Benito’s basement and I don’t care if I wake his mother so long as she doesn’t call the police.  I better have a new post though when I show…hence this post. About Monopoly.

So what’s the biggest difference between Monopoly and life? If you said in life everyone doesn’t start with the same amount of money you would be correct. Next question, what is the biggest difference between Monopoly and the life of a student debtor?

If you think of property as an undergraduate degree and houses/hotels as graduate degrees the difference between Monopoly and real life is that in real life you don’t know what you will be able to charge when someone lands on the square you paid a fortune for. So what’s that mean?

The conventional wisdom in Monopoly is that you buy whatever piece of property you land on if you can afford it. The more property you have the better the chance you will get a monopoly and the better position you will be in to sell and trade for monopolies.  That’s how the big kids play. The little kids just try and roll as high a number as possible and get around the board as quickly as possible and not get in any trouble along the way. Pass Go. Collect 200.

But then suddenly your property is worthless and your little brother who didn’t buy shit because he knows that the object of the game is to have as much money as possible when it ends.  Two years later you are sleeping on your little brother’s couch. But you’re supposed to be the big brother. Nobody is respecting you now particularly yourself.

But does that mean your little brother won? Heh no. He’s just doing better than you. I take that back. He might have had some very very lucky roles. But luck runs out eventually.

So how do you win? Maybe the answer is you can’t. Another difference between Monopoly and real life is that in real life on your first roll every piece of property is already bought and the rules change on each roll.  But let’s assume you can…just for the sake of argument.

Obviously I dunno or I’d be on a yacht not writing on a laptop some Oenn kid threw out because it’s too loud to sleep in this van with the windows down but I think it’s safe to say that you might want to do a few laps before you start buying property. You might also try and get this property for free. Finally, if you can’t win the game yet at the same time you see winners you might have to make some tough conclusions…like maybe there are some rules you don’t know about. Next you have to decide if you want to play by these rules or put in the work to change them.

Battery’s dead. The crickets are loud as shit.