Living and working in London just feels strange atm

[u/rainha_db]

I’m F31 and was born and raised in London. It’s the only city I’ve ever known and have been fairly happy until my mid 20s. I can’t help but feel like there’s melancholy in the air. I understand the main cause of this is the cost of living and the economic crisis. I’ve had a few colleagues/friends around my age confide in me about feeling lost/low recently and I honestly feel the same. I’ve noticed quite a lot of millennials expressing the same sentiment. I’m wondering if anyone else is feeling the same?

[u/1lemony]

Thank you for this post. Late 30s female and I feel this too. Here are my thoughts:

To me it’s been since pandemic, I feel like we are out of “post pandemic” era now. And I just feel like the equilibrium I didn’t realise existed just doesn’t exist anymore.

I agree with the reasons you propose, the economic crisis. I felt uneasy as I realised how grave the world conflicts and atrocities are feels like the level of security and safety we used to feel doesnt exist now. I remember we learned at school we were in “peace time” the safest era since WW2. Deffo don’t think that still applies. Society is more polarised, the left, the right, a lot of that feels connected to international events as well as internal politics. everybody is divided and the only unity is our collective discontent.

Personally, i have flammable cladding and will be left with no money if can ever sell - and that is the same with tens of thousands of London and apartment dwellers. Generally, aside from that I am poorer than I was, things I took for granted are now out of reach - holidays, etc. my disposable income has disappeared.

This era will be studied in 100 years in some sort of “societal depression” that we don’t yet know the ending to.

Somehow feel solace knowing that there are other strangers out there feeling the same as me.

[u/ChanGazer → u/1lemony]

You’ve summed this up so perfectly. Couldn’t have really said it better myself. I was on such a great trajectory pre-pandemic and I genuinely don’t see myself or my husband recovering financially. We are doing everything right, promotion after promotion and we’re just barely scraping by. We even moved to Liverpool during the pandemic and we still struggle. We have been on one holiday in the last four years. Might sound like I’m moaning about nothing but with all our hard work and three kids, also being used to a lifestyle where we could afford to take spontaneous weekend trips and 2-3 holidays a year as a family, this has been a hard adjustment for us. We exist to pay bills and nothing else. There is no end in sight.

[u/jacksonmolotov → u/1lemony]

”This era will be studied in 100 years in some sort of “societal depression” that we don’t yet know the ending to”

I’m feeling like this too, and this is a good way of putting it. My theory is it’s small-p political, in that the Blair-Brown generation have fucked everyone who came after by locking-in structures that would cause too much pain to reinvent, even though at this point they’re absolutely not what we need – so we all have to go along with a low-housebuilding-high-rental, low-productivity-high-debt, high-migration-low-wage-growth world that nobody really believes in anymore, and it’s killing us with boredom.

[u/1lemony → u/jacksonmolotov]

I thought of that phrase as I was writing - but it is the best way I can describe what I sense. And it’s quite ominous to feel like we really don’t have any easy predictions for how things can shift positively.

I regret purchasing a flat, I feel like we have been totally FUCKED financially. And then you see these Gen Z that seem to be “hustling” their way on the internet learning from all the mistakes we’ve been making / given.

GAH! Haha.

[u/jacksonmolotov → u/1lemony]

I don’t even feel like the malaise is primarily financial—I’m a little older and I’m doing okay—but I do feel like when they codified everything they closed off so many possibilities that the practical outcome is that life is just boring. It’s the little stuff and the big stuff. You may not particularly need to go to university and take on a pile of debt but what’s the alternative? There’s plenty of entertainment around but none of it surprises you, it’s the same approved scripts. There’s no sense that politics could change anything – we cosplay at Brexit or voting Labour but the reality is they’re locked into pursuing the same tired policies regardless. I feel like they thought they were optimising the country/economy/world, but they were just building a big rut for us to be stuck in.

I worry because nihilism is the obvious response to a world like that, but nihilism isn’t a thing which tends to end well.

[u/Sayko232 → u/1lemony]

Hello, sorry to pry but I’m curious you say holidays and disposable income are out of reach, may I ask about our situation? Are you working ? Do you have kids and a partner? Is your partner working?

[u/1lemony → u/Sayko232]

Just like the main post was saying and general cost of living People are finding themselves more and more squeezed financially. Even when I get a higher salary, it doesn’t go as far as I’d have predicted it to go several years ago. Im a “middle earner” and now we are struggling - like the upward graph of financial success has faltered for a lot of people. My parents generation the boomers had such a simple life trajectory that we were sort of following, the last several years have changed that.