Warning: This is lengthy, but not boring. Scout's honor.
I'm not sure how to start this thread, so I'll just jump in - I'm 35 (36 in February), I've got an awesome wife and three amazing young daughters (ages 8, 3, and 1) that are the light of my world, and I feel like my life is going nowhere in terms of my career or my ability to provide them the life and the future I want to provide them. It's the paradox of having the family life you always wanted, but the professional life not achieving 1/10000th of its potential.
In The Beginning (The Slowlane Begins)
On the outside, I don't have it so bad - from the age of 14, when I first laid eyes on my friend Ty's new Acer Aspire (486DX CPU and 33Mhz baby!), I knew what I wanted to do for a living - work in the world of computers and tech. Ever since I graduated vo-tech school when I was 20, that's what I've been doing, and I do it well. We live in Southeast Kansas, where I make just over $41,000 (which for the area and my knowledge level is pretty darn good), and with my wife recently jumping over from Missouri to Kansas to teach, we're netting about just over $80,000 before taxes. It's slow lane to a tee, but it pays the bills.
The problem is, while I've had multiple employers over the last ten years, my job has been literally the exact same - I'm the help desk bitch. I've a very competent, well liked, and skilled help desk bitch, but a bitch nonetheless. A big part of this is me - I've failed to do much to increase my intrinsic value in the last decade. The first five years was due to comfort - I felt like I was still getting new challenges, I enjoyed what I did, and was overall very content. When I hit 30, that changed. I became bored at my job as sole the IT guy at a very good manufacturer, as it wasn't offering anything new or challenging anymore - I was just collecting a check. It was out of that malaise that I made the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.
Hasty Choices and Bad Bacon (Kicked to the Sidewalk)
In the fall of 2010, I started actively looking for a new job with new challenges. I started way too late - I should have started searching about six months earlier, before I had completely burned out of my current job. As such, I was ripe to pick the first thing that sounded good that came my way. I interviewed with a bank in Neosho, MO, and the interview went AWESOME. They answered all of my questions the right way, including the critical one: How much turnover do you guys have? The IT Manager and his Network Admin both stated that they had both been with the Bank between seven and ten years, and that turnover wasn't an issue there. What they failed to mention was that I would be the third person to have the position I was interviewing for in less than three years, and that my two predecessors had not left voluntarily. Had they told me this, I would have seen the red flag and jumped, but they didn't, I didn't prod (I was just happy to be having a good interview), and 24 hours later they offered me the job on a silver platter. Just under three months later, I was unemployed for the first time in my life, and devastated.
That should have been the time I totally re-evaluated my life and its direction, but I didn't. I felt like a failure not having a check to provide for my wife and then four year old daughter, so I hit the ground running trying to find a new job, thankful for the unemployment assistance I got from the state, and the assistance my father was giving me (more on him later)... I scored a good job as the sole on-site IT guy for a bacon manufacturer in Frontenac, where we were living at the time. It was a temp to hire - my first 90 days would be working for Manpower at a reduced hourly wage, and after that I would be on full time at $39,000 a year (a pay raise and no commute - w00t!). Unfortunately on my third day, after a very strange conversation with a fellow employee who made it clear *he* wanted to be the IT guy, I had a complete psychological breakdown/panic attack, convinced I was going to be fired all over again, and quit in tears. The bank had done way more damage than I had thought possible.
