Dating and The Rat Race

[slaog]

Modern society and western man is a disease...a melanoma on the face of the planet. Think about it, what society would expect you to work at least 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week from the ages of 20 to 65, the prime of your life (if you dont think it is wrong catch a train in the morning and have a look at the peoples faces, do they look healthy to you lol ?). I quit that charade long time ago. Use your vision to find a way out and do what nourishes you and your soul.

+1

People are programmed into thinking working all day most days is normal. It most certainly is not and is a form of slavery put in place by the debt based financial system.

This thread reminds me of the story of the American tourist and the Mexican fishermen.

An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, "Only a little while."

The tourist then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?"

The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs."

The tourist then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life."

The tourist scoffed, " I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"

The tourist replied, "15 to 20 years."

"But what then?" asked the Mexican.

The tourist laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions?...Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

 

[djzulu]

Update

Well, during the past 2 weeks I have decided to considerably cut down on the amount of time I spend working. I am also waiting for another deal to close so I can finally take some time to relax, get social etc.

The results are incredible: I am more confident, happier, enjoying the moment and am getting a ton of a$$. In some cases girls are approaching me, I believe it's the more 'open' relaxed attitude that I am generating.

I also know that this will be over soon when the next deal comes along, and keep trying to figure out ways to balance life and work so that I don't go back to square 1.

In regards to slalog's fisherman analogy (which I have heard a few times before), what keeps me going is knowing that I might be able to retire within the next 3-5 years if I make the right moves.

The fisherman will always have to continue fishing, he can't stop. The millionaire can take up another hobby if he wishes. This is the big difference and where I think the analogy is flawed.

Unfortunately we live in a computerized world so it is getting tougher to find jobs that do not involve computers. Most of the arts are computerized and no matter what you do you will end up spending hours editing / writing / coding something on a pc.

Therefore, most of us will have to work hard in order to find some balance, unless we are willing to go for a different career.

 

[backbreaker]

You are making the wrong correlation.

without disclosing my income i do pretty damn well for myself, enough where i'm in the highest tax bracket, i'll leave it at that (Which ****ing sucks)

anyway, the reason those people are miserable is not becuase they are successful

the reason they are miserable is because they are spending all their time doing ****, they don't like doing, and they know it.

this is why, i can't ****ing stress this **** enough, FIND SOMETHING YOU ACTUALLY ****ING LIKE DOING, AND IT WON'T SEEM LIKE WORK. **** sounds so damn cliche, but i'm telling you, today i got up at what.. 5, went to the gym got home at 8:30, been working since, it's 4pm, i will be working utnil 8pm.. so that's a 11 and a half hour day for me when it's all said and done, and i do this 6 sometimes 7 days a week and i'm having the ****ing time of my mother****ing life.

friday i will work every bit of 15 hours. i don't consider what i do work at all. at all.





there was a point in time when i had my first company, i hated it so much i kept a liquor cabinet mad men style and an 8ball of blow in the desk at all times just to get me through the day. was good at it, but i hated it. I did not like the people i worked with, i didn't like the industry, i didn't' like the hours, i didn't' like jack **** about that job except really the status it gave me, everyone around town knew me and my business partner for what we did.


when i started smoking crack becuase of that and was spending 300-400 a day on the habit and had a dealer put a gun to my head and rob me, and then locked myself in my room and tried to smoke myself to death and my old oneitis broke into my house basically and flushed all my **** down the toilet, i told myself, you know.. i am never again going to have a job i hate. the **** isn't work it.

if i were making 35k a year doing what i'm doing now, i would work just as hard. I love what i do.


when i was 21, i used to stay up as late as i could, becuase i did not want tomorrow to come. nothing for me to go to bet at 4am.

I go to bed giddy now because tomorrow is coming.

the key is to find something you like doing, something you are passionate about, something that does not seem like work to you. The rest will take care of itself.

you put me anywhere, i will make money, i work too hard. making money in itself is not hard for me. Everywhere i've been I eventually was promoted and was making more and more money. They put me in Best buy and i became the lead tech in a year. they put me in a car lot and i was the f and i guy for an infiniti dealership before i quit. my last commission check there was a little bit under 9500 dollars for the month, that does not include my 800 dollar a week draw check, so in all about 12000. that's over 140k a year. But i hated it so much i stayed blowed. the day i quit, no notice no nothing i woke up and sat on the living room floor crying like a little punk *****. at that point i knew enough was enough. But when i started working that hard, doing **** I love doing, my quality of life and income skyrocketed and i'm HAPPY.


