Again, James Altucher is rockin' my world!

I took an hour between projects today to read more of Choose Yourself and I came across this little gem:

 "You use the corporate job as a rest stop on the way toward being healthy, on the way toward figuring out how to innovate and take advantage of the mythical safety net to move onto bigger and better things." 

A dangerous idea in my book. And I like it alot!

Here's the thing: I love my corporate job. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a corporate job. Hell, I turned tables for 15 years of my life, asking diners "home potatoes or fries" for more hours than I care to count. I had no money, no self-confidence, and I smelled like the fryer. Those were the lost years of the locusts.

A corporate job for me has meant new frontiers, new possibilities, creativity, confidence building, enough money to pay my rent every month and more!

I am grateful for my corporate job AND I'm ready to be healthy and to find new ways to innovate. And I don't (nor have I ever really) believe in the "mythological safety net."

So what is there to lose? 

That said, I have a lot of work to do. That means that for right now, I get to ask myself every morning (and several times throughout the day): "How can I be a kick-ass employee? What is my employer asking me to do? What am I expected to deliver and when?"

But then I have an additional responsibility. And that is to myself. 

That means, once the work day is done, once I have put in my employer's hours, I have the responsibility to "go home" to "clock out". For me, that means NOT nibbling on my work emails, NOT working overtime (unpaid) and NOT using my precious creative resources (that is my thinking) on my employer's assignments.  That means, it's time to devote time to my dream work. 

There are so many projects I want to work on. And I want to work on them all RIGHT NOW! I don't really see how they all work together, but I do feel in my heart that they are the next steps, the right things to pursue. 

And so now, off the clock, I work.