Reflections On A Life In 4th Gear (Part 1)

When you decide that you’re going to be in the business of persuasion, you crank up your engine when you are in your early 20s and, save for the occasional pitstop to change jobs or go to the cottage, you keep it running all the time.

You do what you can to keep the engine tuned and running efficiently.

But you never completely shut it down.

Many times this 4th gear living involves creating elaborate bits of bullshit to explain why you want people to take their advertising dollars and spent them in a certain way of your choosing. Other times you can rely on cold hard logic. Mostly it’s a combination of both.

But it’s all in aid of keeping your engine geared towards creating and selling ideas that you believe will help build their businesses and make them richer/more successful/more attractive to customers…whatever they are seeking.

The Times They Are A Changin’ I Think.

Lately I have been wondering just how long anyone can go on humping in 4th gear without starting to feel the strain of it all.

I have been talking a good deal with my wife, who is a lot smarter than me about practical things and who definitely cares more for me than I do for myself.

She is on a bit of a mission to get me to slow down. To learn to relax and enjoy life a bit more. She gives me these little lectures about gearing down and taking it easier. She wants me to have a hobby…build something out of wood, or whatever.

And as much as I don’t care to do that at the moment, I have to admit that she has a point. I have spent the majority of the past 40 plus years in fourth gear, chasing the dream that all the life coaches tell you about, and enjoying it all immensely.

Maybe it’s because I moved out of the big city to a smaller one where the pace of just about everything is slower. Maybe it’s because our financial advisors have told me that I don’t have to work any more if I don’t want to, as long as I am not crazy about it.

And there is the rub. If I don’t want to.

Whenever you are presented with something like that, you don’t really know what to do.

First of all, you are no expert on this because it has never happened to you before.

Secondly, it kind of messes you up with the confusion it brings.

Nothing Good Happens Fast

I currently have no intention of stopping or slowing down. I mean, all this stuff is still a lot of fun, and it’s something I do rather well, IMHO, so there’s the personal satisfaction thing that has always been more or less, besides money, the raison d’etre for doing all this shit in the first place.

But it’s quite a decision to stop or even slow the pace of what you have been doing for more than two thirds of your life. I mean, how the hell do you go about something like that?

I have no clue. But sadly, or happily as the case may be, the idea has been planted and over the course of the next while, I suppose I will find out.

I do know that since I moved to St Catharines, I am able to see the weekends as work-free zones, which is something that hardly ever happened in Toronto.

I have also cut back the frequency of my blogging, as those who follow me will have undoubtedly noticed.

And I have developed a bit of a hobby, which is expressed in a series of memes, where I am doing my bit to save America from the terrible decision it made to make Trump their leader.

I’m not sure how much actual impact I am having, but the personal satisfaction levels are off the charts, although one could argue that it is really no more than a glorified version of shooting fish in a barrel.

So maybe I have already started with whatever this transition is.

Who knows for sure? Not me. Not yet, at least.

I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop. Because, sooner or later, the time to wind it down comes to everyone, if their work obsession hasn’t killed them already.

jim out

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