the avg rich bastard, what.. goes to college, goes to grad school, gets a job where he busts his ass for 10 or so years, and looks around, he's 37, he has somehow accumulated a wife, a kid, a mortgage, 2 luxury cars, and is ****ing miserable becuase to keep this ****, he has to keep working this job that he is finally figuring out, lol, he really doesn't particularly like.

money in itself does not make you happy. it never will. If i am stuck at work at midnight, i log in to look at my bank account it's not going to ****ing cheer me up.


your job should have some sort of purpose to you. I have a very clear and definitive purpose for my job.

man guys i can't stress it enough, the most important book you will ever read, is the laws of success by Napoleon hill. book changed if not saved my life.



i can take off whenever the **** i feel like it. i can take off saturday. lot's of college football on. i might take the day off but i doubt it. there is some stuff i want to get done this weekend, and some big time races i need to catch.

6 years ago i would have taken off friday, just so i can get plastered for saturday

 

[djzulu]

backbreaker - I have also always been best at what I do and kept changing jobs since I didn't enjoy them. The $ hasn't been an issue for me too, but I guess every job gets boring for me after a while.

I think that this time (I am moving toward's my 40's) I have to stick with what I do before I call it quits. In the beginning I enjoy my job, but then after a few years it gets old. Maybe that's my problem...

If you don't mind me asking - what industry are you in?

 

[backbreaker]

i do a combination of things. the majority of my income comes from horse racing. truth be told i just play the horses for a living. it was the only thinkg I knew, that i was so passionate about in life, that i knew i would never get tired of and that i knew could keep me sober/clean, so ity wasn't one of those things where, oh this is what i want to do that would be cool, i actually was like look, damnit it's this, or i don't know what, becuase this is what i want, more than anything. and eventually i got good enough where it wasn't an issue anymore

over the time i also started a web development business, but the second it started becoming a drag i leased it out which actually was just a few months ago. i started that to build a portfolio, so that we can start doing equine related websites development, there is no one there that is any good that specializes in equine/thoroughbred sites, and it's an industry that generally doesn't go calling regular web development companies. i had the portfolio i wanted and it was becoming hassle some so i leased it out as it made no sense to just fold a company that was actually making money.

to be frank i never expected to be as "successful" as i am now doing what i do, i just knew that this is what i wanted to do and if i could live off doing it that would be the best thing ever for me. I had some money from my first company i sold, so i never was going to be dirt broke, still have most of it actually,s o it allows me to take chances that probably the avg person would not take. but i can honestly say even without that i would have done the exact same thing, as i have no qualms about failing anymore.


few other things here and there mainly stuff in development, i have a whole bunch of **** that is about to take place, but it all revolves around horse racing which is what i am passionate about. if it were, stocks, i would be doing just as much work.. just something about horse racing, the industry, the game itself, the horses, just does it for me, money be damned.


something that I LIKE, alot but not passionate about, are video games. don't' talk about it much here but i'm a video game nut. when i was right out of high school, at the time, this is what i had decided, i wanted to devote my life/career to, video games. this lasted for about a year. sounds like a bad hobby right? well, you tell me. at one point, i had 5, count em, 5 video game backup sites up. if you bought a video game backup in the early 2000's there is a good chance, you bought one of them from me lol. That is just online, there was a shop in little rock, that figured out I knew how to record video games and movies, this is little rock, no one knows how to do that **** there, everyone knew he sold bootleg cd's and stuff, he wanted to expand so he started selling my stuff, modded ps2's and psones as well which i also did as well as XXX movies, which i had as well, at least 500 of them.

I also wrote cheat guides and sold them and was starting an online magazine for reviews and stuff when I met my future business partner.

truth be told, that operation, funded my computer company. for a while to be honest. we didn't make money for a while,. that's how lived. i was making 6-7 grand a month pretty easily at 19. more than antyhing i've just always been a hustler.

I am a firm believer you can turn any passion of your into a legit business. well that business was not very legit but you get the point lol. you can make money doing what you want you love.

 

[djzulu]

few other things here and there mainly stuff in development, i have a whole bunch of **** that is about to take place, but it all revoles around horse racing which is what i am passionate about. if it were, stocks, i would be doing just as much work.. just something about horse racing, the industry, the game itself, the horses, just does it for me, money be damned.

Sounds like we are in a similar industry in some respects.

That's great that you've found something you love doing and that it makes you $ at the same time.

In my case, I started out very passionate about the business, and now that passion has died a little. Will see how things go next few months, otherwise will make another change.

 

[backbreaker]

Sounds like we are in a similar industry in some respects.

That's great that you've found something you love doing and that it makes you $ at the same time.

