I Didn't Hate Work - I Hated What It Did to Me
May 23, 2026
#burnout #money #financialfreedom
Ronnie Christian reflects on the subtle, long-term impact of professional life on personal well-being. This discussion explores the loss of agency, the constant pressure to rush, and the perpetual cycle of seeking permission, ultimately examining how shifting away from traditional employment allows for a reconnection with oneself and a simpler way of living.
12:15
Many jobs in transportation - particularly OTR trucking, and railroading - used to be like that. OTR truckers...they had their mission laid out; depending on the carrier and the load (HazMat or not) they had a few routes they couldn't take. Other than that, it was, get it there the best way you know how. As late as 1990, when I was doing it, we could detour to see the folks at home as long as it was not over a mileage limit, and the dispatchers knew. Back then, no worries about parking a loaded truck on a residential street or farm road. Or, drop the trailer at a truck stop - you could still do THAT, pay a fee for it - and bobtail home.
That's all gone, now. Company GPS and navigation tools TELL you where and how to go. And it's obvious why - rather than keep wages up with inflation, they're hiring waves of dumber and dumber drivers. How many vids have we seen of some woman on her first solo trip, taking a fully-loaded trailer over a spindly one-lane bridge with a LIMIT FOUR TONS sign on it?
Now we have the Durka-durkas and Somalis driving. As you'd expect they might. That's why the industry leaders are all tumescent for Self-Driving Trucks. The natural end of things...all but the catastrophic failure of THAT.
Railroading. Thirty years ago it was free and easy. I got into a drag race once, leaving Collinwood...we were both given a signal, both had equal priority, and the first one to take the Distant Signal at Willoughby, would get first through the interlocking. We notched it out, side-by-side, until I chickened out at 68. Speed limit was 50, there. Straight track, just that signals weren't engineered with higher speeds in mind (that matters).
We could DO that kind of thing. If I didn't feel like working, when Conrail was a company...I'd decline the call when it came. The crew-caller would call me a filthy name, and that was the end of that. I'd get a day off, or so...maybe the callers would deliberately put me on a nasty job (coal switching at Ashtabula, or a "dimension train" (walking speed over so many bridges and close clearances) but that was the price you paid.
I look at the BS that carriers are putting crews through, now...Attendance Standards, longer days (every day is 14 hours, now, call to tie-up) and AI/computer crew-calling and dispatching...along with PCS software that does all your thinking for you, just not as well. They've become automatons, too.
That was my world. In the white-collar middle-management world, they're getting pink-slipped by the thousands. Well...I guess it's a tragedy. To some. Maybe. I've no more focks to give, as that song says.
We've turned our world over to brain-damaged autistics, simply because they can write code. This is what they're doing with us.