Futility Is Awesome!

There are a lot of things I'd rather be doing than my current career path. I'd really like to be a brewer, especially if it were my own brewpub or a really small boutique production brewery. I'd love to run a little restaurant that was only open three or four days a week. I wouldn't mind opening a bakery (my town doesn't even have one). I think I'd thrive as a travel writer, and I really wouldn't mind being a farmer free range, organic heritage poultry. I've actually got access to the land for pasture-raising turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens, and some experience with that on a small scale.

Despite those daydreams (or in the case of the brewery thing, night dreams are involved too), they'll never happen and I'm fully aware that, unless I win the lottery or inherit a ton of money from a wealthy relative I either didn't know I had or at least didn't know was that wealthy, I'll never take to risk to actually become any of those things. I just don't have the guts. My current job guarantees me a living wage in retirement if I can just make it 26 more years. It also requires no financial risk on my part. None of my "dream" jobs comes with much job security or anything resembling a pension plan that doesn't require me to trust the stock market to be able to afford to retire. And honestly, I'm not too keen on giving up my summers. You can't exactly shut down a restaurant or brewery for an extended period every year for me to go wandering off to random places. And as for the farm, it means I'd have to be making enough to afford trustworthy help to care for the business while I was gone and still have enough profit to be able to afford to go anywhere.

So I've resigned myself to remaining in the soul sucking career I've chosen so that I can retire safely at a relatively young age and have two months a year off to recharge so that my soul ends up only a little grayed instead of blackened by the time I'm 54 and can sign out for the last time. The ironic part is that I when I do finally retire and have the financial stability and time to take a risk on starting one of those businesses, I'll have no reason to bother. Why would I want to have any responsibilities when I finally don't have to. The only reason I have a job is because I have to have one to get money to live and play with. If I didn't have to work to make money, why would I want to tie myself down with a business that needs me to run it? I'd rather be able to do whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it.

My midlife crisis is SOOOO going to suck.

And the moral of the story, kids, is that you can't be whatever you want. You're probably either too stupid or too untalented for what you really want to do. If you take the risk, you'll probably fail. In the end, you'll settle for the safest next best thing. You can only hope that you won't spend too much time thinking about how you've settled. Resisting the futility is futile. Watch TV, ignore what's going on in the real world, convince yourself that your job is important or has any real value, and you'll be happy. A lot of people are critical of the masses, but maybe the masses have it right. They may be ignorant and deluded about themselves, but at least they don't know their life sucks.