There are times when my wife wonders why I’m doing all this. Why would I try to keep up a schedule of working 40-50 hours at my day job, going to graduate school, and spending most of the rest of my free time on writing and building our website. She knows what I’m trying to do, but she just wonders sometimes. Recently I found out that my mother has been having chest pain, and has been going through a battery of heart tests to try to determine what the issue is. The other day she went through a cardiac catheterization, which is a pretty major heart test, to try to determine root cause. The good news is that they didn’t find any signs of blockage in the heart. The problem is that we still really don’t know what is causing her chest pains.
For me, anything that deals with my parent’s health is hard to handle on many levels. Part of it is because of some personal guilt I feel about being away from them for so much of my life. They were so good at making me independent that we’ve managed to live in different cities for almost all of my adult life. As I get older I realize how much I want them around, and how much I want them to be a part of the family that my wife and I are making on a more regular basis. They were such great parents, I know they’d make amazing grandparents to our children. I know that I’d have a lot of regret if they passed away without being to spend more time together, and I’ve been taking steps to make that better for the past couple years. Now that they’re planning on retiring in the city we live in, I’m really excited and can’t wait to have them around. We’re not sure exactly what will come of my Mom’s current health issues, but right now we’re confident that it’s not extremely serious. If that changes, there’s no telling what we’ll have to do as a family.
This latest incident with my Mom’s health is a prime example (and reason) of why I’m doing what I’m doing. My parents have worked extremely hard their whole life, and they’ve managed to build something really amazing for themselves. They basically came from nothing to being extremely well off, and that example has shaped my work ethic. I want to work just as hard as they have, but do it to build my own businesses instead of someone else’s. That’s the epiphany that I had about a year ago, and the driving factor is time. I don’t want to be tied to an 8 to 5 job five days a week. I don’t want PTO (paid time off) and vacation days to determine when I can go enjoy my life. Our workforce is constantly changing and is getting more competitive every day. I don’t want to kill myself to compete in a game that I don’t even really want to play.
So sure, you can say money is the driving factor, but only because having money gives you the freedom of time. I don’t want to wake up one day wondering where my life went because I was too busy working it away at a job that I hate. Even worse, I don’t want to miss out on those special moments with my family that make life worth living in the first place. If anything, those are the things I want to make happen more often and time can allow me to do that. That is why I continue to do what I do, because I know that if I put my heart into it I’ll be able to get us there. It just may take a little bit of that precious time.
