Success

Had a great conversation with my friend last night about success and money.

I was telling him how I have a fear that success will turn me into a douche and this affects my own motivations. I am fully aware its bad mental programming and not at all based in reality. Ive actually read about something called the fear of success and its a pretty common thing for a lot of people.

My friend said something that made sense to me. He said first off you never really have money. You don't really own anything when you think about it. You have money flowing through you at varying amounts throughout your life. Some people find a way to make a lot flow through them. Some hardly any. If you have a lot of money flowing through you, you can choose to do some amazing things with it, both for yourself and for other people.

But its so easy to look at it in archetypes. The Gordon Gecko, greedy soulless twat crushing everyone in his way or the peaceful artist happy with nothing and living on pure existentialism. Both are lifestyles I don't want.

The truth of the matter is entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. And I realize how limited my thinking is sometimes.

I know I am sitting on a great opportunity with my profession. I have a company thrilled to have me on board because I am making them a ton of money. If I can stay motivated, fight the loneliness of self employment, and work hard I can hit my six figure goal well before I am 35. But thats just it. It has to be more than just a figure. I have to decide what kind of person I want to be. What kind of things I will do with this income. Who I can help. The experiences I can have that I couldnt have otherwise. Because without these things it just becomes an empty figure that will only bring me down when I hit it and realize I have no real motivation to have it in the first place.

As far as who to help I have an idea as to where my heart is. I have a soft spot for old people living their final days in either bad nursing home conditions or in abject isolation. The stories of old people trying to befriend telemarketers because they have no one else to talk with absolutely levels me. I was almost crying as I typed that sentence. I think that emotion holds an answer as to where I can turn my attention. I'm not sure how best to go about it exactly, but knowing I am making a persons old age less lonely or painful is something worth looking into.

As far as personal experiences, the big house and giant television sounds so vapid and awful. Id rather have several small places around the world than one giant house here in Austin. That would be my idea of wealthy living. The ability to live comfortably, not lavishly, in several locations throughout the world and being able to take a handful of people with me as much as possible. Paying my friends employers to let me snatch them away to hang glide in Spain for awhile or something awesome like that.

Those are the thoughts I need to hold on to when I'm sitting here at this computer thinking to myself what the hell I want out of it.