Jayden Garrison wrote:
Oh and I also wonder like how do you guys handle the stress? I am sure you have a lot of stress when working and you have family to spend time with. Do you guys feel like exploding due to the stress at some point?
How much stress there is in each one's life is mostly up to them. That's not to say a person will never make an irreversible life decision with consequences; but if there's stress, I think it's usually because the person has bit off more than they can chew, possibly because they were greedy and wanted things that brought on big obligations in terms of expenses, or went into debt, or whatever. In many cases you can get rid of those and make do with less. The average house being built today in the U.S. is twice as big as it was in 1960. Is it necessary? No. Or how about a car? Many people think you have to buy new, and have a big payment, and of course if you have an auto loan you're also required to have collision and comprehensive insurance, not just liability. My wife and I, married 33 years, have never taken out an auto loan or had a car less than ten years old, yet we go years at a time without having to make repairs, the one thing people are afraid of in buying a used car.
You can't get rid of your kids though. Hopefully you love them and have a highly functional family; but regardless, you know you can't just skip out on your responsibilities, because someone is highly dependent on you. You have to provide for them. There may even be legal consequences if you don't. You do not have to structure every part of their lives though, taking them to soccer practice, dance lessons, etc.. If there's something both you and they enjoy and it's stress-relieving, fine; but in most cases I'm against these. I'm sure glad I had most entire afternoons and evenings free as a kid, to build my personal electronics and other projects, to program, etc.. Now our own kids are grown and no longer dependent on us parents, so a little stress is gone.
Hopefully my job will continue to work out nicely. I won't go to any heroic efforts to save it though. I get occasional unsolicited offers; but the things I really value are not material anyway. In my last job (1985-1992), the company owner changed priorities all the time and expected me to be able to do everything at the same time, and then he would ask where something is, and I got to the point that it didn't stress me at all to just say I haven't done that yet, without making excuses or anything. If he didn't like it, he could fire me like he did everybody else. I did finally quit, and I can't tell you how good it felt to turn in my keys, even though I didn't have another job lined up yet.