Standing Still As Life Passes By

[Vigilante]

I am visiting Minnesota right now, where I still own a home after moving to the East Coast.

Needing to escape to get some work done, I stopped by my old Regus office to use a vacant office for the day.

I rolled up to the building, and in a force of habit I parked in my usual parking spot, to take the walk to my usual elevators to my usual floor.

I couldn't help but marvel at something. The same fat nurse in the same blue scrubs was standing at the same corner smoking the same cigarette as she was the last time I was here.

That's where she is, every day. Same routine, same job, same habits. Standing on a non-descript corner on NobodyCares avenue. I wonder if she wonders why seemingly life has passed her by with each drag of the cigarette. I wonder if she allows her mind to wander, prone towards thinking the man is keeping the middle class down.

When she was younger, I wonder if she ever pictured herself here. I wonder if she realizes inbetween drags of her rushed cigarette that it is not too late for her. I wonder if anyone has ever taken the time to tell her. She's just one of the glossed over masses, repeating her days like so many others in cities across the country and across the world. Working for a paycheck, living for a 5 minute break from reality, and wishing today was Friday instead of Wednesday. Dreading Sunday night, because it means that Monday is coming again.

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and years into lifetimes. We wonder where the time went as we light up another cigarette. Is this all there is?

 

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[hellolin]

I just had a conversation with my older cousin that lives in London right now, this kind of thinking is even more prevalent in the EU region, people willing to sacrifice their own potential to take risks in exchange for government/big brother guaranteed benefits that they think they are entitled no matter what. Sure, a secure job is nice and all, but it also takes out the fire inside one that gets him/herself to the higher places in a society. I think this is where the "blame the man for the middle class" has come from, because really if you think about it, the middle class are those who have just enough audacity to not to be a sidewalker, but ever so close to that status.

 

[DeletedUser394]

Great thread

 

[juggler619]

@Vigilante
Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and years into lifetimes. We wonder where the time went as we light up another cigarette...always the same for me,lucky for me TMF woke me up soon. using the legal pad technique to kill this & do stuff. So that i don't end up like that nurse.

Cheers, Ur post r gold always

 

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[John Clancy]

Great post. Really makes you think... I get so caught up in my own head sometimes that I forget to consider things from other peoples perspectives.

From my own experience, I've seen close family members suffering this lifestyle... any discontent that comes up is quickly pushed aside and ignored. The fear of having to actually confront their own reality is so great that they move through their day in a state of numb detachment, preferring to dream without doing, to wish for a better life rather than engage and focus on improving their situation.

Thanks for posting.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Powerful stuff.

Sometimes I wonder, where exactly is the moment when someone gives up and just resigns to being a piece of driftwood floating down the river of life?

Where was it? What was said? What were the circumstances? What choices led them there?

The same fat nurse in the same blue scrubs was standing at the same corner smoking the same cigarette as she was the last time I was here.

I suppose she didn't look happy.

 

[Vigilante]

Powerful stuff.

Sometimes I wonder, where exactly is the moment when someone gives up and just resigns to being a piece of driftwood floating down the river of life?

Where was it? What was said? What were the circumstances? What choices led them there?



I suppose she didn't look happy.

She looked distant. Resigned.

I think it is a slow boil.

 

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[SBS.95]

When I first read TMF and joined the forum, I was all about motivating myself. My username, my avatar picture, my desktop wallpaper.

Stories like these are a much bigger kick in the a$$. Thanks for posting.

Rep+

 

[ddzc]

I see this daily. I know many who live this life. From our eyes it's an extremely depressing and miserable life....but to them, this is the best they can do, this is the life they're happy with and what they have accepted.

I know many people who are happy and content with this daily regimen. I know many who want to put the 40+ years of service in so they can retire comfortably at 65. They believe that the only OUT to this lifestyle is winning the lottery. They will continue playing on a weekly basis and if they don't win, this is the life they have accepted.