Rebuilt Only To Be Re-Broken (Beware Evil Androids)
I have a good therapist who I had known since I was 13 (a long story for another day), and worked through a lot of the pent up issues the bank incident had caused. I couldn't get unemployment anymore, but thanks to my wife's small income, and (again) help from my dad, we made it through. I got a part time job doing PC Repair for the Geek Squad at the Joplin Best Buy, which wasn't well paying, but was far from terrible, and started to rebuild my confidence. A couple of months after that, I got a full time job with a great manufacturer founded by a fastlaner, and one of the most good and decent men I have ever met. I had to take a pay cut from where I had been before the bank incident, but life was getting back to normal, and I had a great boss. And then, four months in, he left for San Antonio to marry the girl he had been long distance dating for the year prior. I was overlooked to take his IT Manager position (I was well liked, but again - depth of knowledge and lack of intrinsic value kicked my butt), and in his place they hired a man who was very hard working and technically proficient, but had zero communication skills, zero people skills, was a complete control freak, and well...an a**hole. In terms of both his appearance and demeanor, the closest equivalent I can think of is Lore, the evil version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Every responsibility I had was taken from me, since he could trust no one to do even the most basic work but himself. I got so hard up for something to do other than surf the web, I started hitting up other department managers for any non-IT related work they could pass my way. The only emotion he showed on occasion was anger, usually that I had not picked up on something he wanted me to do that he had never actually communicated to me in person or over e-mail. Almost exactly a year into my time there, on the day before Thanksgiving of 2012, the managers all grilled up sirloin steaks and all of the fixings for the employees at our month company lunch/meeting. It was a great meal, made even greater by the VERY generous Christmas bonuses handed out afterwards, and I returned to my desk full and feeling good. Immediately my boss asked me to shut the door. Uh-oh...what was coming now? He asked me to sit in front of his desk. "What can you do that someone I could hire for minimum wage couldn't!?" he asked, loudly. I was blindsided. All I could do was stutter. He then went on to rip me for taking too long with some cabling I had to run that morning (which I had politely asked him for assistance with specifically for the purpose of expediting its completion), and just tore me to shreds. I was dumbfounded. I drove home, a 32 year old man, bawling. The next day was the family Thanksgiving, which I had invited the whole family to, as we were now living in Uniontown, I small town not far from where I grew up that I love (more on that later as well), and much of my family lived in the same area. I spent the entire day in my bedroom in bed, convinced there was something fundamentally broken with me, and that I had been incredibly selfish to marry my wife and have a child with her when I was a useless failure that couldn't support them. My dad encouraged me to go to the HR Manager the next Monday, so I made arrangements to do so.
Back To School, Then Back To The Helpdesk
That following Monday morning, I met with the HR Manager before work - I told him the whole story, and how it was an escalating pattern that I was no longer able to deal with, and that while I as hesitant to use the word, the post-Thanksgiving lunch incident couldn't be described as anything but bullying (even my father, a pretty world hardened, middle aged man, had used that term). The HR Manager told me he disagreed, and that he didn't feel that was bullying. He then called in my manager, who blatantly lied about the entire incident ("Well, that's not *exactly* what I said", etc). The HR Manager was *still* taking his side. So I walked out.
I had been pondering going back to school and getting an actual degree ever since the bank incident, but the desire to support my family couple with the selfish desire to continue to support my Blu-Ray and video game habit led me to stay the course. Now I had no excuse. In January I started classes at a nearby community college, where I had already taken some online courses while at the job I had left the bank for.
If I piled on the hours, I could graduate with an Associate's In Network Administration in a year and a half, and I was game. I had feared college (well, namely college algebra) for a long, long time, and it was time to face my fears, achieve something I had always wanted to achieve but never thought I could, and *hopefully* increase my intrinsic value.
Well, two out of three ain't bad. I worked hard, got the degree (and aced my feared nemesis College Algebra), but the intrinsic value thing? Yeah, not so much. While the head of the IT/CIS Department was a passionate and gifted programmer, he knew less about Network Administration than me, and I only knew the bare basics. Network Admin II and III were free sessions where we did whatever we wanted - he couldn't teach what he didn't know. I self-studied MCSA material, while my classmates mostly did homework or surfed the web. In terms of increasing intrinsic value, aside from the value of having the degree on my resume, aside from some basic C++ and VB programming, it didn't do much to enhance my career prospects.
As graduation approached, I interviewed for and was offered three jobs, two of which offered steep pay cuts ($30,000?! I know this is SE Kansas, but REALLY?!), and the third, the one I currently work at, offered $40,000, which was the most I had ever been offered. The downside is that while they value me, and I am good at my job, upward mobility is pretty nill (I've been promoted to oversee/manage the Help Desk, but that's about as far as I am likely to go with my current skillset).
