The United States as a country has some of the least productive 20 somethings out of any developed country but hands down the most productive 30 somethings out of any developed nation. That statistic has stuck in my mind for a long time and didn't fully make sense to me until very recently.
When I turned 30 I did not feel like anything changed, I didn't feel any different, didn't want to play video games and sit around and be lazy any less, overall it was kind of a disappointment. I guess like everyone does, I had built up the number in my head as some magical day that I will all of a sudden feel reborn and feel like this brand new person. I was also extremely disappointed when this didn't occur. I was blessed with some pretty damn good genetics and like my dad throughout my childhood, look much younger than I am. I still couldn't buy a pack of cigarettes anywhere without my ID if I wanted to, and have had more than one shocked reaction from clerks when I show my ID for alcohol purchases.
I think in retrospect this kind of allowed me to elongate my 20's for a bit too long. A lot of people that I have known didn't grow tired of partying or being lazy so much as kind of started to look to old to be partying, at least from my perspective. Feeling uninhibited in this way, I guess I kind of felt for a while that as long as I look extremely young and therefore didn't really have societal judgements placed on me by people that don't know me for doing young things, then who cares. If I had to sum it up in an honest manner I would say that I kind of had a Peter Pan syndrome for many years of my life.
I've never been one to truly care what other people think about me. A lot of people, myself included oftentimes won't fully speak their mind on subjects or how they feel towards you and even if I could know what other people's full thoughts of me were, they have no idea who I am as a person so why should I care? Again something that I think attributed to the Peter Pan syndrome for a long time.
Combine Peter Pan syndrome with nihilism and you get a nice cocktail that is guaranteed to leave you unproductive for a few years. This doesn't mean that I spent 31 years of my life living as a complete loser but it does mean I lived 31 years of my life with no true motivation and with a completely selfish mindset. I worked in politics, through which I got to live in Maine and Indiana, I started two businesses in my early 20's, travelled a lot and did many things throughout the years to test myself. While I always passed every test I set for myself, after a while the nihilism would usually kick in and I would question the grander purpose of whatever it was I was pursuing. I think this was also so easy for so long because I didn't have a passion for anything I was pursuing and couldn't see any hope of ever getting there. I have always been really really good at sales but hate selling, I didn't like politics for a variety of reasons, same with academia, which to me for a long time left no other options.
Once I found out I was becoming a dad, all of this, once again, changed. It is no longer me that suffers due to the bad decisions I make but what will soon be my family, and to me that whole change in thought process has been amazing. My girlfriend and I had many conversations early on in which we both expressed the same fear about not being able to be home with our infant child because of long, outside of the home work hours. It has become a driving desire in my life to see this goal to fruition and I want to make it happen more than I have ever wanted anything else. I still apply on all of the local job boards first thing in the morning to any new jobs that pay a livable wage and that I fit the qualifications for but I have never been a big company type person and so outside of sales, retail and politics is what I mostly have to rely on. My problem with politics is that no one that I ever worked with who was married at one time was still married beyond the age of 30 unless they were a politician. So that leaves retail, sales, or retail sales pretty much. Since a significant portion of those types of jobs either don't pay a livable wage whatsoever or are scams, I apply to the few that don't fit into these categories every time I see one but I know a lot of people in the same boat as me and have decided to not put all of my eggs into this basket.
Now that my side ventures are starting to bring in small but definitively growing amounts of revenue I have found that more people in my personal life are becoming understanding of the idea. I do not want to generate streams of income that I can do from home because I want to be lazy, though I understand how it is very easy for it to come off this way. I am devoting more blood, sweat and tears into my business venture and my articles than I have into anything in my entire life. I have known for a long time that to be truly successful you have to make opportunity rather than rely on opportunity. For too long however I didn't really truly care about making opportunity happen. Flipping the switch on this thought process the other way was an immediate response for me to hearing the news that I was going to have a child. The only times I have been happy in career have been during the times when I was running and managing my own business and completely in charge of my own destiny. I find that when I am working for myself I don't feel like I have to work for 12 hours that day when I wake up although that's what inevitably has been happening. If a core value that I want to pass along to my child is that they should pursue the career path in life that makes them the most happy I feel almost hypocritical pursuing anything else with as much fervor as the the career that makes me the happiest.
I know that there are still some people close to me who are worried about my future or perhaps the direction I am devoting my efforts in, to them I say I understand. From the outside the most sensible choice is to take an $8 an hour job now and stick with it. Having spent more time during my life working these types of jobs than I ever wanted to, I can honestly say these jobs are the biggest honeypots I have ever seen. They sap your motivation and make you feel worthless and dependent on a wage that isn't even enough to support yourself let alone a family. I know my path has question marks but I have found ways to create revenue streams that I never thought possible and that I am currently making money off of. I have faith in myself, and I have faith in my girlfriend and am extremely thankful every day for the faith that she has in me. Outside of her and my soon to be unborn child, for the first time in my life it is not a significant influencing factor to me what anyone else thinks about my decisions. I truly believe that I am smart enough, creative enough, and have thoroughly researched through all of my ventures enough to be able to provide a better lifestyle for me and my family than wasting 40 hours a week working a job that will not ever come close to being able to provide for my family. I have thought every decision through not from my perspective but from my future families perspective, and as a result of this process so far can honestly say for the first time that I truly understand what it means to become a man.
No comments:
Post a Comment