The Guy I Almost Was (1998)
The most painfully 1990s thing in this whole essay is a man surviving on minimum wage, however modestlyIf you were to re-tell this story in 2020 it ends with the fellow living in the homeless encampment but still trying to stay clean and timely enough to make it to his data entry job--------To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic senses of the term)The "guy he almost was" is homeless in 2020, if he isn't dead.  There's nothing to envy in that life.