In my case, I started out very passionate about the business, and now that passion has died a little. Will see how things go next few months, otherwise will make another change.

sounds like my first "real"c ompany. i thought i was passionate about it. i worked my ass off.

come to find out, i was just passionate about being rich lol. and i made a **** load of money. I didn't particularly care for the job but I want.. you know what **** it i'll keep it 100% real, my damn oneitis drove me make that business work. my sick AFC ass, told me that dammit she can't not like me if i'm that successful. guess what lol, she didn't. oh she got **** and she hung around me, we even ****ed, but i never "got her". there was a point in time, when i could have had her, she wanted me to have here. there was about a year window but this was well after this business venture.

the things a man will do for *****, never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Ricky]

Im working for the man, just in better and better positions. Is very stressful. I used to be an engineer and the travel burned me out. Now its the scope of responsibilities that is getting to me.

 

[Heretolearn]

I wonder if this is why you are supposed to have fun/date then settle down THEN get serious about a career - as it does not work simultaneously.

Yet the risk here is that if you do the same, you can focus on the career, until your wife leaves with half...

 

[zekko]

I was raised with good Christian values, so I was taught that it was honorable to work. The Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat. So as a male in Western culture, I feel I have a responsibility to pull my own weight.

I've always been fascinated with asceticism though. I know people with little or no income, yet they manage to exist somehow. I've read about lower caste families in India who live out in the middle of the woods somewhere. I do think that you can be happy living a very simple life. I've known guys who have lived off their welfare, or off the welfare of their girlfriends. Ultimately, that's not for me though.

 

[Warrior74]

I wonder if this is why you are supposed to have fun/date then settle down THEN get serious about a career - as it does not work simultaneously.

Yet the risk here is that if you do the same, you can focus on the career, until your wife leaves with half...

I think it was better in the victorian age where a young man went to seek his fortune and then after success or failure, found a wife of what ever class/station he found himself in.

 

[Jitterbug]

That successful young man didn't "find" a suitable wife. Other people found her for him. That used to be a social contract.

As that contract is broken nowadays, people have started to question various aspects of The Plan.

 

[Warrior74]

That successful young man didn't "find" a suitable wife. Other people found her for him. That used to be a social contract.

As that contract is broken nowadays, people have started to question various aspects of The Plan.

I stand corrected. But I would rather a young man seek his fortune than a wife.

 

[zekko]

I would rather a young man seek his fortune than a wife.

Well, you have to be able to take care of yourself before you can take care of someone else, so yeah that should definitely be the priority.
Of course when you're young the hormones are really going crazy.

 

[Boilermaker]

Here's some latest science for you:

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/09/09/rspb.2010.1678.abstract



Practical applications of this knowledge are:

- Don't game girls early in the morning. That's when your cortisol level is at its highest (plus your T-level also at its highest - i.e you'll look like a stressed horndog - not sexy).

- Don't drink coffee, and don't ask her to coffee on the first date. Caffeine causes your cortisol level to rise and makes you stressed (it also exhausts your adrenal glands, causing adrenal fatigue). It kills the mood. Hot chocolate is a much better replacement.

Haha, I hope you are joking

You should write a book: "My success with Women" supported with state-of-the-art scientific data

 

[Jamo]

Hmm

Define rich. What many of you are describing is what is considered "working wealthy". That is not a pleasant state. You are working 10 hours a day to maintain a style of life.

For me being rich would be someone who has at least a net worth of $50 mil in liquidable assets.

 

[zekko]

What many of you are describing is what is considered "working wealthy". That is not a pleasant state. You are working 10 hours a day to maintain a style of life.

Beats being "working poor" though.

 

[Jamo]

Working rich and working poor are certainly at the extremes. Yes the working poor are in a worse off state. But the question is about happiness, and the rat race, not about material comforts. I would think that those who don't work as hard, but consequently earn less than those who would be considered high "salary" earners to be overall happier as they would have time for other activities in life. However both of the above are still stuck in the rat race.

But if one were earning enough that their income can literally generate a full lifestyle simply on interest accrued, then at this point money can be considered a facilitator for happiness as one has the choice to exit the rat race and not suffer for it.

I think ultimately happiness stems from one's ability to choose without having to make hard sacrifices.

 

[Zarky]

As long as you're not working more than 35 hours a week I think you're doing ok. Nobody should work more than 35 hours a week if they want to live a healthy, long, enjoyable life.

 

[zekko]

But if one were earning enough that their income can literally generate a full lifestyle simply on interest accrued, then at this point money can be considered a facilitator for happiness as one has the choice to exit the rat race and not suffer for it.

Ah, THAT is how I would define "rich". When you don't actually ever have to work again, ever, if you choose not to. Dave Ramsey calls this state of being able to live off your interest "critical mass".