Come on, they even have that sexy magazine: Practical Accountant
No doubt. Even if you get to go to exciting places like Amsterdam instead of Ass Junction.
In a former life I was a secretary. Former life was so long ago that we still called them secretaries. I put a guy on a plane for a two week trip - business class. He flew from Minneapolis to Toyko for a meeting, went to Bangkok, Singapore … somewhere else is Asia, somewhere in India, then spent time in Paris, London and Dublin, before flying home - basically in two weeks he went around the world - he was either in meetings or on a plane or sleeping in a hotel room the whole time. This is the same guy who went to Paris six times before he had time to see the Eiffel Tower - he had the taxi drive by it because he had a few extra minutes.
That doesn’t mean its always horrible - I’ve had a great time on business trips. Meals on an expense account are really nice. And I’m lucky to have pleasant coworkers that keep me from eating alone in a hotel restaurant too often. But I’d rather be home in my own bed with my own family.
hey, how come no one mentioned me? I’m a professional photographer !
I served a six year apprenticeship, very similar to indentured servitude.
Worked in the fashion industry for a while, where your ass was always on the line, and where “beauty” became strange and unreal, and models would forget my name.
Then I went on to:
Business owner.
As RickJay said,
“Owning your own business sounds like a lot of fun until you do it. It’s an amazingly hard job with incredibly long hours, and if you do anything wrong you could ruin yourself.”
To the point where, today, some guy came up to me and told me he always wanted to be a photographer, because he “has a good eye”. and I almost spat out my coffee on his shoes.
Now, I work as an employee of a large and uncaring multinational corporation. I work at one of the satellite offices, by myself, in the dark, all day. I photograph forklifts, hand trucks, and shelving units. Well mostly, I listen to music and wonder if anybody is going to walk in today. I lock my legs, throw my arms around the tripod and try to get a little sleep.
The only consolation is that I get paid pretty well. I went balls to the walls and asked for an astronomical amount of money and they said yes without blinking an eye. But this makes me the exception to the rule regarding photographers. They are starving, and the industry is getting worse.
They do?
Royalty?
It’s a job I would not get for all the money in England plus a crown.
I am an extremely private person, I would have just killed myself if I had been born into some European Royal family or something.
I second what msmith says about trading. I know a bond trader. She’s handsomely paid to be chained to the phone and computer for hours at a time - can’t even leave her desk for lunch. And this is a fairly senior person in her group. For all I know she wears Depends too.
Let me add some more reasons why ‘professional gambler’ sucks:
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The boredom. The soul-crushing boredom. Being a good poker player means throwing away a lot of hands. You can go hours without playing.
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The people. There’s nothing like having some drunken lout blowing smoke in your face all night, berating you for not playing enough, and then beating you out of a $1000 pot with a 45-1 longshot and laughing in your face over it.
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The people. Watching people bet more money than they can afford and becoming totally stressed about it just gets to you after a while. You can tell they’re betting the rent money, and playing stupidly, but you just can’t say anything.
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The people. The flip side of the guy who beats you and laughs in your face is the guy who plays against you with a hopeless hand, loses, and throws his cards in your face or calls you an asshole or a lousy player for calling his obvious bluff on the river.
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The losing streaks. Everyone, no matter how good, goes through them. Tolerating the people and the atmosphere is okay when you’re pulling in the bucks, but go through a week or two of straight losses while putting up with the above, and you’ll be wishing you were doing anything else for a living.
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The losing streaks. There are days when you’re tired and burned out, and just want to stay home and watch a movie. But then you tell yourself you have to be disciplined and put in your hours, so you drive over to the casino - and lose. You would have been better off staying home and watching the movie. Do that for a few days straight, and you’ll hate the job.
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The hours. Poker is playing in the wee hours of the morning. That means you’re essentially working the graveyard shift, all the time. It plays havoc with your family life (or social life if you’re single).
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The stress. Your bankroll is always fluctuating. You never know how much you’re going to make in the next year. It’s always feast or famine. This puts tremendous stress on your family as well. Another aspect of that stress is that you start jealously guarding your bankroll, because it’s your lifeblood. You know that for every good day, there will be bad days. But that doesn’t make it easier to explain to your wife or husband (or yourself) that you really can’t afford that $50 item when you just made $2000 the previous night. But the downfall of many otherwise good gamblers is that when they make the big money they spend big, then when they lose the big money, they are wiped out.