What I realized is that us, this community, entrepreneurs in general have a MUCH different mindset than the rest of the world. We know and realize that winning the lottery is not the only way out of a mediocre lifestyle. Entrepreneurs are the hardest and smartest workers in the world. These people are lazy as shit. They don't want to put the effort and work to better themselves. I can't even count the number of encounters I've had with people who tell me to not forget them when I reach the top, that they want in on whatever I'm doing if it takes off, and not too long ago a friend asked me how to make side cash without doing any work lol. Love it.

 

[jon.a]

A lot of them don't know any better.
Before RDPD and TMFL, I didn't.

 

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[ZCP]

Have offered several jobs, parts of the company, profit sharing, the red pill....... Sometimes they don't want out. It is just too hard.......

 

[sija1]

We wonder where the time went as we light up another cigarette. Is this all there is?

Phenomenal post!

This ending gave me chills

 

[ilrein]

@MJ DeMarco

It's a good question, which I suspect you raised rhetorically, to invoke thought.

Of course, there is no one moment when one gives up.

You don't wake up one day and decide you'll never have the resolve to execute on your ambitions. The hard truth of the matter, is that you never had that resolve. It takes such courage and strength to not only conceive, but to commit to a path that is so goddamn different than the rest of typical society...

I guess it's probably true what they say. The extra mile is never crowded.

I'll let you know for sure when I get there.

 

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[RHL]

Sometimes I wonder, where exactly is the moment when someone gives up and just resigns to being a piece of driftwood floating down the river of life?

I used to run experiments on insects back in high school. I was trying to isolate an algorithm from their sorting behavior that would help with image analysis; weird as it sounds, ants, with their handful of cerebral neurons and bizarre, formless-till-the-last-minute organizational methods, can actually sort things into categories and move them around much faster than a human or many human-designed computer programs just having a go at it. If you can build a program that sorts in a way that looks similar to what ants or termites are doing, it's often a big improvement on the kind of systematic routine you'd have cooked up thinking about the problem logically. Prototypes of insect-derived algorithms have even been tested in air-traffic management in Europe, though very quietly, as nobody wants to know that an insect's brain is helping determine their holding pattern.

Anyway, it was always interesting, they'd have a set of objects (usually brood [eggs/larvae]) to sort, and they'd first take them from a scattered mess into a bunch of smaller piles, then re-organize them, and, like osmosis, the piles would grow and shrink seemingly without explanation or justification, some would grow, shrink, and grow again.

Eventually, however, they'd get down to one form, sometimes it looked like a circle, sometimes like a figure eight, but it'd eventually go to one pile shape and location.

And you could leave them in there until they were on the verge of starvation (I never killed them on purpose though; I developed a weird attachment to the test subjects), and all they'd ever do after that is meaninglessly move the eggs on the edges to a different spot on the edge. They burnt energy but changed nothing. Because there world (the petri dish) was so small and enclosed, without food or water, I suppose they hit a point where there was no longer an evolutionary drive to alter their environment or change their surroundings. The just shuffled the deck chairs on their little ship until the scrawny teenage hand of fate swooped in and altered the situation for them.

It's pretty horrifying that you can get to the point where basically the same thing can happen to a mentally healthy adult human.

 

[Deleted21961]

I wonder if anyone has ever taken the time to tell her

Have you?

 

[jason91]

I used to run experiments on insects back in high school. I was trying to isolate an algorithm from their sorting behavior that would help with image analysis; weird as it sounds, ants with their handful of cerebral neurons and bizarre, formless-till-the-last-minute organizational behaviors, can actually sort things into categories and move them around much faster than a human or may human-designed computer programs just having a go at it. If you can build a program that sorts in a way that looks similar to what ants or termites are doing, it's often a big improvement on the kind of systematic routine you'd have cooked up thinking about the problem logically. Prototypes of insect-derived algorithms have even been tested in air-traffic management in Europe, though very quietly, as nobody wants to know that an insect's brain is helping determine their holding pattern.

Anyway, it was always interesting, they'd have a set of objects (usually brood [eggs/larvae]) to sort, and they'd first take them from a scattered mess into a bunch of smaller piles, then re-organize them, and, like osmosis, the piles would grow and shrink seemingly without explanation or justification, some would grow, shrink, and grow again.

