And just happened to be browsing the board today, saw this thread on the first page of IMHO, and thought “holy crap!” 
I went to medical school and am now in residency. It’s a long story.
True. I just told a new project manager about that company just yesterday as a warning. He didn’t believe that any reasonably famous company could be run that way but we both know it is a fact :). The company I currently work at is fairly closely aligned with what I did in graduate school, very respected and prestigious, and as strict as they come but it still isn’t nearly as hard as grad school was.
Going to medical school is an excellent way to avoid long work hours.
It is amazing how some people’s goals shift over time. All I know right now is that I am tired of working in corporate America even though I don’t really dislike the work when I actually get to do it and I am pretty good at it. My plan is moving to Costa Rica in 11 years. It isn’t a pipe dream either. My father and brother want to move there too. We have the money for it and are going to look at locations if not specific properties in May. I just have to wait until my daughters get out of high school. I will still do something while I am there but it won’t be before 10 am ever and hopefully no more than four days a week. I can always whore myself out as a remote or local technology consultant if I need more money.
I think one would simply have to combine frugality with a change of attitude, to reach the OP’s goal.
You’d need to live very frugally, perhaps exchange some yard work for a rent reduction, like that. Then you’d need to apply yourself to acquiring some part time jobs that fit into the lifestyle you liked such as walking a few dogs in the park 3 mornings a week. Cut a couple of lawns. Shovel some snow from time to time. Let people know you can be hired out to help with tasks, do odd jobs, etc.
Instead of working you simply need to view it as a ever changing series of challenges or learning experiences. You needn’t take on anything that you don’t fancy, or is too hard,etc. You could do as much or as little as you pleased, at the hours that suited you. And it wouldn’t be far removed from days spent puttering, lots of free time, suitable hours, etc. You could probably get by nicely and be happy too!
I have a friend in Oakland who is a tree trimmer. He had a doctorate in something or other. He has wealthy clients who just love to hear his take on enviremental issues and no telling what else. He charges a premium because he uses all hand tools. I would guess he spends at least 70% of his time hiking the Sierras.
I think I’m not alone in saying that I’d LOVE to hear even small tidbits of that story. I also think you win for best follow-up to a zombie thread EVER!
Wow didn’t know the op was ten yrs ago and what a shift to where arcite is now,
I have a story too and I’ll post more after I do my ten hr shift today. Yup that relates to how I fantasize about not working.
Just a mini story before I go, I’m a worker drone bee, and one day I visited a dermatology office where they had hour lunches and off half day Fridays and closed on weekends, then thought man if only I went to medical school to get into that field and work hrs like that. Not to work as the secretary but be a doctor with specialist salary with those office hrs.
+1
I would especially like to hear the OP’s perceptions of his/her younger self.
Buy an RV
- Rely on soup kitchens/food drives/churches for food
- Fast food restaurants for bathroom use
- Shower at college gyms and other accessible places
- Medicaid for health insurance
- Do research studies [either online or through colleges] for side-money, most pay $10-$30 and last about an hour.
Just read a book last night of a scenario of where a dad wanted 3 weeks vacation but can’t afford it and was essentially a slave to his job.
Back to where someone referred to having a high paying professional job and being frugal, I hope I can honestly quit in a few more years. I have worked 12 yrs and I’m already burnt out. I already got a taste of working part-time in last few years and it was freeing…left time for me to do freelance writing, shop whenever and not worry about my job performance. I’m back to full-time again on basis that I really could go back and work and save money, and Ive just about had it for corporate america and meeting metrics and not taking vacation time on basis of not being updated on new updates in processing. It has been a relief that today was my last day before one week of vacation.
I guess this was the American way, corporates using u up and spittting you out when you can produce the work. I’ll offer more posting here, when I’m not beat for working today.
One word: disability.
I believe there is a place where work = play (therefore just fun) and I believe I am very close to that paying quite a bit ‘in excess’. But that involves knowing yourself, what your passion is and following it despite what it looks like.
So find and follow what you love, sounds like you don’t have any real alternatives, so why not.
Why would you want to live without working?
Why would you not? If your position was the common one, there wouldn’t be lotteries.
I took a position last year as a trophy wife. Its been pretty sweet.
I already had the wife position - I just got promoted by my husband.
The old unemployment dodge used to be popular. Work just long enough to qualify. Get laid off and draw unemployment. Get a job when the benefit runs out. Repeat the cycle.
I have wondered how these people work the system. They can’t just quit a job and get unemployment. Or do something bad and get fired. It has to be a lay off.
A lot of work is seasonal or cyclical. The auto factories in Detroit used to have hiring booms and the layoffs even during the old days. Construction work, tourism, hospitality, agriculture, all are seasonal, at least in some places, although I don’t know if they’re conducive to collecting unemployment.
I went into psychiatry, so I suppose you could call it one big reaction formation.
Telling my story would feel like hijacking the thread (but can an OP hijack his own thread? Somehow it doesn’t feel like “my” thread anymore since 12 years has passed) and it’s too complicated for me to get out all at once anyway. I will say that I certainly don’t see the world the way I did back then, though I wish I did, but the incongruity between seeing the world that way and the way the world really is was making me unhappy.
I think I realized this at some level, and what I was going for by going to medical school was a “fake-it-till-you-make-it” approach toward becoming a more high-achieving person. I mentioned in the OP that I was labeled a “gifted child” in elementary school. Many of the same cohort of my classmates went on to Ivy League schools, or Duke, Stanford, etc., and became doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. I wanted to prove I could do the same thing.
There was also the female factor. I had a foolish crush on a girl, and I wanted to impress her. I thought pursuing medicine might do it. She did date me for a while, but broke up with me before I even applied to medical school. I kept going with it partially because I thought I’d meet other women who’d be impressed by it, and thought I’d be Mr. Suburban Dad by now. Yeah, that didn’t work.
What I wanted out of life when I posted the OP… due to being a shy, timid kid, and a contemplative dreamer, I had developed the idea sometime in adolescence that the meaning of life was to be found in thinking like a traditionalistic Christian British literary intellectual, along the lines of J.R.R. Tolkein, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. What I would have liked if I had not had to work was sort of to establish my own little world where I drank in the Great Books of Western Civilization, and where nothing in life ever changed. (Think of Tolkein’s Hobbits: they lived happily in the Shire, basically just hanging out, tending their gardens, and smoking pipes.) I now realize that wouldn’t have been possible.
I did find it difficult to be motivated in medical school, though I made it through. Honestly, part of the reason I chose psychiatry is that it’s probably the field in which you least have to know all that anatomy, physiology, etc. that formed the basis of our classroom years in medical school. Am I happy with it? Content, perhaps. I think of myself like the lady in the short story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. Content, perhaps, but it’s a contentedness reached only through a long, arduous process I’ve realized in retrospect I didn’t need to go through to achieve it.
Congratulations. Much better than homelessness!
Regards,
Shodan