Late Intro

[Deleted19242]

Hi everyone, I first registered when I finished TMF a couple years ago. Many things in the book resonated with me at the time, though I was still living at home working retail making peanuts. I put my fastlane plans on hold to acquire a bit of capital first.

Hearing about the boom in Alberta I packed my bags and got into a trade. Alberta was difficult for me, I never felt like I belonged. Coming from a big city in BC it seemed as if I had gone back a couple decades and the winters were harsh. My plan was to finish my apprenticeship, join the union and work up north for months then take a lengthy vacation to start a business. The was when oil was high and jobs were plenty.

Well it came crashing down shortly after and although I had a job in town, I was laid off when construction completed. I decided to finish the rest of my trade school during this time. I found a job up north after I finished and made good money, but was promptly laid off after 1 month along with 100s of others. Most big projects were starting wrapping up too.

I had just re-read TMF again. What the hell happened to me? I feel as if I had taken a big detour in the slowlane and the fastlane is millions of miles away. I had spent the past 4-5 years listening to people telling me what to do that I had lost all direction and creativity. Sometimes I'd spent months on end just doing the same task over and over, but I'd justify it by telling myself I was earning "hours" towards my apprenticeship. Welp those "hours", more like my life, are not coming back. When I was working up north I would see old tradesmen with a bad shoulder, bad back, bad hip, and/or bad knees. Our welder would start the day walking with a slight limp and by the end of the day he would just hobbling. He was taken to the hospital, last I heard he was doing well.

I am now back at home, where I wanted leave in the first place. It's nice living rent-free, but I need my independence. I'm thinking of taking most of my TFSA out and leaving for somewhere warm when winter comes. I don't know what I'll be doing but it'll probably be something web related, I've been dabbling in web development on and off. I have lessons on freecodecamp I can go back to and continue. Gotta learn skills and take massive action.

I'm nervous, I don't know how things are going to turn out. Apprenticeships have a defined path - go to school for a bit then go back to work, repeat. This fastlane stuff I'm not too confident myself, sounds like I'll be throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall and see what sticks. But it sure beats a life of mediocrity. Maybe I've been playing too safe all along, maybe I need to take more risks. I'll take this risk.

 

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