the water doesn't flow fast enough and it's swamp at best and reconstituted duck crap at worst XD

Yeah, I wouldn't drink from that stream, as it flows through behind many houses. But, it pours out into a large lake and I reckon diluted enough to be okay :)

and do exactly as they're told and while it theoretically didn't stop you it really felt all but impossible to do anything other than that so I'm not surprised that most people "stay the course" because trying to do anything else is an endless uphill battle and it's exhausting.

Absolutely. The system isn't designed for the "average person" to get ahead, which is why most people are in trouble and the "non-average" are often twisted individuals who have sex slave islands.

today I'm hovering between still being pretty damn furious that I didn't fully achieve the lifestyle I wanted and pretty content because we did manage bits of it and life is pretty good

Totally understandable. At the moment, I think I am still in the furious arena.

Unlike you I'm completely useless at talking so I just keep trying to show that a lot of things are entirely possible if you only invent excuses for some things rather than literally everything.

You know what is interesting? I am great at talking about other things when I am not the focus, but terrible at selling myself. Nowadays, people don't seem to care about what you can do in reality, just what you can say you can do.