ancona
Praying Mantis
I just read an article on Zerohedge that made me truly think about something I take for granted these days: My station in life and what I do to maintain it. The subject article can be found here http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-23/what-its-be-poor-and-make-terrible-decisions and I highly recommend reading both the letter and corollary.
I have found myself bitching about my work-load lately, because I feel older than I probably should these days, and those seventy-hour-a-week stretches can be incredibly tough on a guy. Sometimes I get so run down I begin to feel a little sorry for myself and self-pity takes hold like a clamp on my soul. Well, I got to that place last night after working yet another in a long line of Saturdays, because I simply have too much shit on my plate and have to get it finished and submitted for approval [Gov documents and work plans]. Once again, I looked at my net pay and felt a little bit sorry for myself when I saw that Uncle Sugar had taken over four hundred and ninety dollars from my pay before I even got to see it. I was fucking livid. When I came home I was in a shitty mood and not talking to anyone because I didn’t want to precipitate an argument over something I can neither control, nor blame on someone. The Wife came in after a while and not being able to push aside her maternal instincts, asked me what was up?
I answered her with a mini-rant about how hard I work yet never seem able to accumulate enough ‘extra’ to suit me. I went on and on about how I deserved more and how I should have done something different because the outcome would have been different somehow. Before I could get much farther she looked at me and said, “Are you listening to yourself?”……”Answer me!…..Are you listening to yourself?” I thought about it a minute but it didn’t click for me so I said that yes I was listening to myself.
At that moment my wife looked at me and began a short lecture about how I needed to calm down and get some perspective about things before I continue to bitch and moan about how I deserved ‘more’, or how I should have done something else with my life. She told me a story about one of her girls that she sponsors, and all of the things she once had that she will most likely never have again. You see, my wife is a Friend of Bill W. and has been for over fifteen years, so Mrs. Ancona sponsors other women in recovery because it helps her maintain proper perspective and keep her personal balance.
This girl as it turns out, was married to a neurologist for fifteen years. This guy wasn’t just a neurologist, he owned and operated six offices across the state and had privileges in several very prestigious hospitals. This yound woman was also a physician, a thoracic surgeon to be exact, and between them they made an unimaginable amount of money, and lived in the extremely exclusive enclave e down here called Lansing Island. For the uninitiated, Lansing Island is home to a huge portion of Florida’s GDP, and every single resident is a multi-millionaire or a billionaire. Well, one fine day this lady had a car wreck and broke an ankle and some ribs. While in the hospital, she was given some pretty powerful pain medicine to ease the discomfort of broken bones and torn muscles. When she left the hospital to convalesce at home, she continued to use the pills, and became addicted. At first, she could hide her addiction pretty well. She wrote prescriptions for pills to relatives and friends at first because it was the easiest way to go. Eventually her husband found out and demanded she go to rehab, which she ultimately did, but it didn’t stick. She ended up addicted to dilaudid, oxycodone and alcohol, and in very short order she was stealing drugs from her practice, her husbands practice and from the hospital, which cost her the medical license, very nearly her husbands license and her marriage. She ended up getting arrested for forging a prescription in her husbands name, got eighteen months in jail and wound up at the half-way house my wife volunteers her time to help other women with alcoholism and addiction. Now, she is grateful to have a solid waitress job at a local steak house and she lives from one day to the next, always thankful to make it one more day sober. She lost the money, the right to practice medicine and her husband, but she says she is just fine with that. She lives in an efficiency apartment that is a quarter the size of her former five car garage and she drives a twelve year old beater.
Armed with some new perspective, I broke out my five hundred dollar telephone and put it in to calculator mode. As it turns out, Uncle Stosh peels out of my check almost twice what this woman nets each week in tributes and taxes, yet she is fine with that and has adapted from having access to millions of dollars to having access to a few hundred bucks a week. I cannot imagine having to live on just what I pay in taxes, let alone half of what I pay. I often bitch about the condition of some of the homes in my area, complaining that it doesn’t cost that much to maintain some paint and a little landscaping, but now I realize that it is likely that they are making a value decision rather than being cheap or lazy. Perhaps it’s a choice between food and home maintenance. I’m just an anomaly. I am not the average Joe for this area because it appears I am earning [apparently] far more than most of these folks but never realized it because I never really gave it any thought.
I should add that the Ancona Clan has lived where we do for a very long time. I have no desire to “move up” or to graduate to something bigger or more expensive because this place is paid for in another year, and we simply don’t need to. While we certainly could afford to live in a better area, we are content to stay here and to continue to save for our retirement. I took a good look around myself last night and let it sink in a while.