Where I Am Now, And Where I Want To Go
So, here I am, basically at the same place that I started 10 years ago, though making about $6000 a year more, and I now have a family of five. I work for great people and a great company, but I'm going nowhere, and driving 50 miles each way. I am starting online classes at Western Governor's University on January 1st to get my Bachelor's in Network Administration. Part of the curriculum will give me literally all of the Microsoft Certifications I want to achieve, and some others that would just be handy to know and have. After listening to the audiobook of the TMF , I know intrinsic value is the wrong approach to wealth, but I really want to do this, plus it will deeply widen the type of clients I can take in should I start my own business again - I ran a repair shop in my hometown for three years, but left in 2005 due to lack of income. I just didn't have the drive, maturity, or skills at the time to make it work.
I've had this feeling in the back of my head, particularly as I've met more and more fastlaners in my life (you'd be surprised how many there are around you, even in a place like southeast Kansas), that I had the potential and ability to do great things. I passed it off as wishful thinking until I listened to this book. Now I want to act. Given the family of five, ditching the 9 to 5 right off the bat isn't going to cut it, but I can start working towards that. That said, I want the fast lane, and for two primary reasons.
1) Philanthropy
If I had a blank check from God, what would I do? I'd be a philanthropist. I spent ages 25-29 on the City Commission of my hometown, and I realized something serving both in it and at my local church - money can't buy happiness, but it can solve problems. There are a lot of great people and groups trying to do great things, and what can kill there efforts is rarely lack of effort or passion, but simple lack of funding. For instance, in nearby Pittsburg, KS, the SEK-CAP shelter had to close its doors due to state budget cuts last year. This was not just a port in a storm homeless shelter, but a place where people (particularly families with kids) could go to get a roof over their head and some food in their stomach while they worked through programs that got them back on their feet into self-sufficient, productive members of society. I could go on and on with things that have popped into my head over the last few years like this, but I won't bore you more than I already have.
2) My Dad
My dad turned 60 this year, and has worked his a$$ off for literally my entire existence. He makes great pay, but has miserable hours and lots of travel (through Western Kansas no less - YUCK). I think he's also buried in parasitic debt. Not for stuff for himself, but his kids (me included) and, if I'm being honest, my mom. My dad is the type who will never retire - if he could quit his job, he'd just do construction for fun (he's the son of a contractor - his idea of a fun weekend is re-siding the house- no joke). I'd like for him to have the freedom to do whatever he wants by the time he turns 66. I would say 65, but he and I are both gonna have a birthday in February, and being wealthy enough to do this in five years seems outlandish enough, much less four. That said, I believe I have the ability within me to do it, and, for the first time, the maturity and wisdom.
The Tools At My Disposal
1) I'm pretty good with technology. I'm an IT guy by trade, so I better be, right? The one caveat to this is programming. Aside from the VB and C++ classes I took at the aforementioned community college. I've got no knowledge of web development or coding, which I get the feeling I will need to make the fastlane.
2) I've been told I'm a good writer. By the time you've gotten to this point in my post, you might not agree.
3) I can do this - it won't be overnight, but I won't be in my dad's shoes when I am his age, either. I'm tired of the 5 for 2 trade when my family is the one that takes the brunt of it.
I Need Input
1) What are some goals or projects those of you who have succeeded or are in the process of succeeding think I should take on?
2) My current job isn't exactly fulfilling, but it treats me well and pays me better than most around here. The downside is the commute. Would it be worth taking a pay cut and a quality of employer cut to find a job that doesn't require two hours a day in a car? A day job is going to be my reality for a while due to the responsibilities I have, but should I sacrifice my current one for one that frees those two hours back up? Currently my commute is Podcast/Audiobook University.
3) What resources should I utlilize? I listened to Pat Flynn's three Passive Income For Beginners podcasts and they were great. He recommends Internet Business Mastery Academy, which I have been perusing. I've got The Four Hour Work week queued up on Audible, but have not yet started.
Any pointers, tips, or advice would be helpful. If you somehow made is this far, thanks!