Eventually, however, they'd get down to one form, sometimes it looked like a circle, sometimes like a figure eight, but it'd eventually go to one pile shape and location.

And you could leave them in there until they were on the verge of starvation (I never killed them on purpose though; I developed a weird attachment to the test subjects), and all they'd ever do after that is meaninglessly move the eggs on the edges to a different spot on the edge. They burnt energy but changed nothing. Because there world (the petri dish) was so small and enclosed, without food or water, I suppose they hit a point where there was no longer an evolutionary drive to alter their environment or change their surroundings. The just shuffled the deck chairs on their little ship until the scrawny teenage hand of fate swooped in and altered the situation for them.

It's pretty horrifying that you can get to the point where basically the same thing can happen to a mentally healthy adult human.

Wow great post. I'd further add that when we look at ourselves, human beings are merely ants in the universe. We are but a tiny spectacle in a much larger world. Our perception of who we are and how important we are is of course always relative to the petridish we live in. We must constantly evolve and progress, to expand beyond this petridish. Otherwise, who knows when greater beings will randomly throw a rock and end up destroying our earth like we can to the ants.

 

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[Bila]

I had an argument yesterday with my family over this .
Them :" why dont you go back to teaching ? Regular hours, nice benefits " why this self- destructive behaviour ?? ( my sis is a psychologist haha )
Me:" because my life is worth more than a f....ing paycheck. I am not exchanging my life for " benefits " "

But how many give up under this type of pressure ?

 

[JAJT]

When I was regularly employed I had a very hard time getting past the 2 year mark.

At 2 years, something inside me snaps and I can't take it any more. At 2 years I literally FEEL the drag of repetition. I don't know what's magical about that number - maybe that's the time it takes me to ramp my learning to a point where all that's left is repetition, but it's been a mainstay of my employment history before entrepreneurship. At 2 years I literally wake up one day and tell myself "If I do this another week I'm going to f**king lose it" and end up quitting or getting a new job.

I guess most people don't feel this, or they find a way to move past it into acceptance. I never could. Once I learned everything I could within my predefined role in the company I felt like a mouse trapped in a small glass box. It's almost suffocating.

I honestly don't know how some people do the same thing at the same company for 10, 20, 30, 40 years without feeling that same feeling I get after 2.

 

[rogen]

Soon I will have my first job for a monthly paycheck, There are days where I think that making above min. wage is just impossible, I'm tired of brainstorming, thinking up ways on what and how you can sell something etc,

I doubt in myself thinking "these people (business owners) are way smarter than me, had better lifes than me, had more things in life, they have more courage, better upbringing, maybe its not for me, I'm not constructed like that, no matter what I do, I won't strike gold because I'm too stupid"

So its time for job, I kind of give up, I'm tired, I want peace and "normal" life, I think "maybe after working for sometime I will somehow invest that money"
But for almost 2,5 years I haven't achieved anything spectacular, so I doubt that having money will change that.

Entrepreneurship is not easy, thats why people prefer jobs.

 

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[DrkSide]

I doubt in myself thinking "these people (business owners) are way smarter than me, had better lifes than me, had more things in life, they have more courage, better upbringing, maybe its not for me, I'm not constructed like that, no matter what I do, I won't strike gold because I'm too stupid"

So its time for job, I kind of give up, I'm tired, I want peace and "normal" life, I think "maybe after working for sometime I will somehow invest that money"

I had and lost a couple businesses before 25. I did exactly what you did and gave up. Went to work at an auto shop, then for a government entity as a computer tech. After having a job for a couple of years the pain returned. Fighting the system every day because I did not like it.

I invested some of my money into a business. A little over a year and a half later I was able to quit my job.

Not everyone here hit a homerun the first time. In fact many of us have been exactly where this nurse was at some point. Instead of just dealing with the pain and going on about that "normal" life we decided to do something with the pain.

Reading the forum you get an overwhelming sense of accomplishment from others who are having success. You don't see the stories of failure as much as most that fail don't want to come back and admit it.