When I take in to account my preparations for retirement, my reserves for emergencies and the fact that I actually have both a discretionary account and a Christmas account, I have to admit that not only do I get more than fair pay, I’m damn lucky to still have a job with all that’s happened over the last five years. In fact, we very nearly closed up shop not that long ago. Perhaps instead of whining about how hard I work, I’ll simply be grateful for what my family has been blessed with and call it good.:wave:
I have found myself bitching about my work-load lately, because I feel older than I probably should these days, and those seventy-hour-a-week stretches can be incredibly tough on a guy. Sometimes I get so run down I begin to feel a little sorry for myself and self-pity takes hold like a clamp on my soul. Well, I got to that place last night after working yet another in a long line of Saturdays, because I simply have too much shit on my plate and have to get it finished and submitted for approval [Gov documents and work plans]. Once again, I looked at my net pay and felt a little bit sorry for myself when I saw that Uncle Sugar had taken over four hundred and ninety dollars from my pay before I even got to see it. I was fucking livid. When I came home I was in a shitty mood and not talking to anyone because I didn’t want to precipitate an argument over something I can neither control, nor blame on someone. The Wife came in after a while and not being able to push aside her maternal instincts, asked me what was up?
I answered her with a mini-rant about how hard I work yet never seem able to accumulate enough ‘extra’ to suit me. I went on and on about how I deserved more and how I should have done something different because the outcome would have been different somehow. Before I could get much farther she looked at me and said, “Are you listening to yourself?”……”Answer me!…..Are you listening to yourself?” I thought about it a minute but it didn’t click for me so I said that yes I was listening to myself.
At that moment my wife looked at me and began a short lecture about how I needed to calm down and get some perspective about things before I continue to bitch and moan about how I deserved ‘more’, or how I should have done something else with my life. She told me a story about one of her girls that she sponsors, and all of the things she once had that she will most likely never have again. You see, my wife is a Friend of Bill W. and has been for over fifteen years, so Mrs. Ancona sponsors other women in recovery because it helps her maintain proper perspective and keep her personal balance.
This girl as it turns out, was married to a neurologist for fifteen years. This guy wasn’t just a neurologist, he owned and operated six offices across the state and had privileges in several very prestigious hospitals. This yound woman was also a physician, a thoracic surgeon to be exact, and between them they made an unimaginable amount of money, and lived in the extremely exclusive enclave e down here called Lansing Island. For the uninitiated, Lansing Island is home to a huge portion of Florida’s GDP, and every single resident is a multi-millionaire or a billionaire. Well, one fine day this lady had a car wreck and broke an ankle and some ribs. While in the hospital, she was given some pretty powerful pain medicine to ease the discomfort of broken bones and torn muscles. When she left the hospital to convalesce at home, she continued to use the pills, and became addicted. At first, she could hide her addiction pretty well. She wrote prescriptions for pills to relatives and friends at first because it was the easiest way to go. Eventually her husband found out and demanded she go to rehab, which she ultimately did, but it didn’t stick. She ended up addicted to dilaudid, oxycodone and alcohol, and in very short order she was stealing drugs from her practice, her husbands practice and from the hospital, which cost her the medical license, very nearly her husbands license and her marriage. She ended up getting arrested for forging a prescription in her husbands name, got eighteen months in jail and wound up at the half-way house my wife volunteers her time to help other women with alcoholism and addiction. Now, she is grateful to have a solid waitress job at a local steak house and she lives from one day to the next, always thankful to make it one more day sober. She lost the money, the right to practice medicine and her husband, but she says she is just fine with that. She lives in an efficiency apartment that is a quarter the size of her former five car garage and she drives a twelve year old beater.
Armed with some new perspective, I broke out my five hundred dollar telephone and put it in to calculator mode. As it turns out, Uncle Stosh peels out of my check almost twice what this woman nets each week in tributes and taxes, yet she is fine with that and has adapted from having access to millions of dollars to having access to a few hundred bucks a week. I cannot imagine having to live on just what I pay in taxes, let alone half of what I pay. I often bitch about the condition of some of the homes in my area, complaining that it doesn’t cost that much to maintain some paint and a little landscaping, but now I realize that it is likely that they are making a value decision rather than being cheap or lazy. Perhaps it’s a choice between food and home maintenance. I’m just an anomaly. I am not the average Joe for this area because it appears I am earning [apparently] far more than most of these folks but never realized it because I never really gave it any thought.
I should add that the Ancona Clan has lived where we do for a very long time. I have no desire to “move up” or to graduate to something bigger or more expensive because this place is paid for in another year, and we simply don’t need to. While we certainly could afford to live in a better area, we are content to stay here and to continue to save for our retirement. I took a good look around myself last night and let it sink in a while.
When I take in to account my preparations for retirement, my reserves for emergencies and the fact that I actually have both a discretionary account and a Christmas account, I have to admit that not only do I get more than fair pay, I’m damn lucky to still have a job with all that’s happened over the last five years. In fact, we very nearly closed up shop not that long ago. Perhaps instead of whining about how hard I work, I’ll simply be grateful for what my family has been blessed with and call it good.:wave:
