Leopards Ate My Face

I find it a bit interesting that you used the HVAC field as an example. I’m assuming that you are perhaps in the field and have felt some kind of sting in your day to day operation.

It's a field I flirted with, back before I banked on college, thanks to a bunch of "Vocational Training is better than college because no debt!" older neighbors and high school advisers. I watched a few friends go through the ups and downs of the field, and it wasn't pretty. Needless to say, the cushy office job with the six figure salary in the recession-proof health care industry ended up being the better choice.

But I'm not going to piss on my peers who took the other road, or suggest they are somehow slackers or losers or lesser people because they took a different set of hot tips from a bunch of blowhards. Downturns come for us all, one way or another.

Every move I have made was in the service of my family. Which is why I find it hard to sacrifice an inch in order to supplement the lives of other families.

I moved a lot because of my family. My dad worked O&G and we changed states several times before I eventually graduated high school. It fucking sucked, but it was the nature of a boom-and-bust industry. One thing we couldn't do was reach back home and support the families of my mom and dad, precisely because we were so far away and my dad's work consumed so much of his life. I got to watch the toll that took on extended family - that net of support torn apart by the push and pull of global economics - on both sides. My mom was the full-time caregiver, because we didn't have grandparents / aunts / uncles / cousins around to help. And when her mom got sick, she couldn't be there in turn. She had to book a red-eye flight just to hold her hand as she died.

The fact that we submitted to free market economics was fucking horrible for everyone... except our employers, who profited handsomely (and strangely enough would brag about how they were Sixth Generation Texans! without considering how they could afford such deep roots).

When I got into health care IT, one of the benefits was that I didn't need to travel and I could spend time close to my family. I did get to be there when my dad passed. I did get to hold my mom's hand. I did get to have a big family wedding, because everyone we knew was nearby. And I'm happy to have my mother in law home with my son right now, while I'm just down the road paying the bills.

I don't find it hard to sacrifice because I've accrued more wealth bonding with my extended family and long term friends. I have more to give because I've needed less to spend.