Less Everything - Taking Risks
b.lesseverything.com
b.lesseverything.com
Similarly, the folks who took risks, ignored the common wisdom, and failed miserably may not be writing blog posts extolling risk taking and ignoring the common wisdom. IMHO there's no sound generalization to make about risk. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, and plenty depends on our attitude towards it.
It's not only easy, the brain is probably very eager to do this all the time, so that we'll feel the last 5,10,20,50 years of our life wasn't a complete waste of time
The likelihood of football leading directly to a career path (rather than through connections obtained while playing) is far lower than the similar probability for art, though - there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that directly use art skills, whereas the number of football jobs is far lower (even if we include high school coaching in the equation).
In that sense, doing art is really the "safe" option, at least compared to playing football. It only feels less safe because in high school playing football is a lot more respected than doing art.
Sure, the likelihood of football leading directly to a career path is far lower than art, but if the football choice was made, he may look back and say, "I'm so glad I chose not to get into the career rat race and follow my football dreams instead..."
Heck he could have become injured and still think it was a good choice, because he learned he was not invincible at a young age and focused on living a healthy life.
"It's easy to retroactively give a positive interpretation to any life choice"
I'm totally all for doing what feels right, but you gotta admit, sometimes people are looking at you funny because the decision you're making is a bad one.
It's easy to find books and articles on people who made it, but not so for the losers.
Sure there is: if you never take them, you'll be mediocre. Conversely, you can't be good without taking risks. Of course, it's stupid to claim that you should always take risks. For instance, I feel that playing Russian Roulette won't make you great. In fact, I'd say it's downright stupid.
"5. Put in every dime I owned into Less Everything so Steve and I could change our piece of the internet."
OK, maybe, but answer the following questions and then we can ascertain the amount of risk taken:
1. approximately how much money?
2. how old were you?
3. did you have a mortgage
4. were you married at the time
5. did you have children?
I applaud his success, but we’re not really talking “Sell your parent’s farm for a 1 in a million chance” level of risk here, are we?
His choice to buy that old car is a wise one, it will probably maintain value, while his expenses/maintenance will be lower on a car that's simpler to work on or buy parts for.