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Work, money, and happiness

#21
Aberdumbie said:
Funny thing..... This very thing has been on my mind a lot lately. I left my rockstar life in 1991 when my son was born and laid the foundations for a business. Worked my kazoo off reaching for that dream. Loans, worrying about cash flow.. All that mess. Now the business is remarkably successful by anyone’s standards. Yet, I still am opening the door before six and locking the door well into the night each and every day.... Wife and I adopted two babies last year. I am so exhausted that nothing sounds fun. It’s just something to wedge into an already exhausting schedule...... My daughters family struggles and asks me often how comfortable it is to not worry about bills.... Well the worries are just larger now and every bit as stressful...... Having financial success does not come with ease of lifestyle or worry..... Here lately I have had a rash of acquisitions outfits trying to get me to sell the business. Well, how can I do that when I owe my heart and soul to those that work for me and help carry my burden?...... The Long and short is, I understand your dilemma and your query. I long for the day that I struggled to make rent but had fun playing rockstar. I heard it said this way.... There is no easy life. There is just life. Somehow that makes good country sense to me..... We play the cards we are dealt and make the best of it best I can tell.
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For me money, fame, power, friends, stuff etc. etc. have always seemed futile in the end. If I base my happiness on those things I will never have enough. Bills will come, people will leave, people will reject me and all the things that happen in life.
Basing my happiness/ success on those things has been a roller coaster ride. I am on top when I get recognition until someone comes along and tells me I'm full of swamp gas. (and they will) Funny, 300 people could say good things about me but I will remember the one person who criticized me and down I go to the bottom of the hill. Up and down, up and down, just thinking about it is making me dizzy. :D
What has worked is having some other in my life that gets me away from the confounded ME. Not always, happy and peppy and bursting with love but I am more stable and that is a good thing.
Won't talk about the "other" here. If someone wants to talk about that they can meet me in the lobby or PM me.
 
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#22
I've worked jobs that gave me more money than I can spend, and it gave me the happiness money can buy. I look back on those days fondly, it wasn't like it sucked.
At this point in my life, age 46, I work about part time and my wife (50) is retired. We have less money coming in each week than we ever have, but there's a happiness and peace in our lives that we never had when the both of us had higher paying jobs.
We have enough to get by, and that's fine by us.
If something disastrous or catastrophic comes along in our lives, chances are money won't be able to buy us out of it anyway, so we're fine with that.
We don't let the worries of yesterday or tomorrow take up our enjoyment of today. Worry about what might or might not happen just caused me anxiety anyway.

-Mike
 
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#23
I had a conversation about this a little while back with the four guys from my old schooldays band.
We're all 52(ish) now.
Purely in terms of what our jobs pay, I'm a long way behind any of them.
Equally, purely in terms of how comfortable we are with our lives, I'm so far ahead of them I'm almost guilty about it.

I've no mortgage, a happy marriage(to a woman who makes approximately twice what I do, which helps:)), our kids have got college degrees and jobs, we've a decent pension plan in place and intend to retire in ten years.
I've a low-paying job, but it's stress-free, and when I clock out at the end of my shift, it's over for the day.

The other guys? All with college educations, and highly-paid jobs in banking, advertising, sales. Walking advertisements for ulcer-relief. There's been bankruptcies, crippling mortgages, divorces, many many late nights and weekends lost to work deadlines, strokes, drinking/drug abuse issues.

Make of that what you will.
 
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#24
Oddly said:
I had a conversation about this a little while back with the four guys from my old schooldays band.
We're all 52(ish) now.
Purely in terms of what our jobs pay, I'm a long way behind any of them.
Equally, purely in terms of how comfortable we are with our lives, I'm so far ahead of them I'm almost guilty about it.

I've no mortgage, a happy marriage(to a woman who makes approximately twice what I do, which helps:)), our kids have got college degrees and jobs, we've a decent pension plan in place and intend to retire in ten years.
I've a low-paying job, but it's stress-free, and when I clock out at the end of my shift, it's over for the day.

