Remson, your truthful reply I find very interesting.
My sister is a lawyer in the bay area and she used to make major cash. But she tired of the crazy calls at 2AM from the higher ups and finally couldn't take it any longer.
She now has a M-F job where she does legal work for one of the counties down there and she is much happier.
Same deal with my brother. He is a dentist and went from running his own practice in southern CA to working for a practice in South Dakota. He is also happier.
It's all about perspective. My mom arrived in the US with what she was wearing and twenty cents (I don't recall the story of that, but it was given to her before she was released from the concentration camp) and my dad's family had a similar story. We all worked hard when we were kids, from paper routes to delivering furniture and hauling scrap metal. I used to get a $3.50 paycheck for the paper route (weekly) and I got paid $20 a day for the delivery/scrap metal work. My first real job after college paid $15k a year in the late 1980s. When I got out of law school, I was making big bucks at the time $60k to start, and when I left NYC I was making over $300k a year, then it went up from there in CA. The price for that was, as your sister experienced, 24/7 working and ridiculous amounts of stress.
It's nice to be able to do something like walk into a car dealer and drive off with a $140k car without even thinking about whether the check you just wrote will clear. It's even nicer to wake up in the morning knowing that whatever you have is paid for and you are happiest driving your older pickup to go hunting and never having to give a second though to how many emails/texts/voicemails will be waiting for you when you get home. I wouldn't change a thing about the years working my butt off for big money, but that's something folks should do between about age 25 and 50. If you keep chasing money after that age, you have lost the game.
Always enjoy your personal stories and really enjoy the family history stories, Remsen.
I guess I'm just a "got lucky" guy. The day I got lucky was the day I told the corporate weasels to pound sand when they told me I couldn't park my SUV in their lot with my personal business' sign on the back. They needed me a lot worse than I needed them. Did waaay better on my own and never looked back. There isn't a single one of those sonsabitches that I would want to sit down and break bread with.
Slaves get what they need. Free men get what they want.