Nick
I'm not sure how to start this thread, so I'll just jump in - I'm 35 (36 in February), I've got an awesome wife and three amazing young daughters (ages 8, 3, and 1) that are the light of my world, and I feel like my life is going nowhere in terms of my career or my ability to provide them the life and the future I want to provide them. It's the paradox of having the family life you always wanted, but the professional life not achieving 1/10000th of its potential.
In The Beginning (The Slowlane Begins)
On the outside, I don't have it so bad - from the age of 14, when I first laid eyes on my friend Ty's new Acer Aspire (486DX CPU and 33Mhz baby!), I knew what I wanted to do for a living - work in the world of computers and tech. Ever since I graduated vo-tech school when I was 20, that's what I've been doing, and I do it well. We live in Southeast Kansas, where I make just over $41,000 (which for the area and my knowledge level is pretty darn good), and with my wife recently jumping over from Missouri to Kansas to teach, we're netting about just over $80,000 before taxes. It's slow lane to a tee, but it pays the bills.
The problem is, while I've had multiple employers over the last ten years, my job has been literally the exact same - I'm the help desk bitch. I've a very competent, well liked, and skilled help desk bitch, but a bitch nonetheless. A big part of this is me - I've failed to do much to increase my intrinsic value in the last decade. The first five years was due to comfort - I felt like I was still getting new challenges, I enjoyed what I did, and was overall very content. When I hit 30, that changed. I became bored at my job as sole the IT guy at a very good manufacturer, as it wasn't offering anything new or challenging anymore - I was just collecting a check. It was out of that malaise that I made the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.
Hasty Choices and Bad Bacon (Kicked to the Sidewalk)
In the fall of 2010, I started actively looking for a new job with new challenges. I started way too late - I should have started searching about six months earlier, before I had completely burned out of my current job. As such, I was ripe to pick the first thing that sounded good that came my way. I interviewed with a bank in Neosho, MO, and the interview went AWESOME. They answered all of my questions the right way, including the critical one: How much turnover do you guys have? The IT Manager and his Network Admin both stated that they had both been with the Bank between seven and ten years, and that turnover wasn't an issue there. What they failed to mention was that I would be the third person to have the position I was interviewing for in less than three years, and that my two predecessors had not left voluntarily. Had they told me this, I would have seen the red flag and jumped, but they didn't, I didn't prod (I was just happy to be having a good interview), and 24 hours later they offered me the job on a silver platter. Just under three months later, I was unemployed for the first time in my life, and devastated.
That should have been the time I totally re-evaluated my life and its direction, but I didn't. I felt like a failure not having a check to provide for my wife and then four year old daughter, so I hit the ground running trying to find a new job, thankful for the unemployment assistance I got from the state, and the assistance my father was giving me (more on him later)... I scored a good job as the sole on-site IT guy for a bacon manufacturer in Frontenac, where we were living at the time. It was a temp to hire - my first 90 days would be working for Manpower at a reduced hourly wage, and after that I would be on full time at $39,000 a year (a pay raise and no commute - w00t!). Unfortunately on my third day, after a very strange conversation with a fellow employee who made it clear *he* wanted to be the IT guy, I had a complete psychological breakdown/panic attack, convinced I was going to be fired all over again, and quit in tears. The bank had done way more damage than I had thought possible.
