This has been a hectic month for me. Between my main job, my secondary job, doing taxes, having a friend over for spring break, and going to gun shows and the rifle range, I feel really spent. Now, I am not a lazy person. But I also don't believe in work for work's sake. If your toil gets you nowhere, there's nothing wrong with pursuing a different course of action.
But the question is, for how long will all this work go on? When will there be a long break? Looking at people's lives, I think the answer is never. We only get 20-25 vacation days a year. Between going on microvacations and visiting family, it seems impossible to gather a big chunk of time (at least a month) of doing nothing, unless we're talking a sabbatical. And people in school might have more free time but they'll probably have to enter the working life eventually.
It also doesn't matter whether you are a lowly laborer or a white collar professional. Even the best-paid white-collar professionals work their asses off. They accumulate all that wealth but never have a chance to really stop and enjoy it. Hence, when talking to a fellow backpacker last summer, he told me that all his professional friends could not take an extended trip around the world as he was doing.
Part of it is the lifestyle trap, I think. Once you get settled into a working lifestyle, and you collect debts and obligations, it becomes harder to break out of it. Just look at the poor suckers in Silicon Valley with $3000-a-month mortgages. What about those who have kids? Is their settling into a working lifestyle excusable because of their obligations as parents? There's more to raising kids than buying a house in a nice neighborhood and sending them to good schools. Eventually they'll get bored to death and go crazy from being part of that suffocating lifestyle.
I am ahead of the game compared to most people. I have asked the question "Why?" and found the answer, "There is no good reason." I have various possible escape routes from the rat race, but I don't have a concrete plan. That's fine. Nothing ever goes according to plan anyway. And if I fail, so what? I'll just be back at where everyone else is, but I'll have lived a dream that many people will not experience. Even if I had to wake up in the end.
1 comment:
I think the word "microvacation" really captures what these little outings are. Personally I cannot stand to be on vacation for more than two or three days because I get antsy to get something done. I guess a long trip abroad is the only reason I'd ever want to take a longer vacation.
Aside from the occasional daydream about being a manual labourer and working with my hands, I think white collar professionals are quite a bit better off: we may not have time to enjoy it, but we're generally better paid and don't have to worry about making ends meet. It's more of a crapshoot with the blue collar folks.
And I completely agree with the suffocating lifestyle of those kids who are well provided for. That's the story of Orange County and Silicon Valley. It really doesn't have to be this way, but I can see myself falling into that trap in the future, so I'm watching my step.
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