You know what I would love? An honest day's work.
That's a funny thing to say. Look at all the linguistic connotations buried in there. Honest work; as opposed to.. dishonest work?
Alright, so I'd love a day's work as a subsistence farmer. (to make me appreciate what I have, because if anything, I think not working has made me less well acquainted with what that is.)
Now, here's the deal. For damn near a decade, I earned a good salary. For parts of it, I earned a fantastic salary. For all of it, I was a heroically responsible spender. Nothing delights me more than to save, and nothing excites me more than spending beneath my means. Multiply that by ten years, and you'll find yourself sitting in a big ole wad of cash.
Now, I've invested all those savings. Every month counts, and every paycheck contributes. And I've only been gone from the workforce for less than 4 months; compensated for by the gamble I took against my own employers, an impulsive decision (and a retrospectively esoteric one) which lead me to one of the best windfalls of my life so far. And now, today, I'm living the unplanned, unstructured intermission in a life with a ridiculous first act and an completely unpredictable second.
Part of me would like to think that the second will blow the first out of the water. I've honed a lot of skills over these years; not just raw technical abilities, but critical skills when it comes to acquiring new skills and understanding new situations. I'm more confident than I've ever been that I could drop into a lot of settings and land right on my feet.
But part of me does worry that I've peaked. An asshole in my past who never meant to be an asshole once expressed his own fears for me of this outcome. What if I peak when I'm in my 20s? That would make life one hell of a let-down.
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