It is not the failure that will kill you, it is what you do after.

 

[rogen]

It is not the failure that will kill you, it is what you do after.

Thanks, my previous post was a bit of self loathing, I just took some sleep and I feel better now,

I agree on overwhelming success, plenty of threads and posts "I hit 5k a month" "10k a week" "no skills 2k a month" all looks easy
..but when you try for yourself, its a HUGE struggle, it's demotivating

 

[DrkSide]

Thanks, my previous post was a bit of self loathing, I just took some sleep and I feel better now,

We all have been there.

I agree on overwhelming success, plenty of threads and posts "I hit 5k a month" "10k a week" "no skills 2k a month" all looks easy
..but when you try for yourself, its a HUGE struggle, it's demotivating

Embrace the struggle! I struggled for years and still do. It is all part of the game.

This is the message that I get every time I startup my computer.

 

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[Weaponize]

When I was regularly employed I had a very hard time getting past the 2 year mark.

At 2 years, something inside me snaps and I can't take it any more. At 2 years I literally FEEL the drag of repetition.

That's funny. It's like we took a page out of the exact same book. I can't hold onto a professional job longer than 2 years. Now, 2 years is even a stretch...

 

[Deleted21961]

That's funny. It's like we took a page out of the exact same book. I can't hold onto a professional job longer than 2 years. Now, 2 years is even a stretch...

Same here. Though once it was exactly one week. ;D

 

[Snaphook]

Hey I recognize that view, Regis is a fairly large account for my slowlane job. Great post! Reminds me of my father in law who is always telling me he's been "workin for longer than you've been alive" and is proud of it. I grew up in small town MN and it was/is hard to get over that mindset for most people. Even with my parents starting and running a local gym it still didn't get through to me. I was absolutely stuck on the track of go to college, get a job... work and then..... no real plan.

 

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[SteveO]

Great post! The reflections of the masses can certainly be seen here.

I was having a conversation with my wife today around the topic of having jobs vs. running a business. It is my belief that the world would still function and perhaps be more productive if everyone found their niche and worked it. Of course this could not ever happen. Most people do not have the ability to run their own business.

Life is filled with opportunities though. People can still be happy and productive as employees. In this world, there is no stress around the tough daily business decisions or starving while starting. There is no wondering about the next sale or batch of sales. There is no inventory that needs to be purchased. No employees to direct that could have an affect on whether you survive the next year.

Sometimes, planning your next vacation or setting aside time for "bowling night" is a simple enough pleasure.

Of course that is not what we want here. But we are a different breed...

 

[DeletedUser394]

I live in a city that was built by oil. We've finally reached the breaking point with unsustainable oil prices, and hundreds of people are being laid off each and every day (1,200 were fired just yesterday as I recall).

The only thing worse then just going with the motion, is being in your bubble and then having that bubble burst.

 

[Paul David]

It's probably better that some people are like that @Vigilante otherwise who would do all my mundane day to day work whilst I travel the world looking for products to buy and having fun!

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

 

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[happybhoy]

They say a simple life is a happy life, but a simple life in my opinion will go very quickly.
I used to work in a potato packing factory. The place was mind numbing but there was one role that stood out for mundaneness.
The potato grading machine. Thousands of potatoes rolling past and you just picked out bad ones.
Whilst you were standing there time almost stood still, but the second the day was over it felt like you had only been there for an hour. It was horrible, literally felt like life was passing you by whilst you just stood there looking at potatoes.
There were 2 sisters who have been doing that job for 25 years, all I could think of is how quick their life must feel.

 

[AntEmpire]

When I was regularly employed I had a very hard time getting past the 2 year mark.

This is me all the way. I have never held a job beyond 1-2 years. My last job was the only job that came close. It ended a few days before my 3rd year anniversary.

My current job will only last a year. I can't do any more than that. And like you I don't know why I burn out so quickly with a job while others around me can go 5, 10, 15, 20+ years doing the same thing even when they themselves are unhappy.

I think until one of my entrepreneurship pursuits take off I will forever be a serial job hopper, but right now I'm still in the failing stage.