Do something that you love doing….
Well, that’s a problem. I don’t really “love” anything or aspire to anything. That was beat out of me a very long time ago.
Another thing that I realized a long time ago is without family support, you can have the greatest business ideas, but you won’t get anywhere.
You never hear about the small business failures.
You only hear about the successes.
Bobbie, if you just tried, you could be the next Bill Gates. He started off from absolutely nothing. You like computers, right?
Won’t go off on a Bill bashing tangent, but he came from “old money”. Musk’s family was involved with an Apartheid era Emerald Mine in South Africa. Jeff Bezos had easy access to about $250k in the early ’90s when Amazon almost went bust. Sure, they had innovative ideas, but they also had the family and the money to back them.
And no. I don’t like computers.
I use computers. I can RTFM (read the fucking manual). And I can set them up.
But I don’t like computers. That ship fucking sailed when I was in my teens. I never developed an interest in computers after that.
But what about a small business Bobbie? You seem to like lighting effects and lighting systems. You installed and wired up a BOSE sound system by yourself and installed the DMX lighting system by yourself and impressed the pants off the owner of the lighting & sound company that supplied the equipment.
That’s true. But to start up an even modest lighting company you need funds. And you need guarantors for your loans.
I would rather smash my testicles with a ball-and-peen hammer than ever have approached Richard for any type of loan or help securing a loan.
As Richard would often tell his friends, Richard kept my brother and I solely to control the costs. If he had given us to our mother, he’d have to pay child support, and that wasn’t something that he was ever going to do.
So no, there was no manna from heaven with Richard. It wasn’t that Richard was cheap really. He had the money. And he could indulge himself and Sue whenever he saw fit. The problem is he had such a hard on hatred of Marie. And seeing as how he couldn’t discharge his hatred on Marie he vented his hatred upon my brother and I. The “Heathcliff” phenomenon.
And no, my stepmother would never have been an option. She made it very clear early on that we were not hers.
My mother? Between September of 1982 and July of 1990 I had absolutely no contact with her. From July of 1990 until February of 1992 I had contact with her, but she was unemployed for a good stretch of that. And then I had no contact with her from February of 1992 until November of 2013 when I had to track her down to ask her about who actually had legal custody of my brother and I.
Extended family? Nope. Our family was far too fractured.
So no, there was no financial backing available.
Bobbie, start small then.
Even if you do start small, you need cash.
Okay, fine Bobbie, maybe you don’t go into lighting production. Do something else like cars.
I hate cars. I despise cars. I haven’t owned a car since 1998. I only got into working on cars as I thought that it would be a way to bond with Richard. Man was I ever fucking wrong.
When I lived in Edmonton and I was unemployed from the summer of 1991 until I moved to Vancouver in February 1992 I did some cash work for a bodyshop on the south side of Edmonton. Man did I get fucked over by those two brothers. But there’s a lot of that in the automobile repair business. All I can say is be very fucking wary of buying a car from a bodyshop.
Electronics, why don’t you start an electronics shop? Again, money.
And I turned my back on electronics when I was younger because of what an employer had said to me. Both Bruce and Ed at Rainbow games turned me down for pay raises because although I could beat a DeVry certified technician, the fact that I didn’t have an electronics certificate meant that they couldn’t justify paying me what they paid an electronics tech that was qualified.
Yeah, I’ve used electronics to open doors for me into jobs that I normally wouldn’t have been hired for. But once in the door I scale back what I’m willing to do. I’ll do enough to make up for my major depression and my severe anxiety, but nothing more. But that’s more so that I don’t piss anyone off at work. It sucks that I have to play dumb in order to get along with others. But that’s the way it works out for the “unticketed” and “unqualified”.
So, it’s not that I haven’t tried. It’s not that I didn’t have hopes and dreams. It’s just that those options were never available to me.
Beeshive 