I figured much of this out on my own in my early 20s, but a customer at the backpacking store I worked at was more explicit:
Like many of the upper-middle-class customers in our shop in the burbs, he’d come in way more often than he needed to prepare for a trip. Because he’d only go on one trip a year, often on trips we led for 7-8 nights in the Sierra. He’d look at any new offerings, leaf through the topo maps, maybe buy a Backpacker magazine. Mostly he’d chat about the trips WE – the 20-something staff – were taking. We knew him by name, as we did the scores of people we’d been with on week-long trips or who we taught to X-C ski or rock climb. One time, I was mentioning my next road trip: 6 weeks off to drive around the US, camping out as I went, checking out the national parks (mostly) and cities along the way. And he encouraged me to keep doing that, not forever necessarily, but a few more years yet. He related being college-age and not having the money to do big trips or have decent tools in the garage to work on projects. And, having gone early into work and family, he now had money and a garage full of nice tools, but not the time to work on projects or take many trips.
This was during of my “seven-year itinerant-bum phase” between my two stints at college and I worked in a backpacking/ski shop, taught first aid classes, installed solar systems (thermal panels, not planets), programmed and repaired microcomputers, hung sheet rock, and led backpacking trips. I learn quickly – heck, I get bored if I’m NOT learning new stuff – so employers are happy with me when I quickly became a skilled employee. And it’s less boring to be working than not, so I was productive.
While others would ASK for time off, I’d ANNOUNCE when I was leaving and when I’d be back. Not with some arrogant expectation that I should or expected to be rehired, but to give my employer the option. Most wanted me back after a month or two or three off.
Now, as a senior engineer with some very specialized skills, I’m an “on-call” employee at a large firm. If you can call me and describe what your project, I’ll likely tell you how to do it yourself, but if it jives with my skill set and my schedule, I take on that task and make a nice hourly wage for a while. Otherwise, I’m doing my own thing, or taking trips with my family or one of our teenagers, or volunteering in the schools (I coach the middle school math team).
It helps having put money in the bank during a decade of 45-50 hour weeks. It helps even more having married a physician, but she only works 3 days a week when we’re in town and we take 1-2 months of vacation a year. And 3 months of maternity leave for each kid. Most professional couples don’t manage nearly as much play nor family time, but we’re in a small rural town with inexpensive land (13 acres / 6 hectares of spruce forest, 700 feet of sandy beach on the salt water, looking across at 10,000-foot volcanos. = $100,000). Our house is compact, efficient (tightest house in town by a factor of 4), and I did all the plumbing and electrical on it). So the house payments look more like car payments. Versus friends in SF, LA or NY whose housing costs each month could BUY a decent used car. Each month.
We buy boring, reliable cars (Corolla, RAV4, Prius) and drive them for 200,000 miles. Other than travel, we don’t have expensive hobbies like fishing, four-wheeling, guns, or snow machines. At least, I don’t buy and own the gear for those activities. I aspire to be the best guy to invite on your fishing trip. I bring a great lunch for everyone. I buy the gas and the bait. I help you work on your boat ***that you own and that sits in your driveway***. You shoot a bear and I hump it out. etc. So there are no end of adventures I get invited on. We’re super generous with our time and expertise and some people just benefit from that without returning the favor, but others step up if I need someone to cover math coaching some week I’m traveling or a extra hand to help build a roller coaster or bungie jump or treehouse in our forest. And our kids are nice people, so we can deposit them with friends for a night or a week. For instance with the family whose daughter we took on a week-long BPing trip in Canada last year and will take to see the total solar eclipse on August 21st. There is a lot more “paying it forward” in this small town than I saw in the suburbs 40 years ago.
And back in my 20s and early 30s? I lived like a college student a lot longer than my co-workers. I wasn’t paying a California mortgage nor commuting in 2-3 hours each way from some starter home I could afford in the ex-burbs. I hung with college / graduate students at the university outing club for a long time. They take more physical, less expensive trips than working professional do. And a lot more of them. My co-workers would leave work on Friday, mow their lawn, deal with the plumbing, fight with the spouse and come back on Monday and hear my tales of bugging out on Thursday, billing my my travel time by stopping by a toxic waste site on the way to the mountains with a car full of college students, and doing a 3-night trip. And do that at least twice a month.
I was lucky to born white. I was lucky to born smart. I was lucky that a world-class college education at a public school (UCB) was $240/semester plus $400 for books. I was lucky to have parents who’d let me return home for a month or two after an extended trip as I returned to work, saved a bit, and found a new rental place. I suppose I was lucky to see my father do a job he wasn’t enjoying as much as when he was playing with the maps at the USGS and to see a few friends who enjoyed the challenges of their jobs, so early on I decided to pursue jobs I liked over ones that initially paid better or were a more obvious career path.
