To recap from my previous post I am here: (1) realizing how truly crazy this world is as evidenced by the seemingly limitless contradictions present everywhere, (2) having my soul/creativity/life/hopes/dreams sucked from me daily working in the corporate suit world, (3) while at the same time believing that there is an opposite side to all of this hidden in plain sight. A side that is creative/happy/loving/fun/life giving and harmonious rather than life destroying.

At this point in time my family and I were still living in Denver. My two jobs there were not so bad. The truly bad shit comes later. My gigs in Denver were good for the most part if you count reading over boring details day in and day out and then “analyzing” them for discrepancies “good”. It made our time there worthwhile due to having so many things to do which served to take your mind off of how sucky grown up life is.

There are however some things that I want to explain here. Firstly, I always worried about dressing nice. You know the whole button down dress shirt, slacks, dress shoes number. God forbid I get a dress code violation. Which would be pointless because none of us that worked there ever had any outside contact with people other than those who were our co-workers. So a dress code simply seemed stupid.

Secondly, I always worried about offending someone. For example, one day I was talking to a co-worker in spanish in the break room and a lady came in and yelled at me saying that I offended her. I told her I was sorry and that was that. But then I went home and talked to my wife for hours about maybe getting fired, or being upset that people were going to start not liking me, etc. From there on out I walked on eggshells because I realized the hard truth – you can’t make everyone happy, but that’s exactly what everyone in the company was trying to do – make everyone happy. So there were no disagreements. Basically everyone there was a yes man that agreed with everyone and everything. Not because it was true or agreeable but out of fear of upsetting someone because they didn’t like what you said.

Also make note of this ***consider for a moment that companies/corps/job places want everyone to walk on egg shells, be caught up in office politics, follow stupid rules/procedures, etc. Think hard about this and consider it and it’s many implications. Consider the implications if this statement is in fact true. If you automatically discount the truth of this, then you should leave my blog because your mind isn’t open enough to understand these things and your time is better spent reading the Wall Street Journal or some other noise.

The stupid thing here is that I was placing my happiness on external people. People whom I cannot control. Whether it’s your co-worker, wife, or friend – placing your happiness in something or someone that you cannot directly control is foolish. For people are constantly changing and may like you one moment and despise you the next. The only thing that you can control is yourself, your thoughts, your emotions. It follows then that the only way to truly be happy is to make sure your happiness depends on no one else and resides solely within things solely under your control.

Chances are I’ve described situations common to all of us. And I began to feel like there had to be some way out. That’s when I began researching on different business ideas because I wanted something to take me out of this rat race for good. That’s when I began selling tea and my real life learning truly began.