Any advice for my brother?

@sliceswiththings what was his career path?

Take him out for a day of fun and maybe invite some of his friends over for a get to together?

Maybe he can go back to college and get another degree. 27 is not too late to start over on a career path.

When I was back home and depressed and unemployed, my parents quickly got sick of it, and one night, without thinking about it before hand, they kicked me out. On the spot.

I survived.

That’s one way to do it. Not one I recommend. They should have gotten me into therapy. But that wasn’t something people did in those days.

He should see a psychiatrist and see if he is clinically depressed. If he is, he’ll get meds that might help. If he isn’t, therapy should help.

All you can do is be a broken record. Telling your brother over and over that you love him and are concerned about him and you hope he’ll see a psychiatrist. Eventually, he might do it just to get you off his back. Remember to always couch it in terms of love.

Other than that, it’s his life. You can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. You can’t jolly him along if he’s depressed.

You can, however, offer to exercise with him—at the club or taking a run or a bike ride or whatever he enjoys. You can try to help him go to sleep on time. Just by urging him to do that. You might try to help him do some volunteering—just while he’s unemployed.

These things all help the depressed.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot, @wundayatta, for a great answer. He actually did move out, hoping it would give him some momentum, and is currently crashing with some friends in a new city (air mattress in the living room). Part of it is that these friends have been living there for a while and he feels like he’s coming in late to the social group and thus doesn’t fit in.

Unfortunately I’m across the country from him so I can’t do things with him.

@sliceswiththings what’s his field? Let’s see if we can network and hook him up or brainstorm something.

@bkcunningham His field is screenwriting.

27 he is still a pup and has plenty of time to get his ass in gear and make it happen. If I were him I would thoroughly review the why’s and what if’s of where and how his dream job never took off. Maybe some missed opportunities along the way. As long as there are no health issues, drugs or alcohol addictions in the way here, give him some encouragement to network whenever possible.

Screenwriting and making a living at it is not for the feint of heart and maybe time for a change. I completely changed careers at 36 and never looked back.

@sliceswiththings He needs to be employed at something to have a feeling of worth. Screenwriting is something one can do during free time and you never know where the idea for a film or show may come from. Wasn’t Tarantino working at a video store before he broke out? Some job, any job is better than none.

Why stress yourself about what one have or have not accomplished in this Life…?
What so ever one does is vanity anyway and result to a big fat nothing…...

He need to understand that one will live out His destiny in the things that occurs in their Life time.

So one should be looking for Life within the situation they finds themselves in..

They must assume all things that happens was meant to be…. and in that they will find peace , freedom and happiness.

Otherwise they will be constantly beating themselves over the head as to what might have been…banging a cage of their own making.

What drives me nuts is that he’s not taking any action, he submitted his info to a temp agency but he isn’t actively seeking work, he isn’t asking girls out, he isn’t calling his friends, etc. He’s older, isn’t he supposed to be wiser??

As long as people enable him to go on he will. He needs to be forced to get some type of work. Remind him that you never know where inspiration comes from and his hit documentary may come from the people he interacts with at his job at Starbucks! Key word here is JOB!

Good call, @missingbite. Hope it’ll convince him.

If he could see @Cruiser‘s answer he might feel better, because it’s true, he is still so young, and loads of people that young are still trying to find out what to do with their lives, only the lucky ones are sorted. And most 27 year old guys are still playing the field, right? I think he’s just going through a bad patch, maybe you could buy him a book on carreers, and encourage him to have a look at his options.

@lemming I agree, but he is too proud to read said book or allow our folks to pay for therapy or whatever, which they’ve offered. There are some great answers on here, and I’m going to try to find a way to make him read them.

@sliceswiththings do you think he’s clinically depressed?

@sliceswiththings I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to help him find a job.

Sounds pretty parallel to my own path. I too chose that dream career, that of a working musician. I started college as a music major and enjoyed a series of moderately successful bands. That dream career seemed to repeat the following cycle:

1) Get together a group of awesomely talented and like minded musicians
2) Show some moderate success on the local music scene
3) Cut a demo and teeter on the verge of actual sustainable success
4) Drummer would spontaneously combust, bass player would go into rehab, guitar player would decide s/he wanted a solo career, etc…
5) Get crappy “Joe” job to pay the bills and repeat cycle.

