How I Made A Gazillion Dollars, Step By Step By Step

Who Am I?

Just a guy, really. Someone who’s stuck in a dead-end job, working for less than he needs, dreaming of the next best thing, the next way out. Oddly enough, I’m happily married, happily a father, and loving life. But this job. All of my jobs, really, save the one. They’re good to have, but also, I think, they’re like opium, or morphine. While they don’t treat the cause of the pain, they put you in such a cloud of haze, that blanket of security, that you don’t care about the pain anymore. You don’t want to move, for that matter. You work your butt off for eight or nine hours, then come home to work some more, around the house, a second job maybe, picking up after yourself, your kids, your dog. By the time you go to bed, you’re worthless, and you catch a few hours only so you can get up and do it all again. Exhaustion keeps us where we are, and fear over the economy, and inertia: A body at rest tends to remain at rest.

You feel bad about it, or at least I do. You want to rail at coworkers, or bosses, or just about anybody that’ll take a beating. You complain that they don’t treat you well, they don’t pay you enough, or they did you wrong, or they’re stepping on your neck and keeping you down. You come out and call your luck bad, or non-existent, and wonder what you ever did to deserve this. Or you come home and silently fester, all the bitterness and resentment building up in you until in most cases we’re going to work because we have to, we hate this place, we wish we’d win the stupid freakin’ lottery, anyway. We promise that we’re gonna find another job. And then the painkiller of security and busy-ness drops over us in a haze, and we find the blessed refresh of sleep only to wake to the nightmare again. We ARE stuck, it seems, and when is the lottery gonna fall in our laps, already? When is opportunity gonna rear its beautiful head and beckon us to our house on the beach, our castle in the sky? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Somehow life and its riches will find me, right?

Or is that just a dream? A hurtful and misleading dream...