Do You Wish You Were Rich?
In a way I'm glad I didn't become a rock star or famous author. I wouldn't have lived to see 40. Just having enough money to pay the rent and keep me up to my neck in Chinese food is fine by me.
I wish i was rich. I don't have any use for extra money for myself, but when you're rich (or at least financially secure) your condition goes from being a guy with disability to being a successful "eccentric". People look at you different, somehow all your disorders and shortcomings become forgiven and people look up to you. I know this because I've met aspies who inherited a good financial situation. And no, i have never seen or heared of someone with asperger's who started a successful business from scratch. At best we can look forward to limited careets as 'assistants' with college degrees.. that's encouraging...
But mostly i wish i was rich so I could get married and start a family. Again, because nobody wants to get married to a "poor guy with disabilities" unless he's got something to show for himself.
I will likely live the rest of my life out- and die- alone. I don't want to be... I wish someone would love me or show any sort of interest in me but I haven't seen any of that in many years. Life has served us a very cold and bitter plate.
nick007
Veteran
Joined: 4 May 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 27,643
Location: was Louisiana but now Vermont in capitalistic military dictatorship called USA
Here's the short version:
I got a job as a telemarketer at a pharmaceutical company many thousands of years ago. I worked it pretty successfully and was offered a job in the marketing department. They put me to work in a room filled with 100's of phone-book sized books containing nothing but pharmaceutical prescription data and asked me to analyze it - a perfect job for an Aspie and I got really good at it.
I figured out how tweak products to make them sell more, I could predict what they would sell in the future, I could accurately value acquisition/pipeline candidates, etc etc.
Turns out this was also a very valuable skill in predicting the future value of pharmaceutical stocks, so I got recruited into a local broker-dealer as a sell-side analyst. I was very good at this too, I got promoted to senior analyst two years later and was a finalist for the Wall Street Journal's "Best on the Street" award my rookie year, and found myself regularly quoted in the business press and developed a fat list of high-level industry contacts. The brokers on the floor called me "Rain Man", which I was a little offended by but I think it kind of made me seem like a sort of prodigy.
(BTW if you doubt any of this, Google "greg gust analyst", and you'll see my work)
I was still unsatisfied with having to depend on others to decide how much to pay me, so I started developing concepts for new drugs and putting some IP (patents/trademarks) around them and then shopping them to the contacts that I developed in my Wall Street days.
I signed my first deal in November and another one shortly thereafter and I've got more on the way. Basically I own 8% of the drug I developed and someone else does all the work, giving me tons of time to do the things I actually enjoy doing.
All this started with just some dorky Aspie guy and a bunch of numbers, the rest happened by learning to exploit this skill to maximum advantage.
If I had just fallen into the get a raise/promotion...get another raise/promotion trap, I'd
still be stuck in a cubicle complaining about never getting the raise/promotion I deserved.
@Wefunction - that will be $300 please... Wink
_________________
"I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem!"
"Hear all, trust nothing"
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ru ... cquisition
Last edited by nick007 on 10 Mar 2014, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
that's gotta be the exception, like the 1% aspies.
Here's the short version:
I got a job as a telemarketer at a pharmaceutical company many thousands of years ago. I worked it pretty successfully and was offered a job in the marketing department. They put me to work in a room filled with 100's of phone-book sized books containing nothing but pharmaceutical prescription data and asked me to analyze it - a perfect job for an Aspie and I got really good at it.
I figured out how tweak products to make them sell more, I could predict what they would sell in the future, I could accurately value acquisition/pipeline candidates, etc etc.
Turns out this was also a very valuable skill in predicting the future value of pharmaceutical stocks, so I got recruited into a local broker-dealer as a sell-side analyst. I was very good at this too, I got promoted to senior analyst two years later and was a finalist for the Wall Street Journal's "Best on the Street" award my rookie year, and found myself regularly quoted in the business press and developed a fat list of high-level industry contacts. The brokers on the floor called me "Rain Man", which I was a little offended by but I think it kind of made me seem like a sort of prodigy.
(BTW if you doubt any of this, Google "greg gust analyst", and you'll see my work)
I was still unsatisfied with having to depend on others to decide how much to pay me, so I started developing concepts for new drugs and putting some IP (patents/trademarks) around them and then shopping them to the contacts that I developed in my Wall Street days.
I signed my first deal in November and another one shortly thereafter and I've got more on the way. Basically I own 8% of the drug I developed and someone else does all the work, giving me tons of time to do the things I actually enjoy doing.
All this started with just some dorky Aspie guy and a bunch of numbers, the rest happened by learning to exploit this skill to maximum advantage.
If I had just fallen into the get a raise/promotion...get another raise/promotion trap, I'd
still be stuck in a cubicle complaining about never getting the raise/promotion I deserved.
