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The other day at work, my boss, a coworker and I were all talking about company loyalty. It seems that it’s a thing of the past. My boss mentioned, “I don’t blame kids these days. Work a year or two, get what you can out of the job, do a decent job and move on. There’s no loyalty to workers anymore and great benefits that myself and many others enjoyed just aren’t there.”
I spend at least twenty minutes a day, in some way or another, thinking of ways to make more money, to invent something or even win the lottery. I’m not a pauper by any means, but it’d be nice to not worry about living paycheck to paycheck. Depending on the source, anywhere from half to two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t really want to have money, but I, and many like me, slave away at jobs we at best are indifferent to and at worst, loathe.
Like many people, I grew up in an upper middle class household that pushed the “you have to go to college” mantra. They made too much money for me to qualify for grants and not enough to actually help with college which is fine – I have no problem paying for stuff, I use but I’d at least like it to be reasonable. It incenses me when I hear people say, “you need to work harder” or some bullshit like that. The Atlantic did a column on the myth of part time job working through college, where at Michigan State one credit hour in 1979 was $24.50, adjusted for inflation that is $79.23 in today dollars. One credit hour today costs $428.75. I don’t want free college; I want it to be affordable. I completely cherish my college experience, the information I learned and all that, but not a day goes by where I don’t wonder what it’d be like if I went to a trade school.
What really wears me out is that it’s not just student loans. Institutions/corporations/companies always want things from you. Car insurance, health insurance, cable/internet, car payments, groceries, utilities, mortgage/rent, the list goes on. I feel like I get my paycheck and then it slowly gets chipped away. You have to pay to play the game. Whatever happened to jobs paying for your health insurance or even any form of benefits?
Often, I think about success. The media, movies and to me, it seems that there is a positive correlation between success and money. I don’t really want money for any other reason than to open up a dog shelter and help out animals on a small farm. No fancy cars, big houses or anything, just a dog rescue with some apple trees, grapevines and a big garden. Can one be “successful” and “happy” by society’s standards? I don’t know about you but putting on my business casual every day isn’t exactly what I consider successful.
I’m sure everyone’s seen the memes online “You weren’t born just to pay bills” or “You get a job to pay for your car to go to the store to buy clothes for a job to pay for your car.” It’s easy to purport some pseudo-existential rumination. What’s hard is that regardless of how many times I tell myself in the mirror “You weren’t born just to pay bills” I will soon be living in a van down by the river if I don’t drive my car I bought to buy clothes to look presentable at a job I got to pay for all of this shit.
Other times, I think of those Wall Street guys that get tired of the rat race and go become soy farmers or open vineyards because I guess they have enough money where they can start actually “living.” We all have things we want to do, but like anything else, everything costs money and nothing is free. That’s really the only goal I have working is to finally dig out of debt and to work a job so that when I’m old, I’ll get a few years to actually do what I want. Hopefully, I won’t be one of those stories where someone works their entire life, goes up to tee #1 and has a heart attack the first day of retirement.
What it all boils down to is trying to make it happen. What “it” is to everyone is completely subjective. We’re all in our own struggle, from the richest to the poorest of people. Some people covet money, want to own football teams, own Lear jets, travel first class and eat caviar. Me? I just want the little things. Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today..
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Madoff
I specialize in damage control, being the drunkest at any and all functions and social assassination. Always appreciate a strong gif game. Follow me on Twitter. Sometimes I put up cool stuff about golfing at the local dirt tracks.
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All I really want in life is enough money to buy a significant stake in Monsanto, just so I can casually mention it to vegan hippies and see the hatred in their eyes. You know, typical stuff
I actually work for Monsanto, in agriculture directly, I can tell you right now all that hippie bullshit you see on the Internet is lies. We are so tightly regulated you wouldn’t believe it.
Tell me something I don’t know. GMO feeds the world. I applaud your work, sir.
It was my dream once to be a Monsanto patent lawyer and get rich suing farms. No sarcasm, that’s what I wanted to do. I am fully behind GMOs, those idiots preaching organic would be repulsed if they saw an organic ear of corn.
