A year or so ago, I was driving through Yellowstone National Park with my brother.
Snow had piled up quite high and there was an avalanche warning in effect as long as the sun was up – so all the cars coming into the park had to wait until sunset to pass through.
We parked the car outside the gate and got out of the car to stretch our legs. We had a good amount of time (over an hour) until the sun went down so naturally, we started talking to some of the people in neighboring cars.
One of our chats was with an older couple from the car in front of us.
After the basic formalities, we went back and forth for a bit and somehow the price of the park’s admission came up. They mentioned they got a senior discount rate of $10 for the yearly national park pass. We had just spent $80 on the standard pass fare, so in a joking manner, I said something to the effect of, “Oh, I wish I could get that.”
They responded quickly:
“We worked 50 years for this! We worked too hard for this. I’ve wanted to do this my whole life – you need to wait.”
We chuckled a bit and walked away, but as I did, I got really sad for them.
The national parks are cool…they really are, but there’s no way I’m waiting 50 years just to get $70 off.
I know it was meant as a joke, but there was still part of the conversation with a “we put in ‘our time’ and now we finally get to enjoy life” mentality that simply didn’t resonate with me.
In entrepreneurship, every once in a while you have a realization that you’re different than you were – that you can’t go back to how you once did things.
That conversation made me realize that I can’t go back to how I used to do things when I was living in my parents basement or working at a corporate gig – waiting for things to happen to me–putting in my time and sticking to “the plan” so that it will all finally pay off “some day.”
I realized:
- I don’t want to wait 50 years to start doing the things I want to do.
- I don’t want to spend the majority of my life making someone else a ton of money.
- I really don’t want to sit around an office for 50 weeks out of the year, just to get 2 weeks of vacation and only use one of them, and only truly travel when I finally retire.
I’d rather live my life now rather than continually put it off over, and over, and over again–even if it means I’m paying $70 more for an annual park pass 🙂
Love the post, Joel. I’m one of those boomers that will be getting one of those passes soon, but not because I waited for it. However, I did spend a lot of time putting off experiences because I thought there would ‘always be another time for that’.
I’m still young enough to know that I can’t go the ‘work for others’ route and do all the things I am going to do. With business and travel, I say “Just do the damned thing.”
I’ll say that 50 bucks when I’m 105 years old. 🙂
Should read “I’ll save the 50 . . . “
Yeah wait till your old to enjoy travel? Not me. I see too many folks that do wait and then they cannot really enjoy it because of health issues or their company stole their retirement funds etc. next up is the US government raising the SS age, so don’t plan on that to help ya either.
While I get the live now slant, I also want to ask that folks do save for the older days when they cannot work or don’t want to. But don’t lay all those eggs in one basket.
Enjoy now, but plan for later. That’s the best of both worlds.
A week ago Monday, I had my yearly performance evaluation at work. The boss was very happy with my work and gave me the biggest raise allowed by my employer.
I thanked him, then told him that was the last time we were going to do that.
I quit.
I don’t have a physically taxing job, and it pays a lot, but I came to the realization I just can’t do it anymore. So I’m off to work for myself. What am I going to do? I’m not sure, yet. All I know is it’s going to be something that will make people around me happy, and it’s going to make my life a lot happier, too.
Thanks, Joel! You’ve played a part in my coming to this decision.
It is more than just getting what I want now. I guess the thing is to do something you believe in, something you know in your heart of hearts is worthwhile. No job is going to be exciting, challenging and rewarding all the time. But when your work has no other value other than being work then perhaps it is time to think again. Our lives are most worthwhile when get past ourselves and what we want out of it; whether we are prepared to wait for it or to grasp for it in the moment.
Your page bugged out on me creating scripts that kept saying “Testa” ? I disabled future notifications just so I could reach the bottom but I’ll have to come back to read your post because I was unable to scroll back up to the top to read it, but your headline has me hooked. 🙁 Bummed I can’t read it properly.
That national park pass? Still good value for money. So good I made sure I travelled to the U.S. twice in a year to max it out.
A dozen or more parks in two months. No way I’d have waited.
Iain
Edinburgh, Scotland