The other guys? All with college educations, and highly-paid jobs in banking, advertising, sales. Walking advertisements for ulcer-relief. There's been bankruptcies, crippling mortgages, divorces, many many late nights and weekends lost to work deadlines, strokes, drinking/drug abuse issues.

Make of that what you will.
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You're in a great spot, and congratulations for recognizing it.
For many men, there's that pride and competitive spirit to make the most money, have the most toys, etc. I'm happy to read you don't subscribe to that mentality.

-Mike
 
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#26
The first half of my adult career was in high-pay, low-pressure jobs that brought me no pleasure or pride. I buckled down, bought a house in the burbs, took the subway every day with a briefcase. It wasn’t the worst existence, but I am glad I tried it early and figured out a way to escape the rat race.

The second half of my career has taken the form of multiple apprenticeships in woodworking, signmaking, stone masonry, carpentry, and prosthetic fabrication. These jobs have varied widely in pay and long-term stability, but each has come with the benefit of flexibility in my schedule, the ability to set my own workflow, and access to virtually any tool or piece of equipment you could ever imagine. Over the years, I have become deeply entrenched in a network of other tradesmen and built a reputation in a diverse subculture of other skilled laborers. One of the most important things I have learned through this experience is that by becoming highly specialized, you gain entry into a more collaborative mindset. Instead of competing with others, I am in constant competition with myself to offer a superior product.

For the past few years, my time has been largely spent in rehabilitating and developing the historic homestead where my family lives, as well as being a full-time parent. My wife and I have long-term plans to build a retirement career out of our property. The big picture is sprawling and complicated, but my wife’s skills are a perfect complement to what I bring to the table. She is a marketing and business development consultant for technology and healthcare start-ups. She has the drive and acumen to handle that type of business setting, with the high-stakes gamble of mergers and acquisitions. I could never.
 
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#30
buldog5151bass said:
It's always a balance. I own two small businesses. It can suck when you go periods without making money, but one allows me to really help people, another allows me to combine an interest (baseball) with something I enjoy (wood working) to meet people and make some money (making custom baseball bats).

Sleeping well at night beats another zero in your bank account IMO.
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I got lots of zeros in my bank account. Just wish I had some other numbers to go with them.
 
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#32
The 'balance' thing is key, IMO.

In my profession (Construction Estimator), there are a lot of guys who are putting in 70 hrs a week. Sure, they are bringing home more money than I am, but at what price does money exceed having a life? I work about 48 hrs/week, and feel like I have a good balance between work time and me time. Yes, I'm leaving about $25K per year on the table, but I would be miserable if I had to work six or seven 12-hr-days.

As the old adage goes...I work to live, I don't live to work.
 
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#33
The fun thing about my job is it makes my hands hurt so much I could scream. And switching from day to nights every 10 weeks. And being sent home or told not to come in because there is no work. I do the like the people. The sneaky, back stabbing people.:woot:
 
#35
Having been raised by a very alpha male and a very strong mom, i’ve been an overachiever all my life. I was quick out of the gate and even in the grip of alcoholism was collecting money on patents and licenses for my work. I was killing it professionally but i was dying personally at the same pace. I was so obsessed with being at the top of whatever heap i was on i had nothing in my life but that drive. It wound up costing me everything when i finally hit bottom. I spent almost a year wallowing in self pity working for a day labor company and living in a bottle. Fortunately i was able to get tired of the life before i got tired of life, and i started the long climb back up out of the pit. Amost a year to the day i attended my first AA meeting i got hired to oversee a largish defense contractor’s conversion to a full CNC machine shop. I was once again in the shark tank, but i quickly discovered i lacked my former drive. I did my job and my employer was happy enough to give me a nice raise with only six months on the job, but i no longer cared about being the alpha dog, i had become content to be another cog in a wheel full of cogs. We finished the revamp eighteen months early and i resigned and took a job that involved repair and upgrades to specialized process equipment. It put me in a repair truck and took me all over America and even up into western Canada a few times. I traveled alone and i lived out of a backpack in motel rooms for a few years and it was the best time i ever had earning. The money was good the solitude was better, and everywhere i went people were very happy to see me because their problem(s) were about to be solved. Then i got mangled and the world as i knew it ended and left me unable to function at anything i’d ever done before so i had to start over one more time, only this time i could barely walk and the outlook for improvement was worse than grim. My doctor wanted my leg in the worst way. He was concerned about blood clots and rot. I told him when it got to stinky for me he could have it but until then, no deal. I collected up a nice piece of straight grain ash and resolved to turn myself a peg and get a big floppy hat, an eye patch and a parrot if the doctor won. I’ve still got the piece of ash and even managed to con the most wonderful woman on earth into throwing in with me. She calls me monkey boy but it’s all in fun so she can stay for a while longer.
TBH, it was not until i was facing the possibility of my declining years as a cripple that i ever truly considered my happiness versus my ability to take care of myself with no outside help. I always just assumed happiness was the ability to be beholden to no man. Silly me.
 
