Category: success

I lived my life 1/4 of Mile at a Time…and Now I regret it

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, life, peace, success, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Dominic Toretto once said “I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Yadadadadada, for those 10 seconds or less I’m free”, or close enough. I am a 90’s kid, and like most of us who grew up in that ohhh so sweet spot between being an old fart and a full blown millennial, I took to heart everything I learned via my role models on TV (this was long before Youtube and people chewing on laundry packs for fame, because of course that will make you uber famous in 2018).

As badass as it sounds to say you lived your life a quarter of a mile at time, the reality is very different from the expectation. By living your life this way (which I did, much to my disappointment, maybe I needed more NOS or a larger ball bearing turbo) you begin to focus more on living fast and less on the actual fantastic life experiences you are going through. I took for granted people, moments, feelings, sensations, all in an attempt to “live my life a quarter of a mile at a time”.

It’s a sad day to look at your old contacts list and realize that you don’t remember who half of them are or what it felt like to be around them. Instead of living our lives a quarter mile at a time, let’s go ahead and live our lives focusing on every inch of that tarmac as we swiftly drive across it as slowly as possible. Embrace every second you spend with every single person or experience you have because in a blink of an eye it may be the last time you ever feel the way you did at that particular point in time and it’s really easy to forget just whom or what it is you ever lived for. If you’re reading this means you’re still alive, breathe it in…

Written by: Del Rivers

The Pajama Chronicles: Why Working From Home Sucks More Than You Think!

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, Long Reads, Random Thoughts, successLeave a comment

Now before all you “regular worker bees” go and grab your pitchforks and get the lynch mob ready to exact some “vigilante justice” let’s get something straight: working from home is pretty great and has many advantages and perks. There, I said it! Sure you get to rock your Batman pajamas all day (not that anyone would do that…) and theoretically get to pretty much do whatever you want and you don’t have that nosey co-worker who sits in the cube next to yours listening in to everything you say and do just so he/she can go tell everyone about how all you do is crack jokes all day while he/she is actually getting his/her work done and how unfair it is and blah blah blah! BUT, despite all of the good things that come with working from home, they’re quite a few downsides that only the 2.5% (latest statistics from globalworkplaceanalytics.com) of us who actually DO work from home understand and the other 97.5% don’t even know about or shrug off. So before you decide to break your bosses door down and demand that he/she let you telework before you go apeshit and burn his/her house down read on to learn why working from home actually does suck more than you think:

