There are a lot of weird things from my youth that have stuck with me. Things that I don’t think I understood when they happened so I filed their meaning under “to be determined.”
The Flashlight
When I was a teenager I told my dad something was wrong with the toilet. He had just fixed something with the plumbing about a week earlier. We lived in a double-wide and had laid brick around the bottom. To get to anything under the house you had to climb under and commando-crawl to the issue. It’s tight quarters but maneuverable.
Dad went out and checked on the problem. I went to whatever teen-boy activity I was engaged in. Probably playing my guitar or Team Fortress on my 56k internet connection. Thirty minutes later he came back inside and I asked him what the issue was. Something was wrong with the septic system. It was too much work for him to complete in the dark in a single night. He started walking to his room but before he reached his door he flung the plastic flashlight he was carrying at the kitchen floor and the sound of shattering glass and exploding plastic startled me. He slammed his bedroom door behind him.
Coming down from my shock I uttered to myself, “Now what did that help?” The plumbing was still shot and now we were down a flashlight. Completely irrational behavior.
The Wendy’s
I’m 27 now. When I moved into my townhouse I had to put up a lot of money quickly. Deposits, renter’s insurance, and first month’s rent crushed my bank account. On one of my first nights in the new place I had to stop at Wendy’s for dinner because my roommate and I hadn’t unpacked all our kitchen stuff yet. I was peeved to be eating Wendy’s because 1. it cost money and 2. it messed up my diet. But I was hungry so I got a grilled chicken meal with a diet Coke. I also stopped to get groceries.
I balanced the diet Coke and the Wendy’s bag on top of twelve rolls of toilet paper while I struggled with the lock for what felt like five minutes. Finally I opened the door and pushed my way inside. I took two steps inside before I tripped. I recovered my balance but I lost my drink and half my fries. The brown soda poured all over the white carpet and sea salt french fries scattered about. I couldn’t help what was done so I continued to the kitchen to find a towel to clean it up. But inside me something boiled over and before I reached the kitchen I hurled the toilet paper and my Wendy’s bag as hard as I could across the kitchen. I just had to. I was so mad.
Feeling Trapped
I wasn’t sure what it was that made my dad destroy a perfectly good flashlight. Maybe it was the frustration that he had just worked on that very same issue and it hadn’t been resolved. Maybe it was because he had to be up in a few hours to go to work, outside, for nine hours. He was a carpenter. He didn’t have benefits. At that time we were facing the housing crisis and work was scarce. There was cheaper labor around but Dad was good at what he did and his boss respected him so he had a job. Maybe it was his divorce with my mother, the weight of which I couldn’t understand at the time, that was stressing him.
Maybe it was all these things and the frustration of being stuck in the same place every day. Spinning wheels.
My dad grew up in a generation that was taught in order to make money you trade your hours for dollars. He wasn’t ever taught that it only takes a very basic plan to make his own money on the side, like I did or like my friend Donata did. Maybe if he had a couple more bucks he could have hired a plumber and that would be one less thing to worry about. Instead he was left to juggle all his problems himself. They say money can’t buy happiness but it knits a giant comfy blanket you can wrap up in called security.
I wasn’t sure why I hurled the Wendy’s bag that contained a perfectly good sandwich. It probably wasn’t the spill. Throwing the bag only added to the mess. Maybe I was frustrated because my bank account was tapped and I had to spend money on junk food that caused me to break my diet. Maybe I was frustrated because my job at the time was a dead end role. Maybe I was frustrated that no matter what I did, or how much money I made, I was ALWAYS BROKE. Maybe I just felt completely out of control of things that I felt should be in my control.
The struggle with the lock and the tumbling of my soda and fries was like a metaphor. I couldn’t even control the stuff in my arms. Dad threw the flashlight. I threw the Wendy’s bag. Two frustrated guys.
I don’t want to live like that.
Shrinking to Grow
There’s an expression in the financial world that stockholders rarely like to hear: “shrinking to grow.” What that means is a company is selling off a ton of its lower-producing assets and focusing on its core business. Why stakeholders don’t like it is that it means something the company tried had failed, or they are closing locations down because they have just lost a ton of money on them.
Think of yourself as a company. I had been putting all my time into lower producing extensions of Kyle Inc, like my stable job. It’s so much easier to take that regular, “good enough” pay than to build your own stream of income from the ground up and explore the infinite potential it could hold. I am “shrinking to grow.” I am cutting everything away and focusing on the core business of Kyle Inc. Think about your core business. How can you focus on your core competencies?
A paycheck is a trap. Whether you’re a carpenter, a salesman, or a doctor, it’s all the same. You get a predictable flow of cash, you keep up with the Jones’, you create a predictable line of credit and bills. And you live to hold on to STUFF. You don’t need stuff. You need freedom.
Freedom
Freedom means the real ability to make your own decisions. To work if you want to work, when you want to work, on whatever you want to work on. It’s not impossible. It’s not even uncommon. The disconnect is that we (the majority of people) have been taught one way of doing things (get a job) our whole lives and haven’t had our eyes opened to the potentials of another path- the path of entrepreneurship.
We have to unlearn what he have learned about how to measure “success.” Your job title should not determine whether you feel successful or not. Your feeling of success should derive from your ability to REALLY exercise your freedom. To just do what you want to do and not do what you don’t want to do.
My dad didn’t agree with my decision to quit my job the way that I did, but he didn’t oppose it. To this day, he still doesn’t have the answer for his own financial plight, but 52 years on this earth have taught him that his method, a steady paycheck, isn’t working.
Relying on a paycheck hasn’t given him freedom. His employers haven’t helped him to freedom and they never will. No employer and no paycheck will ever hand freedom over to you because in doing so they are handing you your emancipation from their control.
Freedom still exists- for those willing to take it.
You have to unlearn this belief that you are supposed to trade your hours for a preset number of dollars. The hamster wheel of a 9-5 isn’t the only way. That’s been brainwashed into your paradigm and it’s incomplete. There are other ways.
If you’ve ever wanted to hurl something across the room because you hit a breaking point- maybe your bank account is about empty, maybe your stuck in a job you don’t like but you spent all that time getting a degree, maybe just nothing seems to be going your way, it’s okay. You’re not alone. I’ve been there. Don’t sweat it. Don’t feel trapped because there are other options, like entrepreneurship. You’ve only been told half the story.
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