The short version of cinder's 15 years or so of adult life. Shortly after graduating college, I got a job in my field and moved 800 miles from home to take the job and also help out a former pastor who was planting a church in that area. Had a good job, a nicer apartment than I have now (it had laundry machines inside it, I can't wait to live somewhere with laundry machines inside again), and pretty good career prospects, but my co workers were also almost all current or former special ops guys closer to my parents age than mine. And the church plant wasn't a good fit either.
So socially I was miserable (quite possibly still the most difficult and miserable year of my life) and after a year and some proding I finally admitted to myself that it totally wasn't working and tried moving home... for about a year and then I went off of my first mission adventure with YWAM and got sucked into the YWAM world which meant that I was abroad for x months and then home a few months and then back abroad for another few months. I did that for two and a half years staying with my parents and living a lot off of their subsidizing my lifestyle (which to their credit they didn't give me a blank check for my "mission work" but just treated me like one of the missionaries they supported) with free room and board during my home times (where I worked cheapy temp jobs, mostly substitute teaching). YWAM can vary a lot in different places in the world, but my experience was that it in some ways encouraged in me extended adolescence which wasn't so good; and I was perfectly content to kind of let my parent's home be home base and my permanent home though there were months at a time when I was in other countries and only my stuff was living there.
That ended by spending a few years at home (still with my parents) trying to prepare and raise support for a 3 year venture doing Bible story translation work. Support raising was one of my achille's heels during my time as an aspiring missionary and so after that 3 year venture I came home burned out and with a small enough support base that staying on the field long term wasn't going to be possible. And after months in the lazy bummitude of the burned out and fairly aimless, it was my parents again who pretty much kicked me in the butt and said if you don't get job hunting soon, you're going to have a harder time finding a decent job because a big employment gap is really ugly to prospective employers. And after some thought I started down my current whateverth career path (or at least job path) this is. Remembering the lessons from my last real job though, I definitely prioritized that the job I was looking for had to be within driving distance of Mom and Dad's so I could transition reasonably slowly into new job, new town, new place to live, figuring out how to be an american adult in america etc.
So my parents have been an awesome and huge support in my adult life, and one of the best things they've done is not continually bailed me out financially when the going got tough. They also expected me to pay rent when I was living at home and working full time and do the basic helping out around the house that you do as part of the family . They live a little over half an hour away now and I see them every few weeks to take advantage of their indoor washer and dryer (the default arrangement for that has become I buy their laundry soap when they run low) but other than that I'm pretty much independent, though I still get a lot of free dinners from them if I'm at their house during dinner time or we're out somewhere together (they also tend to get free tech support from me so this isn't always completely one sided).
Yes I have just about the best parents in the world.
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