One of my favorite web comics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It’s a great combination of intellect, irreverence, philosophy, science, and superheroes. One day you’ll get several pages of existential rumination and the next day you’ll get a single panel comic with a line graph about penis sizes. The one about the librarian is probably my all-time favorite.
I bring up SMBC because in the past month, Zach (the creator) has put up a couple great comics that I found particularly timely for me, but are certainly applicable to everyone:
They’re related, but slightly different. I really like the second one because it reminds me that money is a means to an end and not an end by itself, which is a very simple concept that’s also very easy to forget.
Taking time off without a foreseeable source of income is scary. Really scary. And not having a job with daily tasks and goals does make me feel like I’m not doing enough with my life. I’ve found that throwing off the shackles of a 9-to-5 job, as temporary as it may be, is incredibly liberating, but has also generated a significant amount of self-imposed pressure. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that every day I’m not working is lost potential income and that thought is a bit unsettling.
My current rationalization is that, being a student of life, I’m currently in school. Education is not free and so it follows this won’t be free either.
Almost ten years ago (good god, has it been that long?), I told my father I was thinking of going to graduate school after college. I would be paying for it entirely myself and we were discussing the costs of that in terms of new debt, time spent, and lost income. It wasn’t a clear decision and he was playing devil’s advocate. He said to me: “Just be sure that the view is worth the climb.” I think that nicely sums up the process of making any important decision.
Here’s hoping to a sunny, cloudless day at the top.