[Dr. Howard]

(04-05-2016 10:52 PM)Laner Wrote:  

(04-05-2016 10:01 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  

There's definitely a dark side to being in charge of a sink-or-swim operation. I've noticed I've kind of turned into an asshole. You start to view everything in terms of value. Your childhood carefree attitude is permanently gone. You only see consequences, wins or losses.
I know people working shit jobs with no future who are much happier. Hopefully these few years of suffering will pay off so I can be truly financially carefree for decades after this. Watching the more 'carefree' people in the oil industry get laid off in droves has already vindicated my gamble, however. Had I taken the normal path I would've already been eliminated. At least now I've given myself a legit chance at wealth instead of the certainty of a permanent wage worker. Gotta take advantage of the remaining vestiges of the capitalist system before we get full blown communism / economic collapse.

The happiest people that I know are essentially grown children. They roll out of bed in the morning all ruffian and get into work with bed head and a dumb story. They perform their routine tasks while whistling and biding their time for a prank or conversation. They are the affable idiots, and I love them to pieces. Some of my best friends barely graduated high school but manage to do routine, dead end jobs, raise their affable kids and make a nice simple life.

My first real job was landscaping at 13. At first I was insanely happy, busting my ass in the hopes I would get to play with the little Bobcat excavator. When I realized that I was as high up as I was going to get without being able to run big pruning sheers, I lost interest. I dreamed of more already.

I am certain this is what makes an entrepreneurs mindset. Put a guy like me into a 9-5 job and watch me try and run the show. Then tell me to go run the copy machine and do data entry like a good bee and I would be out of there in a flash.

Sink or swim? Definitely.

This is why I had to get out of government. I rose to the top quickly by out performing people but then when I actually got power people were like "whoa whoa Doc Howard what are these crazy words you are using "improve", "efficiency", "wasting money" what are you talking about?!

Contrast that with another guy my age, that was also great at his job but could handle 'just doing his job'. He referred to his job as a 'paycheck penalty box'...aka he had to sit in that chair for x hours to get his paycheck...nothing else really mattered as long as he was there. It helped that he was a friendly guy, but his mindset allowed him to not care how stupid his assigned tasks were, not care about people freaking out or case backlogs all that mattered was that one hour moved into the next.