Work-Life & Money — How I was taught to live / by Sabrina Johnson

NFT-”Depression” by @scorchedrealm.eth — twitter handle @powerpixelNFT’s & @scorchedrealm.eth—

Today for the first time, I thought about what it means to be an adult in today’s world.

I have always wondered what my life would be as I grew older and the years passed by me.

Now, I no longer have to wonder. I know what my life is and can’t help but dream of what it could be.

In a world and time where there is so much emerging opportunity — why am I still giving my life away to someone else for the profit of someone else?

Why am I not running my own business of some sort?

What is happening in today’s society where we all have this live-to-work mentality?

We don’t have to follow the same old-school thinking that made the world the mess it is today.

We can choose to stand up, learn, keep an open mind, and create something new for ourselves.

We don’t have to continue to stay burdened by the chains that hold us to one particular job that we hate and feel stuck to be a part of to pay the bills.

What’s happening? We aren’t making money for ourselves. We are making money for someone else.

We don’t have to work our lives away to break even and not even have a chance to take a family vacation.

We don’t have to stay restricted by the ever-increasing inflation rates and the dollar’s decline.

Growing up, I lived in a small town, with a small house and a small car.

I was living the average everyday life of a lower-class citizen.

Also known as the “poor.” It was plain and simple; we were poor. We weren’t even considered the lower middle class.

It was just me, my mom, and my brother. He was “the man” of the house when my mom decided she could no longer tolerate the treatment of an alcoholic husband.

My dad always had big dreams and small pockets!! He loved his drinking too much and was a touch on the self-absorbed side.

When he was younger, all he wanted to do was start his own business and make a success from home to support his family.

As he got older, he got more talented, but his college frat boy mentality never left.

He was always looking for the next sale on a case of Budweiser to bring home and pound down in the garage while he worked on his classic cars or fixing the next race engine.

If he was lucky and made more money than he thought he would, that was a reason to celebrate and waste it at the bar. He wasn’t always that way.

He had a good dream when he started. It was realistic and, at first, reasonably successful.

As time went on, however, he didn’t manage his money as much as my mother had hoped.

When he noticed the feelings of disappointment and guilty emotions he started to form, he turned to drinking.

It was sad because of all his talent; he could have done amazing things. He could have created more than one business. He could have also been an artist.

He just lacked the confidence for too much success. When he began to miss bills, slack on the cars he was fixing, and started losing business; then he started smoking more and finding other ways to pass his time.

Before you knew it, He burned that business to the ground literally. All he had left to show for it was a bankruptcy case and an old car. That’s when my mom filed the divorce papers.

I swore when I grew up; I would get out of there and find something I was passionate about and pursue it.

I wouldn’t waste any talent I may have. What I did first after graduating was take a year off to do what I wanted to do. Be young, enjoy the party and the boys.

That is how I met my soon-to-be husband, after all. Before I knew it, that year turned into 2 years, and I decided to get anywhere, I would have to start working.

I have learned the importance of working hard to make a living, and It wasn’t till much later that I realized we aren’t supposed to be living to work.

We are meant to work to live and to enjoy living.

I kept telling myself I would go to college and get educated in Physical Therapy.

I had chosen Physical Therapy as a field in the 8th grade during a career hunt in computer class. I was stuck on Physical Therapy.

I would make just enough money to be considered in the upper-middle class if I succeeded, and to me, that sounded like a dream come true.

$80,000 as an annual income sounded borderline wealthy in my younger years. It was not knowing or understanding anything about money and how to budget or what I would need to pay bills.

I ended up in North Carolina at the age of 18 to live with my boyfriend and now soon-to-be husband of 24 beautiful years together.

He wasn’t my “high school sweetheart” in the sense that we went to high school together, but he was my teenage sweetheart in the sense that he was my ex-boyfriend’s best friend, whom I decided was much more my type! A story for another day.

We lived together after talking over the phone and 3 short visits to see him in about 6 to 8 months. We both decided we were it for each other. We didn’t want to live another day without being with each other every day.

His being in North Carolina and me being in NY didn’t stop us. I moved in with him. I lived my dream of getting out of the small town in upstate NY I loved to hate.

I thought it would be great, and I would learn so much that I didn’t know before and succeed in ways I could never dream of in NY.

It took me a year before I found a job. We moved again in 2 years. I still hadn’t found my real passion — the thing that would light me up like nothing else and bring out a burning desire inside of me. Yep, never found that. I guess you could say I am still looking.

Instead, we moved to Kentucky, where my boyfriend would have a better job working with his uncle as a truck driver. I didn’t understand it at the time, but he would be gone from me for weeks at a time while I would be stuck home knowing no one and going nowhere.

It was time for me to start college. I decided, and I started college. I enrolled in the fall semester and started my “dream career.” Physical Therapy.

It took longer than you would think for me to realize that my “dream job” wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Sure it was in the medical field, which I loved and still love. It was also the closest I could get to becoming a real doctor without being in school for 8 to 10 years of my life before I could practice medicine.

It was what I believed I could achieve for myself. I didn’t realize a lot of what I was doing wrong. I was doing what I learned to do.

Go to college, find a career I would like, pay my bills, buy a house, start putting any savings into an IRA, 401K, Or any other retirement account, then work until I retire at the age of 55 to 65.

I have learned in my late 30s that this is NOT the best option we have.

Hopefully, this article will wake some of you up to the time you don’t have to get your life in an excellent place to live it! You don’t need to be a millionaire to travel and see the world. All you need is a stable income. You can work from anywhere there is Wifi or internet.

Create some passive streams of income through Real Estate or other opportunities. Hell, create your own business. It isn’t as hard as everyone makes it. With all the emerging technology available to you and the internet of things, it is your responsibility to LIVE.

This is the best time for anyone to pursue a passion and live their best life. If the pandemic and threats of war haven’t woke you up, then please, get with the times and start considering what you can do.

Stay open-minded and learn about the new technologies out there and options for investing and start making some money. I mean, look around. There are so many teenage millionaires today that have figured it all out. We are literally living in a new era.

Not because their mommy and daddy handed them generational wealth but because they learned what was out there and available to them and found out how to capitalize on it.

They created one NFT or Application you find on your phone, and now they are set for life in their teens on that one choice to get with today’s times and create something new.

It’s your time. Stop asking yourself what is going on and start thinking about how you can start living your best life. I sure as hell am.

• Don’t miss out on — Star Atlas. https://staratlas.com/
• Star Atlas is an excellent example of an opportunity knocking at your door; all you have to do is open it.