Rebuilt Only To Be Re-Broken (Beware Evil Androids)
I have a good therapist who I had known since I was 13 (a long story for another day), and worked through a lot of the pent up issues the bank incident had caused. I couldn't get unemployment anymore, but thanks to my wife's small income, and (again) help from my dad, we made it through. I got a part time job doing PC Repair for the Geek Squad at the Joplin Best Buy, which wasn't well paying, but was far from terrible, and started to rebuild my confidence. A couple of months after that, I got a full time job with a great manufacturer founded by a fastlaner, and one of the most good and decent men I have ever met. I had to take a pay cut from where I had been before the bank incident, but life was getting back to normal, and I had a great boss. And then, four months in, he left for San Antonio to marry the girl he had been long distance dating for the year prior. I was overlooked to take his IT Manager position (I was well liked, but again - depth of knowledge and lack of intrinsic value kicked my butt), and in his place they hired a man who was very hard working and technically proficient, but had zero communication skills, zero people skills, was a complete control freak, and well...an a**hole. In terms of both his appearance and demeanor, the closest equivalent I can think of is Lore, the evil version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Every responsibility I had was taken from me, since he could trust no one to do even the most basic work but himself. I got so hard up for something to do other than surf the web, I started hitting up other department managers for any non-IT related work they could pass my way. The only emotion he showed on occasion was anger, usually that I had not picked up on something he wanted me to do that he had never actually communicated to me in person or over e-mail. Almost exactly a year into my time there, on the day before Thanksgiving of 2012, the managers all grilled up sirloin steaks and all of the fixings for the employees at our month company lunch/meeting. It was a great meal, made even greater by the VERY generous Christmas bonuses handed out afterwards, and I returned to my desk full and feeling good. Immediately my boss asked me to shut the door. Uh-oh...what was coming now? He asked me to sit in front of his desk. "What can you do that someone I could hire for minimum wage couldn't!?" he asked, loudly. I was blindsided. All I could do was stutter. He then went on to rip me for taking too long with some cabling I had to run that morning (which I had politely asked him for assistance with specifically for the purpose of expediting its completion), and just tore me to shreds. I was dumbfounded. I drove home, a 32 year old man, bawling. The next day was the family Thanksgiving, which I had invited the whole family to, as we were now living in Uniontown, I small town not far from where I grew up that I love (more on that later as well), and much of my family lived in the same area. I spent the entire day in my bedroom in bed, convinced there was something fundamentally broken with me, and that I had been incredibly selfish to marry my wife and have a child with her when I was a useless failure that couldn't support them. My dad encouraged me to go to the HR Manager the next Monday, so I made arrangements to do so.
Back To School, Then Back To The Helpdesk
That following Monday morning, I met with the HR Manager before work - I told him the whole story, and how it was an escalating pattern that I was no longer able to deal with, and that while I as hesitant to use the word, the post-Thanksgiving lunch incident couldn't be described as anything but bullying (even my father, a pretty world hardened, middle aged man, had used that term). The HR Manager told me he disagreed, and that he didn't feel that was bullying. He then called in my manager, who blatantly lied about the entire incident ("Well, that's not *exactly* what I said", etc). The HR Manager was *still* taking his side. So I walked out.
I had been pondering going back to school and getting an actual degree ever since the bank incident, but the desire to support my family couple with the selfish desire to continue to support my Blu-Ray and video game habit led me to stay the course. Now I had no excuse. In January I started classes at a nearby community college, where I had already taken some online courses while at the job I had left the bank for.
If I piled on the hours, I could graduate with an Associate's In Network Administration in a year and a half, and I was game. I had feared college (well, namely college algebra) for a long, long time, and it was time to face my fears, achieve something I had always wanted to achieve but never thought I could, and *hopefully* increase my intrinsic value.
Well, two out of three ain't bad. I worked hard, got the degree (and aced my feared nemesis College Algebra), but the intrinsic value thing? Yeah, not so much. While the head of the IT/CIS Department was a passionate and gifted programmer, he knew less about Network Administration than me, and I only knew the bare basics. Network Admin II and III were free sessions where we did whatever we wanted - he couldn't teach what he didn't know. I self-studied MCSA material, while my classmates mostly did homework or surfed the web. In terms of increasing intrinsic value, aside from the value of having the degree on my resume, aside from some basic C++ and VB programming, it didn't do much to enhance my career prospects.
As graduation approached, I interviewed for and was offered three jobs, two of which offered steep pay cuts ($30,000?! I know this is SE Kansas, but REALLY?!), and the third, the one I currently work at, offered $40,000, which was the most I had ever been offered. The downside is that while they value me, and I am good at my job, upward mobility is pretty nill (I've been promoted to oversee/manage the Help Desk, but that's about as far as I am likely to go with my current skillset).
