So I started working the big four-oh two weeks ago and have made about 800 dollars to date. I gotta tell ya, I never knew how much money mattered until I started earning a good chunk of it and thinking about my future. I get these customers coming into the beanery and, as corny as it sounds, we somehow get into talking about what their dreams were as young adults. Some wanted to be professional photographers making the big bucks. Others wanted to be screenplay writers. All of them had dreams and yet, like a majority of Americans out there, are working about 50 hours a week.
I see them and refuse to become comfortable with working 50 hours a week for the rest of my life. It's scary, because at first I couldn't
stand working 40 hours a week. I find working 40, even 50 hours a week easier as the weeks go by and this is unsettling. If I'm going to be working that much, it better be for a ridiculous amount of money. Let me put things in perspective for you so that you can begin to understand the amount of outrage I feel about being employed for anything less than half a million a year.
One third of my life will be spent sleeping. That is approximately eight hours in a 24 hour span; maybe even more considering how often I sleep in on sundays. That means that the other eight hours would be spent working, but anyone who has read up on recent trends will find Americans working more than that on a daily basis. Now, I know all of you like to coddle and tell yourselves that you'll find that dream job that you'll love to do every day, making work seem like play. Let me be the one to do this, since we are such good friends and all.
Cut out the bullshit, all the euphemisms and anything else that may be blinding you from the truth. The truth is that when you get out into the job market you'll be taking anything you can get for the first ten years. After that you'll have the opportunity to be more selective, but even then I sincerely doubt you'll land that "dream job." However, let's say that you manage to theoretically land the job of your dreams and ask this one, simple question: is it really everything you had imagined?
I don't care who you are - working 40 hours a week will suck. Be honest with yourself, the only reason why we like to think there's some sort of dream job out there is because a majority of us will be working 40 hours a week and will have to come to accept that as a fact. If you walked into work everyday with the realization of how much it sucked, you'd probably cut yourself and bleed to death because you would be thinking about how you are dead for about 2/3 of your day. Working eight hours sucks. Period. It'll never be a "dream job" because I'm pretty sure everyone's dream job is sitting on there ass for eight hours and getting paid 100+ dollars an hour.
At least I know that's
my dream job.
Of course I wouldn't be spending it just sitting on my ass, but I am an individual that believes that the thing that defines a person isn't their car, their job, or their home...but is inherently found within their hobbies. Work and sleep leave me with very little time for my hobbies, which means that one of them has to go (or suck a lot less, which means an increase in pay). Work is not living. Sleep is not living. You cannot live working forty hours a week, let me explain why.
So you work from eight to five because your employer doesn't feel like paying you to eat lunch in the backroom for an hour. It takes an hour to commute one way (believe me when I say that isn't generous by any means), which really means you're doing something for work between the hours of seven and six pm. Assuming that you are an eligible bachelor or bachelorette, that gives you about two hours to do chores and take care of miscellaneous business. Most likely you've eaten dinner while paying for your bill which brings you to 8:30 pm. You now have time to indulge in your hobbies, but wait, if you want that eight hours of sleep you should really be going to bed by ten because you've got to wake up at 6 am to get ready for work. Even if you wanted to suffer through the work day on a pitiful amount of sleep, that still gives you about two to three hours of actual free time.
Just imagine this shit while raising a family; a time when you should be with your kid 24/7.
"But Andrew, money isn't important. What matters is happiness, spirit, and all the stuff you can't buy with money!" And what I'm telling you is that you're kidding yourself if you think money isn't important. You're a damn fool and you'll probably go to your grave in denial.
Money can facilitate happiness. Believe me. Got student loans that are bogging you down? Are your friends and family working two jobs to try and sustain your lifestyle? Is your ex-wife taking a third of your paycheck for child support when the bitch is making about four times more than you? Let's see, what could MONEY do in situations like these...
This country is manipulated by and for money. Politicians can all be bought by money. A deal can be bought with money. The laws that are passed? Bought with money, no doubt in my mind. I'm not saying that this is necessarily right, but it's the truth and one I won't have to be impeded by if I have money.
I think if people had the amount of free time an endless flow of cash would provide, they would eventually go insane. Work provides a mundane security in the average life that is comforting due to its unchanging nature. People love what is familiar and expected and often cringe at the unexpected. I find that the standard for "spontaneous" is built upon whether someone jumps up at will on the weekend and decides to go to the mall as a crowd behind the man gasps in awe at his spontaneity. That is pathetic.
You want spontaneous? How about booking a flight the next morning to Hawaii and spending a week traveling to all of the different volcanoes? Or deciding that maybe you'll purchase that in-ground pool that you've always wanted. Your family's debts? Paid for; at a whim. Want to donate to a cause you really believe in? Do it, you have the money. Good things can come out of money...a lot of good and happy things.
So where do you come out on all of this mess? For me, I really need a way out. I need to find out how I can either make a lot of money working forty hours a week or make so much money that I can retire at a young age, live life to its fullest and never worry about the financial side of life ever again. The former will be the least satisfying of the two. The next few years will be about experimenting and finding out about what works and what doesn't, trials and tribulations, joys and sorrows, but all of this for the one goal of alleviating at least one major burden: money.
You do not become what I am talking about through a law degree. You do not become what I am talking about through an engineering degree. These are all ways of getting the initial money used to invest in what I am talking about; it takes time and it's painfully annoying, but it's the only way I can think of going about investment besides winning the lottery. Becoming an entrepeneur and finding your niche is the only way of earning enough money.
Maybe after accomplishing this dream I'll be able to move on to studying for the rest of my life, after all, school has provided some of the most interesting moments in my life. Put it this way: i'll be able to do whatever I want with enough money and that in itself is the greatest amount of freedom to be obtained by any individual.
Let me leave you with this thought: cherry coke tastes a lot like doctor pepper but is my new crack. Random, I know, but more or less what is on my mind as I leave you this evening.