  1. Getting into a routine becomes an IMF (Impossible Mission Force) Task: The most difficult thing to accomplish whilst working from home is getting into a routine because, let’s face it, you no longer have a strict order you need to follow. Most home jobs are pretty flexible (most times) and if you lack discipline you’ll find yourself struggling. Let’s say you you start your work day at 8:30am and have a 20 minute commute; that means you would need to be up by 7:00am at the latest to have time to kickstart your day. You get up, brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, have some breakfast, grab a cup of coffee and jump into your car to beat the traffic. It’s this kind of routine that helps you maintain order and productivity and doesn’t vary much from day to day. When you work from home you can lose a routine very easily and become, for lack of a better term, extremely lazy. It’s very easy to just get up 5 minutes before work and then just do everything in between phone meetings which in turn leads to a severe loss in productivity and lack of motivation. If you’re trying to work from home with the intention of doing the aforementioned “waking up 5 minutes before work” I suggest you don’t even consider it or you’ll find yourself looking for a new job in no time (which we’ll discuss why below on number 4).
  2. Your social skills/life go down to about 0.017%: It’s a glorious Monday morning and the clock just hit 8:30am as you’re walking into your cube; as soon as your workstation comes up and you check your email you’re off to the break room to grab a fresh cup of coffee and shoot the shit with whoever is there about how the weekend went and how you’re all excited about this years Christmas bonus and what you’re going to do with it. This may sound extremely dumb but as soon as you start working from home these tiny interactions that help keep you sane throughout the day no longer exist. Your cube becomes a home office (which is really just a fancy way of saying “some empty room in your house that served no purpose until now”), the break room is now your kitchen, and the only ones who care about your weekend are the Lego’s you’ve placed on your desk to help simulate some form of humanity. Everyone, no matter how anti-social you may think you are, needs human interaction and this is something you will loose almost in its entirety once you begin to work from home full-time.
  3. Nobody understands that you are ACTUALLY working: This has got to be BY FAR the most annoying part of working from home. Everyone including brothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, friends, your dog, that dude you met one time at the taco stand, literally EVERYONE will all of the sudden count on you to help them out with shit because according to them “no one actually works from home they just collect paychecks for sitting around playing Xbox all day”. Your “honey-do” list will go from 3-4 items to about 1,345,897 since you now have all of this “free time”; everyone suddenly has 1,500 errands they haven’t been able to take care of because they don’t have the time but hey, you “work” from home right? You’ve got all the time in the Universe and then some! Flash? Fuck Flash! Who needs to be the fastest man in the world when you have time on your side and according to everyone, way too much of it! I know this may be hard for a lot of you who work in an actual building or establishment to understand but YES we do actually have to work to get paid just like hmmm…. you! Working from home just eliminates the need to have to dress up in the mornings but other than that we do still have to attend phone meetings, finish projects, and pretty much all the shit you have to do at your cubicle except at twice the speed because…
  4. You have to work twice as hard to justify your job: Although this is something that with time and proven work ethics begins to go down a bit it is still a notable nuisance especially for the first year or so of your “at home” job. At most jobs, letting you work from home or offering you a position which allows you to tele-work requires building some trust and establishing yourself as a tried and true reliable and knowledgable asset to the institution or company you work for. It is EXTREMELY rare to just land a job that lets you work remotely from day one. With that being said, once you are granted the “privilege” of working from home you will be expected to have the ability to take on twice as many projects and be able to complete them in half the time because hey, you work from home so you got nothing but free time anyways right? Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if working from home eventually turns you into a TARDIS wielding TimeLord that can bend time to his/her will! Remember that meeting you normally skip because you’re slammed with work and your attending that meeting is really just pointless? Yea, expect to never be able to skip those ever again no matter how swamped you are. Got a project due tomorrow but woke up feeling like shit and need to take the day to go to the doctor? Yea, how about you take your laptop with you to the hospital because hey, you work remotely anyways right? Things like being over worked, sick, victim of an earthquake, etc. all become things of the past and excuses to everyone around you. You are now expected to perform no matter the circumstances because you have all your work with you which also leads me to my next point which is…
  5. You no longer have regular office hours: At a “normal” job you’d have pretty standard hours such as 8:30am-5:00pm; they’ll occasionally vary due to work requirements and such but for the most part they’re non-variable. Not anymore! So your boss needs someone to overlook an overnight data migration? Have no fear, “work-from-home-dude” can take care of it! I’m sure that since he works from home he has nothing better to do anyways! Someone is falling behind on their projects and they need someone to wrap it up because it’s due tomorrow? No problem, just shoot it over to “work-from-home-dude” and go home knowing that someone else will do your shit for you, besides I’m sure he has nothing better to do because he works from home anyways, the way I see it we just did him a favor by giving him something to do! All jokes aside now, say goodbye to having a regular schedule. Anytime a project needs some extra or irregular hours to complete you will be the first choice; you’ll quickly find yourself working 50+ hour weeks with sometimes weekend work tucked in between! Oh, and by the way, most (not all) “work from home” jobs are fixed salaried so guess what? You cap at getting paid for up to 40 hours a week, anything more and you’re working for free. But hey, you work from home so that shouldn’t be an issue right?
  6. You have no Sanctuary to retreat to: It’s finally 4:55pm and you start sending out the last bit of emails and reports before heading out for the day. You start getting your things together slowly to kill the last 5 minutes at work and before you know it’s 5:00pm and you’re home free! You rush to your car before anyone stops you to ask for a favor and get home by 5:30pm. Finally, time to kick up your feet and grab a nice glass of scotch while sitting in your living room couch listening to some Chris Botti and relax after a long day at the office. Doesn’t that just sound amazing? Oh wait, you work from home so that sacred sanctuary of Zen and relaxation is now also your fucking office so guess what? You never get to leave work! As stupid as this may sound, it is very difficult to separate your work from your personal life when they are two and the same. When you work in an office or any establishment you look forward to that time when you can finally leave and retreat to your home BUT when you work from home you’re stuck at the same exact place where you worked and it becomes very hard to differentiate the two. Your home will no longer be where you can retreat to relax because it looks exactly like where you work at! Hmmm, how can we get around this? Oh, I got an idea, let’s leave the house! Let’s call your buddy Erick up, I’m sure he would love to go out and grab a beer with you since I’m sure he’s had a long day at work too! Oh wait, Erick is tired and tells you that he just wants to go home. The very place you are trying to leave because you’ve been cooped up all week is where he wants to go! And here is the grim reality of it all, EVERYONE IS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE FENCE THAN YOU ARE!!! What does that mean? That you are the only person you know that wants to get out of the house to relax whereas everyone else wants to get home TO relax! So now after a long week of being at work, guess what? You now get to keep staring at the same fucking walls you’ve been staring at all week! Doesn’t that just sound amazingly relaxing?!