Where I Am Now, And Where I Want To Go
So, here I am, basically at the same place that I started 10 years ago, though making about $6000 a year more, and I now have a family of five. I work for great people and a great company, but I'm going nowhere, and driving 50 miles each way. I am starting online classes at Western Governor's University on January 1st to get my Bachelor's in Network Administration. Part of the curriculum will give me literally all of the Microsoft Certifications I want to achieve, and some others that would just be handy to know and have. After listening to the audiobook of the TMF , I know intrinsic value is the wrong approach to wealth, but I really want to do this, plus it will deeply widen the type of clients I can take in should I start my own business again - I ran a repair shop in my hometown for three years, but left in 2005 due to lack of income. I just didn't have the drive, maturity, or skills at the time to make it work.
I've had this feeling in the back of my head, particularly as I've met more and more fastlaners in my life (you'd be surprised how many there are around you, even in a place like southeast Kansas), that I had the potential and ability to do great things. I passed it off as wishful thinking until I listened to this book. Now I want to act. Given the family of five, ditching the 9 to 5 right off the bat isn't going to cut it, but I can start working towards that. That said, I want the fast lane, and for two primary reasons.
1) Philanthropy
If I had a blank check from God, what would I do? I'd be a philanthropist. I spent ages 25-29 on the City Commission of my hometown, and I realized something serving both in it and at my local church - money can't buy happiness, but it can solve problems. There are a lot of great people and groups trying to do great things, and what can kill there efforts is rarely lack of effort or passion, but simple lack of funding. For instance, in nearby Pittsburg, KS, the SEK-CAP shelter had to close its doors due to state budget cuts last year. This was not just a port in a storm homeless shelter, but a place where people (particularly families with kids) could go to get a roof over their head and some food in their stomach while they worked through programs that got them back on their feet into self-sufficient, productive members of society. I could go on and on with things that have popped into my head over the last few years like this, but I won't bore you more than I already have.
2) My Dad
My dad turned 60 this year, and has worked his a$$ off for literally my entire existence. He makes great pay, but has miserable hours and lots of travel (through Western Kansas no less - YUCK). I think he's also buried in parasitic debt. Not for stuff for himself, but his kids (me included) and, if I'm being honest, my mom. My dad is the type who will never retire - if he could quit his job, he'd just do construction for fun (he's the son of a contractor - his idea of a fun weekend is re-siding the house- no joke). I'd like for him to have the freedom to do whatever he wants by the time he turns 66. I would say 65, but he and I are both gonna have a birthday in February, and being wealthy enough to do this in five years seems outlandish enough, much less four. That said, I believe I have the ability within me to do it, and, for the first time, the maturity and wisdom.
The Tools At My Disposal
1) I'm pretty good with technology. I'm an IT guy by trade, so I better be, right? The one caveat to this is programming. Aside from the VB and C++ classes I took at the aforementioned community college. I've got no knowledge of web development or coding, which I get the feeling I will need to make the fastlane.
2) I've been told I'm a good writer. By the time you've gotten to this point in my post, you might not agree.
3) I can do this - it won't be overnight, but I won't be in my dad's shoes when I am his age, either. I'm tired of the 5 for 2 trade when my family is the one that takes the brunt of it.
I Need Input
1) What are some goals or projects those of you who have succeeded or are in the process of succeeding think I should take on?
2) My current job isn't exactly fulfilling, but it treats me well and pays me better than most around here. The downside is the commute. Would it be worth taking a pay cut and a quality of employer cut to find a job that doesn't require two hours a day in a car? A day job is going to be my reality for a while due to the responsibilities I have, but should I sacrifice my current one for one that frees those two hours back up? Currently my commute is Podcast/Audiobook University.
3) What resources should I utlilize? I listened to Pat Flynn's three Passive Income For Beginners podcasts and they were great. He recommends Internet Business Mastery Academy, which I have been perusing. I've got The Four Hour Work week queued up on Audible, but have not yet started.
Any pointers, tips, or advice would be helpful. If you somehow made is this far, thanks!
Nick
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