Around 28 or so I figured I was getting a bit long in the tooth to continue the loop. So… I married the girl who had stuck by my side through several cycles, finished school with a degree in computer science, got a career (as opposed to a job), bought a house, had a couple of kids, etc…

Now I’m pushing 50, have a great family, very little debt and barring another dot com type collapse will probably be able to retire in 5 years or so. And no, I did not “loose my soul” in the process, I found it.

Tell your brother not to fret, pull his head out of wherever he has been storing it, apply his foot squarely to his own behind, and get on with it!

Screenwriting is a really field where you don’t quit your day job until someone “shows you the money.” If your brother thought otherwise he needs to figure that out. Then he can maybe get things back on track.

Can’t he just apply for a job not in his field? A lot of people end up doing that, there’s nothing wrong with it. Somewhere down the line he’ll find a job in his dream career field….and 27 is young. Tell him to enjoy being young!

An out of work screenwriter is like an out of work actor or band member in between gigs. When he chose this career for himself then he had to have known, researched and been prepared with some backup plans even though he probably thought he’d never have to try them.

Now is the time for him to buck up and do something else like going for a different degree in a different field of study for the times screenwriting isn’t paying him.

Has he tried getting a job as a reader? A person who works for an agent, or possibly a studio, pre-reads the scripts and then hands them over to the agent? A job like that would be a good starting point because he’ll get an idea of what’s doing well script-wise, have an opportunity for networking, and might find a boost in creativity.

Since he gets irritated at you when you make suggestions, I would suggest you stop making suggestions and let him find his own way. It’s not fun being uncomfortable, but that is exactly what he needs in order to figure out where he is going to go from here. You can’t fix this for him.

ahh, a starving artist. My brother actually is into music, but hasn’t taken it anywhere yet. Maybe one day he’ll get lucky. Problem is, he has no motivation to do anything else or move out of my parents’ house, or at least it seems so. Now I’m his older brother, but I tend to mind my own business unless he asks for my help – which never happens. It seems to me like he is having a pity party for himself, but he is still young enough to make significant changes in his life. I would just try to be supportive of him, rather than trying to “pull him along.” He will pick himself up when he is ready – I had my own pity party when I was in my 20’s. Luckily everything turned out great.Like the old saying goes – “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

Here’s another question: any songs about hopeless people? He just had me play “Melissa” by the Allman Brothers, saying it’s really hitting home now. If music’s going to help him, then I want to find more relevant songs.

Let him know that other people are “worse off” than he is. I’m 40 and back in school to get teaching certification, because I really can’t do any of the things I’d planned to do with my B.A. in English. It took me 4 years in a dead-end, low-paying job to realize that I’d put myself in a box by setting my eyes on only one prize.
As far as being alone goes, I was alone for 15 years before I met my fiance. Things are only as bad as you let them get. If you mope and never try to open new doors, you’ll have an unfulfilling life. Life is what you make it.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind…‘you could just wait until your thirty five…don’t come looking for money from me’. Don’t give him depressing music anyway

Suggest he write about it. He’s not in the boat alone.

I’m 67 ( three years away from 70! ), and I’ve changed careers about five times in my life, and that’s not counting times when I was unable to find work in any of my chosen fields and had to take whatever was available. The key is flexibility. Be willing to take one step back so that you can take two forward. Work at menial jobs until you can find something you truly want. Your brother has chosen one of the most difficult fields to break into. My advice is to do both: take whatever work will put food on the table, and work on becoming a professional screenwriter during the rest of the day, weekends, holidays, etc.

Tell your brother there is no reason to beat himself up for not being an instant success at ANY career, much less screenwriting. He needs to trust the old Captain on this one… work is where you find it, and whatever your hands find to do, do it for all you’re worth!

He needs a lover. Once that’s in place, he will have the courage/confidence to do anything.

@XxSHYxxGUYxX

There’s truth in what you say, but it’s not always possible to put the rest of your life on hold while you wait for your lover to appear. He needs to dig down and find his courage, then do what needs to be done.

@XxSHYxxGUYxX I do agree.

It was interested, he listed the five things he wants, in order, as 1. home, 2. best friend, 3. job, 4. girlfriend, 5. writing momentum

I think if he can get any one of these, he’ll feel 20% better and the rest will be easier to attain.