#36
Chicory Blue said:
On my mind today.

There’s no shortage of truisms on these topics. “If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” “Money can’t buy back the time you spend earning it.” The Beatles famously offered conflicting statements on the topic, noting that “money can’t buy me love,” and yet, “your lovin’ don’t pay my bills.”

At present, I scrape by on a pair of jobs I absolutely love. They’re fulfilling, exciting, make excellent use of my skills and interests, and afford me lots of time to center myself and be creative. Day to day, I’m content, but anxious- living paycheck to paycheck, there isn’t enough money left over for a meaningful savings or to deal with emergencies, and worry is the constant surface noise on the album of my life.

Today I feel closer to happiness than I’ve ever been, but I don’t know if I’m really *there* yet. Meanwhile, I watch people in my life pulling in more money than I could imagine finding a use for, but they’re seldom happier than me- some make a better living on work that means nothing to them, while others sink too much time into their jobs to have a life beyond work.

Some people take the stoic path and accept that work is supposed to suck- they grin and bear it. Others flush cushy jobs down the toilet just because they aren’t engaged by them. Some people spend their youth working their way up to hold their dream job in their old age, some couldn’t stand that thought, and others still don’t have the luxury to make the choice. Some don’t care what they do, so long as they can pursue their passion. Some don’t seem to have a passion at all.

If there’s a “right” way to survive and pursue happiness at the same time, I’ve yet to find it. It seems like self-actualization is a very different journey for every person. Happiness is ever-elusive, but I suppose if it weren’t, life wouldn’t be all that engaging a pursuit to begin with.

I’m curious, though. With the average age on this forum being double my own, I imagine most of you have been answering these questions for yourself long enough to know what you’re talking about, while those closer to my own circumstance may have a perspective worth sharing as well. I invite all to participate.

So, where are you guys at in all this?

Do you feel like you have what you need? Are you working toward something better, or are you content where you are? Would you do something differently if you could?

Are you happy with your job, or in spite of it?

Are you happy at all?

--^@
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Right now I am happily unemployed and use my time to volunteer and make the best of life while I don't have a job to show up for. Nothing lasts forever but not having to worry about money is a great feeling.

You need it up to a point. But if be no happier with a better car. Quality food makes me happy though. Gotta have some thinga. Working hard to get the fancy and shiny things in not as into.
 
#37
"happiness" :rollno:

IMO: folks get messed up making "happiness" a goal. i cannot believe that anyone here knows anybody who has achieved "happiness" as a state of being. contentment, maybe/probably, but not happiness.

right? i'm asking because the differences between contentment and 'happiness' are not just semantic.
 
#38
Gorn said:
Well leave then. If you don't want this job I guarantee there's someone else that does.
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You just struck on the exact reason so many are unhappy with their jobs. Because in the current US economy there are more people than there are jobs. So 1. Employers can ask for anything, offer nothing, and employees can't do anything about it. Employees are disposable and easily replaceable. Positions are hard to come by. The fields where there are more jobs than people is because the requirements are so far out of the reach of most people thanks to education costs.
If things continue along this route we will enter a new age of feudalism and serfdom.
 

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