@Wefunction - that will be $300 please... Wink
i've worked at the same company for 3 years. I started making $10/hr doing maintenance/janitorial/plumbing work, and I've been "promoted" several times, and my salary is now $15/hr. It's a nice 50% raise but i see no difference. I'm still in the poverty bracket, I still can't afford to rent a place on my own and still pay my food and other bills. I've gotten a few small injuries over the years (back pain, cuts, breathing irritation, nothing serious). I have developed some hearing loss since from the work, a few calluses on my hands that won',t go away, and a serious case of foot fungus that won't go away.. either way i have no medical insurance so those problems are here to stay.
I feel exhausted, tired, and disillusioned with life. Maybe this harsh life is tolerable if you have a ife outside of work, but I don't have that due to my aspergers. All I do is work hard and I feel like I have nothing to show for it, except slightly more money and less hunger.
I am 31. I have a highschool diploma (scored 1410 on my SAT's in 2000) and I have 2 years of college (Comp sci, no degree) behind me. I feel hopeless. If 10 years ago you would have asked me to paint a worst-case scenario, it would not have even began to touch the miserable poverty, job, and lifestyle I have found myself with. The only piece of advice I can give younger aspies is to start and finish college, and forget everything else in the world until you have a college diploma.
My parents lived a upper-middle class lifestyle. I was raised in a good neighborhood with good meaning parents. The only thing they didn't teach me is how to live in poverty, work 7 days a week, and never leave your house because you can't afford gas/tolls/dinner/shopping.... I had to figure this one out on my own... And I was not a happy camper.
when i was young, my precious little "parents" used to tell me things like they did not have enough $$ to send me to take karate lessons, send me to psychotherapy, get designer clothes, go to private school. whatever. in my defense, i did not want a lot of things. (fine).
at that time, i wished they/we had more $$ than we did. but i did not want to be "rich".
then in college (ucsd), in la jolla, interacted with a lot of students and other idiots, that looked like they earned or had a lot more $$ than my precious little "parents". felt deprived and jealous. (fine).
but mostly, just felt annoyed and frustrated.
b/c a disproportionate number of them acted superficial, condescending, arrogant, materialistic. Republicans. judgmental and shallow.
they acted like their retail value was more than mine, b/c their bank account was bigger than mine.
but i try to put as little emphasis on $$ as possible. us hippies.
but, i do think about $$ a lot.
and, merely by obsessing over $$, that makes me a bit materialistic too.
while i do not wish i were rich, i would rather be rich than poor.
and there are things in life more important than $$. (fine).
Sweetleaf
Veteran
Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,920
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
It would be useful..but I cannot say my attitude would be 'bring on the cigars and caviar'...I mean the great things I could do. I could secure housing for me, my boyfriend, my brother and my dad, and maybe even some of our friends, I could invest in renewable energy and there are lots of cool things one could do with money.
Even if I became 'rich' I wouldn't want to be like a rich stereotype...I wouldn't want to host wealthy people dinner parties or anything...I think I'd still want to live fairly simple life but just never have to worry about funds to go to a concert or on a cool trip somewhere.
_________________
We won't go back.
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,571
Location: the island of defective toy santas
I wish I had the genes to support being one of those invisible rich people who anonymously helped poor people in a financial way, when he caught wind of their sad situations. the rich are different from you and me, they have better genes and much better luck. horatio alger works for them, not so much for the rest of us.
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,571
Location: the island of defective toy santas
the major difference between the third world and the American underclass, is that we are physically closer to where rich people are at, than they are. i'd bet that most of us live within an hour's walk of at least one millionaire, whereas in the third world it might be a day's journey before they even saw a middle-class person.
Unless you have another definition of third world, I, as someone from third world, think you're a wrong. There is enormous inequality in third world, so actually there is many rich people here. The great inequality creates a bigger social distance than in more equal places, but the psychical distance isn't this absurd.
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,571
Location: the island of defective toy santas
would be convenient to have just enough to fund study of chinese and japanese true self defense arts abroad in japan and hong kong, and then open up studio to teach somewhere accessible/affordable in the united states without having to charge anything to keep it’s doors open to apprenticeship... but such is not the case. surely have to go back to school for some unknown in demand trade while learning at least three languages on the side, so work can be found, and stay possible through work visa while training in any found spare time. by the time that’s done, it’s more likely that comprehensive self teaching books would have to be written and published instead(kind of the plan, anyhow if to live long enough even if to get to teach in person, as it’s not outside of personal abilities in writing and detailed illustration, just far less lively/fulfilling a dream to live out on it’s own for whatever reason.).
_________________
七転び八起き
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,571
Location: the island of defective toy santas
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,571
Location: the island of defective toy santas