Why You Should Work Yourself to Death…

Bones to bury... shoes to eat...

It’s late, or maybe it’s early. Either way, you’re tired.

Don’t worry. If you can make it to 5:30pm on Friday you’ll be sitting pretty looking forward to another weekend. If you’re like most folks those nice, fuzzy “weekend feelings” usually end Sunday evening when you realize that Monday morning is a few hours away. So you start preparing for the week however you can. You lay out an outfit for Monday, maybe prepare your lunch since you’re brown bagging it lately “due to the economy” (and not so much due to your ever expanding spare tire). You lay your head down at a reasonable hour and you may sleep, but you never rest. Your mind is too busy looking at the week ahead.

Then before you know it, your alarm is screaming. Time to get a move on! But you honestly don’t want to. You’d rather lay in your bed and not wake up for another few hours, but you do so begrudgingly because those damn bills have to be paid. Maybe you work out, maybe you don’t, but then you grab a shower, grab a bite, and head out the door to another week of unsatisfying work.

If this is your life, do it full blast. Enjoy those paychecks! Enjoy that restless sleep! Work yourself to death! Just think, if you push yourself and push yourself, you’ll complete a few more assignments, move a little ink, and maybe one day your boss will notice and pay you what you’re worth.

Don’t worry, you’ve only got thirty more years until you retire. That’s only 1,500 more weeks or so of this and BOOOOOOM! The sweet, sweet embrace of death will be here to take you to the other side (or if you’re atheist, nowhere).

One question though: ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!?

This is how you want to spend your life? Working your ass off day in and day out, only to be “rewarded” with two or three weeks of vacation a year?? You gladly trade time away from your family, friends, and the things that matter most to you for a chance to upgrade your 2006 Honda Civic to a 2010 Honda Accord? You’re giving up your life to trade in your 1,200 square foot house for a 2,250 square foot house?

**Don’t get me wrong, material things are great. If someone wants to give me $100 million dollars, then I will gladly accept it and promptly move to a small island somewhere never to be seen or heard from again.**

The most precious commodity you have is time. We freely give our time away; time we can never recover. Even as I type this and you read it (and hopefully share it with friends), we are giving are time up.

This will always happen, but I hope you more closely examine the things you give your time to. For me, giving an extra few hours on any project that ultimately doesn’t make me happy or help me spend more time with my family is without a doubt, a complete WASTE.

Decide today what kind of life you want to lead, because you ultimately get one time to do it.

Get busy… times a wastin’!

One Year…

If you were told an irrefutable truth that 1 year from now you would be dead, what would you do?

I know most would naturally ask, “How do I die?” For this moment look past that.

If you had one year left to live, what would you do? How would you spend your last year?

Would you wake up and go about in the same routine? Would you drag yourself out of bed and make your way to the job that you hate? Would you lock yourself in your house out of fear of the unknown? The questions abound: Do I go to church? Do I go back to church? Do I get angry at the world and plot to take people with me into the unknown?

Believe that for a moment there are no right or wrong answers.

If you could do anything, what would it be?

Where would you go? Who would you talk to? What new experiences would you try for the first… and last… time?

Would the grudges you have been holding for years suddenly seem so inconsequential? Would you lose all hope and end it now with the unknown an bearable given?

Could you find it in the deepest parts of yourself to embrace it and truly live life the way it was meant to be lived? Could you bring yourself to experience the unknown horizons and uncharted waters?

The truth is a truth that no one wants to admit: We do not know which day will be our last.

We make plans and build “toward the future” when in reality, our futures are never guaranteed. We are not promised a tomorrow. We are not promised success. We are promised nothing.

Here’s the damnable misery of it all: If we so choose, “nothing” is exactly what we will get out of life.

This is not an original concept at all. I am no philosopher. I am 26 year-old, small business owner. I don’t have a right or wrong answer for you. Only questions. So all I can speak about are my own experiences and thoughts.

The way I live my life is what most “logical” people call foolhardy. I think of my goals and dreams in terms of months, not years. I am defiant of the social-norm for life, love, and responsibility.

I am a family man through-and-through. They are a huge reason why I live the way I do. Don’t get me wrong, I try not to engage in foolish activities or unsafe practices (drugs, etc.), but I absolutely, without a doubt, live without reservation.

I have lost friends because of this. It’s sad. My heart truly breaks for the friends I’ve lost. Although I’ll offer an apology whenever someone believes that I have wronged them with my “stupid sense of urgency about all matters”, I do not apologize for wanting to embrace the life I have left.

However long that may be.

What about you? What would you do with your year? Where would you go? What do you think you would see? I honestly want to know, because you may give me a clue about where I’ll be headed.

Jonathan Fields, himself a family man and life renegade has a great blog up about making an impact. Do read it if you have a moment.

Neither of us invented these thoughts, but never the less these thoughts remain.

Let’s start sharing some thoughts on the subject…