tsl

Thanks Beverly! Best laugh I had all day, and it was a day full of laughs!

To the topic at hand, no, I don't have fire in the belly, and thank heavens for that.

Last I had it was back in the 80s. I was working 70-80 hours a week and hating every waking moment of my life. But I had ambition! And a career and stock-options, and a business card that said I was Vice-President. (Which with $5 will get you cup of coffee.)

Took me 20 years to get my life straightened out after that little escapade.

These days I have a job I really enjoy, and I can't wait to get to work. I work three days and 16 hours a week. When I do, I wish I could work more. When I work more, like last month and this month (six days and 24 hours a week) I'm glad that I usually work less.

It's not quite balance, but not quite tension either, still I figure it's about right if when I work less I want to work more, and when I work more, I want to work less.

Since the first month there, when I had a few days wondering if I was cut out for this job, there hasn't been a day I can remember in seven years where I left work feeling worse than when I went in. Considering I deal with the General Public, that's saying something.

I also have a little business on the side that I've whittled down to just two clients and three to five hours a week.

I am the happiest man I know, and my income is officially below the poverty line. Yet, I'm debt-free, I have more money in the bank than when I was working 80 hours a week, I'm building my state pension, and I travel a couple of times a year.

Near as I can tell, ambition, or fire in the belly, is one of the feelings you have when you don't like your life and spend all your energy wanting more, better, etc., and caught in the rat race, chasing desires rather than attending to needs, all in the vain hope that "If only I had ____ I'll be happy". In short, a disease of "grass is greener".

You can have it, I don't want it.