Totally agree, nothing wrong with organic stuff, but unless you want to pay $10 for a gallon of milk we need genetically modified/ Roundup sprayed corn and beans.
That would be a litigation attorney, not patent. Also, the vast majority of corn is for feed and ethanol, it looks and tastes terrible anyways because it’s not sweet corn. The window to harvest good sweet corn is really narrow but it looks and tastes just fine without using any roundup.
Exactly, do people really think all these millions of acres of corn is for the stuff you buy in a can at the grocery store.
Guns and a hunting license are way cheaper bro, and you did it yourself.
It’s on my to-do list, I’ve had an itch to go hunting for a while now. Thanksgiving just doesn’t feel the same without blasting a few turkeys back to hell where they belong.
I’ve shot deer, pheasant, quail, turtle dove, rabbit, turkey, and a handful of other woodland creatures. Turkey are the only ones where I’ve never felt even a twinge of guilt at killing. They’re fucking evil devil birds.
This guy gets it.
Coming from a non-hunter, what’s the animosity toward turkeys about?
If you really want to send one to hell, deep fry it frozen.
Thanks for the tip – I’ve always dreamt of sending a turkey and half of my gathered friends and family to h-e-double hockey sticks.
That’s gotta be the best/necessary way to blow off steam before having to deal with your family in December.
“Success” – being able to make it to Friday in order to go home, see the dog, and crack open a beer with your pants undone while watching sportscenter. Another splendid article Madoff.
I wrote my high school senior research paper on this topic. I came to a similar conclusion that what it takes to achieve success as defined by society often deprives you of happiness. Good thing it’s Friday and I can just drink all of those thoughts away.
Pretty sure that’s what keeps bars/distillers in business.
Love the Pink Floyd reference at the end, man. Great read as always. I just got back from Yosemite where I stayed in a van for the first time and to be honest, Chris Farley was onto something because I never felt so relaxed and content with things. Being surrounded by epic shit def helps too but drinking beers on mountain tops and eating beef jerky while sitting in a van bumper is probably the best thing I’ve done in a long while. I know that sounds hipster as shit but for the record I can’t grow a full beard and Black Mountain’s music was playing instead of Arcade Fire so you know I’m legit.
Like many people, I grew up in an upper middle class household that pushed the “you have to go to college” mantra. They made too much money for me to qualify for grants and not enough to actually help with college which is fine
^^This sums up why I am buried in loans- 0 aid and parents weren’t able to help.
“Oh, but you should still out the FAFSA. You never know what they might give you!”
Then just don’t fill out FAFSA, simple as that
K.
I got like seventeen emails and letters telling me mine was not correct when it clearly was.
Dumbass. Even to get merit-based scholarships at most colleges (e.g., get a 2200 on the SAT and we’ll give you tuition), you have to fill out the FAFSA just for their record-keeping.
Okay, so if you think filling out the FAFSA would behoove you, then fill it out. Simple as that
The hamster wheel cycle is depressing. But it’s Friday and there’s a bottle of wine with my name on it, so there’s my success for the week
“If you have 10 problems, throw money at them. 9 of them will disappear, and the last one won’t seem like such a problem anymore.”
Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell makes it a lot easier to achieve.
My rule of thumbs are:
1. Do I have enough money to do most of what I want, but not enough where there’s no drive or challenge.
2. If I really feel like bragging, have I done something recently enough to brag about?
3. Do I have enough vacation time to take a day off to just sit on a couch/kayak/camp/recover from a rough night?
Everything else is ancillary.
**Rules of thumb. I went ahead and Meh’d myself.
Yea, I fucked that up. It’s friday afternoon and I’m focused on the drink I’ll get in an hour.
Working as a General Civil engineer in a small town I have all three. Unfortunately since its still the tail end of construction season, there is no time for me to take off. As soon as winter hits, a nice week long vacation is due.
Enough money to have a ton of kids and a hot wife with perky hoo-has. Success
Yeah working isn’t ideal, but I call success by looking at what the next generation becomes. If you’re lucky enough to have good kids, leaving them off better than you had it is what I define as success. It’s different for everybody but great article