I grew up in a middle class family in North Florida, worked my way through college, had jobs in public broadcasting and at a newspaper and after ten years paid off my student loans and starting paying on a 30 year mortgage. In 1999, I joined a startup to learn more about the Internet. I retired 5 years later and wrote a book about the experience called, "I'm Feeling Lucky-Confessions of Google Employee Number 59." Here's an excerpt that addresses your question...
A cold fog wafted out of the open freezer in front of me. It was a week after my last day at Google, and Kristen had sent me on a night run to Safeway to pick up some milk for the next day's breakfast. As always, I was going off-list; picking up a few items with more sugar and fat than nutrition.
I squinted at the tags on the shelf below the different brands of ice cream. What I really wanted was Starbucks Java Chip, but I only bought that when it was on sale. I reached for the Safeway store brand. My hand froze, but not from the cold.
"I want Java Chip," a voice said inside my head.
"It's not on sale," another voice answered automatically, in a monotone.
"It's. Not. On. Sale," the first voice replied with mimicking sarcasm. "So ...," it went on, spacing the words for emphasis, "what?"
I picked up a carton of Java Chip and put it in my cart. For the very first time, I was doing something differently because of Google's success.
Hitting the startup jackpot was like leaving Flatland, the world hypothesized in a geometry-based novel I had read as a kid.* In Flatland, the characters moved along a single, two-dimensional plane and only perceived objects as points or lines. That had been my life, and I had never realized it. Go to work, make money, come home, sleep. Repeat. Now, though, I had the ability to move in all dimensions. The tethering constraints of grocery bills and mortgage payments had been severed and I was floating free. Some Googlers used their new freedom to change their lifestyles, their cars, their homes, their careers, their spouses. For me, all that open sky was disconcerting. I clung to the familiar to anchor myself. It was surprisingly hard to do that without a job.
Edwards, Douglas (2011-07-12). I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (pp. 388-389). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
A cold fog wafted out of the open freezer in front of me. It was a week after my last day at Google, and Kristen had sent me on a night run to Safeway to pick up some milk for the next day's breakfast. As always, I was going off-list; picking up a few items with more sugar and fat than nutrition.
I squinted at the tags on the shelf below the different brands of ice cream. What I really wanted was Starbucks Java Chip, but I only bought that when it was on sale. I reached for the Safeway store brand. My hand froze, but not from the cold.
"I want Java Chip," a voice said inside my head.
"It's not on sale," another voice answered automatically, in a monotone.
"It's. Not. On. Sale," the first voice replied with mimicking sarcasm. "So ...," it went on, spacing the words for emphasis, "what?"
I picked up a carton of Java Chip and put it in my cart. For the very first time, I was doing something differently because of Google's success.
Hitting the startup jackpot was like leaving Flatland, the world hypothesized in a geometry-based novel I had read as a kid.* In Flatland, the characters moved along a single, two-dimensional plane and only perceived objects as points or lines. That had been my life, and I had never realized it. Go to work, make money, come home, sleep. Repeat. Now, though, I had the ability to move in all dimensions. The tethering constraints of grocery bills and mortgage payments had been severed and I was floating free. Some Googlers used their new freedom to change their lifestyles, their cars, their homes, their careers, their spouses. For me, all that open sky was disconcerting. I clung to the familiar to anchor myself. It was surprisingly hard to do that without a job.
Edwards, Douglas (2011-07-12). I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (pp. 388-389). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
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