Ontological Trust Fund Babies

In my past life, when I was a club pro at golf courses, I once worked with this guy named Steve. He’d come in twice a week and fix golf clubs. He’d put in maybe 4–5 hours of work per day. And then he’d leave.

But the thing is, he drove a brand new $60,000 Yukon (this was ten years ago when $60k was a lot). I asked him straight-up one day how he could work 10 hours a week (not even having to talk to self-important golfer customers, btw) and drive a Yukon.

“Oh, dude, I’m a trust fund baby,” he said, without skipping a beat. “But the terms of my trust fund are that I have to work at least a part-time job until I’m 50 years old. So here I am.”

He continued, “There are a lot of us out there. If you go to a coffee shop and see the barista pulling up to their shift in a brand new Beemer, it might be one of us.”

How cool would this be?

To work a job like at a coffee shop or tuning golf clubs without the stress of needing it to put food on the table? In that case, the job might be… fun! Like, weightless.

But because our survival so often rests on our jobs, they can so easily become miserable. This goes with any job, CEOs, presidents, executives included. We tend to sell ourselves in order to eke out an existence. I’m among this group.