You think, at least partially, your dues to your respective industry have been paid off with three summer’s worth of unpaid internships tucked neatly under your worn-down belt. You volunteered during your semesters at not-for-profits and other resume filling organizations. Or, you worked a side and part-time job to pay for bills and get the coveted work experience those above you said you would need. And now you find yourself here, a soon-to-be college graduate with a new apartment, maybe a new pet, bills up the wazoo, and no prospects for employment. Ok, so you have a part-time job; no, you have three part-time jobs, plus you’re attempting to put time into your money-producing hobbies (i.e. painting, music, or photography, etc.) in order for it to make you some extra side dough.

But what’s the reason for all you did before if it means more free work, free labor now? If you learned anything in your economics class—which you may have taken in high school to forgo the dreaded economics professors of academia—one thing is clear; there is no such thing as a free lunch. You pay for this “experience” or “exposure” with your own sweat and tears and you’ll continue to pay until those above you say you’ve paid enough. There is no algorithm, there is no method; you put hours into back breaking or soul crushing work to survive. That’s it. You put in work, work, work for survival; for food, safety and hopefully comfort. The other two of Maslow’s needs—esteem and self actualization, are luxuries at this point and you don’t make enough for the finer things in life.

So what is it all for? Why do we as college graduates, mid-twenty something Millennial’s stretch ourselves too thin to see; run ourselves so ragged we invented the term “shambly” to describe it? When we were kids they told us we could make it to the moon if we wanted it badly enough, if we worked hard enough. We did, we still do want it; we want all the promises that couldn’t be granted and turned out to be empty. So we work. And work. And continue to work to survive but, all the while, keep our head toward the sky and dream of space. Not space like black holes and meteorites, but your “space” whatever that implies—trekking through Europe, being the dopest queen or king of swag you know or building your own rocket to make it there yourself.

What we work towards is not we what do. What we do is how the bills get paid, the cat gets fed, and how the dream gets the fuel to become a reality. Down the line, when those above you relinquish their power in order to retire or “pursue other business ventures”—aka start their own business with their boatloads of cash—then, what you do and what you work towards might align. But, until then, we wreck ourselves through volunteer work, through internships, through experience because all we really want is to be able to make it to the moon, somehow. They never told us how, so we’ll work and continue to work until the moon is close enough for us to jump on it, or over it, or past it if our destination is still out there. So, work and volunteer and experience because no matter what, through all the struggles, that is what we want most of all. That is why we wreck ourselves and I’d say it’s a damn good reason.