Written by: Del Rivers

From Warrior to Citizen: Things I learned in The Military That Helped Set Me Up For Success That Everyone Should Learn.

On By trustmeimnotadrIn humor, life, military, success1 Comment

Joining the Army was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I had just turned 19, I was flunking pretty much every single one of my classes, and was getting tired of hearing my dad lecture me on how he was spending a lot of money so I can go to college  just for me blow it all partying (looking back now he was right but if you were like me, a young selfish asshole, you didn’t see it that way). After serving 6 years, a few tours, and being out in the Civilian world for almost 3 years I look back at what was the biggest challenge of my life, so far, with nothing but gratitude and a huge sense of accomplishment.

I had an NCO once tell us “The Army isn’t a career for those who want to be rich”. Perhaps he was right, you won’t make millions or swim in a vault full of gold while you’re in uniform full-time but one thing the military did give me was the tools to succeed and this to me is worth more than having all the Ferrari’s in the world (although I can’t say I would mind having a few of those in my garage…). After the military I’ve been working in the Civilian world for almost 3 years and have found that there are many differences between a civilian and a military mentality, most notably when it comes to work ethics, problem solving, and the way we approach every hurdle that is thrown our way. Is there a “right” way to succeed? Perhaps, perhaps not but I want to share what I feel were the things I learned while I was in the military that helped set me up for success:

  1. Teamwork is everything: In the military you either succeed as a team or fail as an individual. We’re trained from the very beginning to work, think, share, heck even shower as a team (dropping the soap optional). You’re assigned a partner (or Battle Buddy as we call them) and are joined  at the hip throughout trainings and deployments. This kind of mentality helps create an atmosphere where everyone works for the good of everyone and thus leads to success in every task you tackle. There’s a reason why the expression “There’s no I in team” exists.
  2. Hardship is a part of the path to success: Ask anyone who is truly successful (please, don’t go out and ask that buddy we all have that daddy sends him $10,000 a month to cover his cocaine and hooker expenses) and I can guarantee you that they will all tell you that they had to go through some very difficult times before they got to where they are now. Having gone through some pretty intense combat training and then deploying to Afghanistan for over a year taught me many things; among those things was humility, gratitude, and most importantly perseverance. I can almost guarantee you will go through some very difficult times in life but I can promise that if you hold on and keep pushing forward you’ll come out the other side stronger and more determined then you could have ever imagined.
  3. Never give up or accept defeat: In the military we are trained to never quit or give up on anything we need to accomplish (the mission). Something doesn’t become impossible until you stop trying to accomplish it. Every single person who has made their mark in history was at some point against unsummable odds and what led them to success was their unwillingness to accept defeat. You will never be a failure as long as you never stop trying.
  4. The courage to make difficult decisions and not looking back: In combat you need to make split second decisions, that could even end up getting someone killed, on the spot and pray that you or the person above you made the right call. Having gone through this I realized that the worse that could happen on my journey to success would be the loss of money and money is something that you can recover or make more of unlike someone’s life. Always remember the ancient Roman saying “Audentes Fortuna Iuvat ” (Fortune helps those daring). If you don’t have the courage to make that tough decision that you’ve been putting off out of fear of failing you’ll never know what you could have been capable of.

Part 2 Coming Soon…

Written by: Del Rivers