The Surprisingly Good Life of the Perpetually Unsuccessful

I have been self-employed for most of my adult life.

Even when I was working for other companies and held what you might consider "a regular job," I still had contract gigs going on the side and I was giving time to my small home based businesses.

For me, the dream of success always involved two related things: One was to be able to just work for myself and do my own business and be fully supported by that, and two, I wanted to be able to work from home with my self-employment gigs; I did not want to have to go out for the contractor work and have to be on site with different companies.

Whereas I have succeeded reasonably well at accomplishing those two particular goals, I hate to admit that I have failed at rather thoroughly and miserably — and repeatedly — at actually making it profitable enough that I wasn't continuously scraping rock bottom, financially.

If there was a way I could characterize my 30-odd years of self-employment, it would be with the simple phrase "too good to fail, too bad to succeed."

Not exactly a great recommendation as somebody who sometimes holds himself forth to know a thing or two about entrepreneurships and home business!

I have talked to many people over the years, and it seems that one of the things a fair number of people agree on is that I lack a certain "Killer Instinct" and ruthlessness that many entrepreneurs evidently have. It would appear that you shouldn't expect to see very much success by being a generally nice and ethical person.

I don't write these words as a complaint of any sort, merely is an observation. I accept that these are evidently "the rules of the game," and I am refusing to play by the rules that are generally accepted as necessary to succeed.

And that doesn't indicate — by any means — that I'm looking to get out of this particular game. It's more a matter of being OK with the level of results I can get from the particular approach I have chosen, and I suppose I have gradually made peace with that!

In these inflationary times, I do face the ongoing challenge of needing to downsize my existence, as a response to being able to continue to afford to live.

As I have contemplated this quite a lot recently, I must admit that it is a far cry from the life I thought I would grow up to live, when I was a young man, or even a fresh baked University graduate. Sadly, that fancy degree never really helped me much in my quest... as I wasn't willing to just become a "corporate monkey, slaving away at some soul sucking job.

Everything in life has a "cost" of sorts... you end up giving up something in order to "have something else.

There are aspects of being "perpetually unsuccessful" that I am not fond of, but overall the independent life is not such a bad way to go!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? Do you consider yourself "successful?" If not, are you OK with the way your life is turning out? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.10.07 01:13 PDT
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