Most people I know spent decades in the same job during which time they looked forward to retirement as their just reward. Once retired, they never looked back and excelled at being good lawn bowlers or bingo players.
Not so for me. My work had been the greatest adventure of my life because of the speed and the variety with which it all happened. Perhaps because of lack of education I always accepted jobs that more educated men would have avoided. Because of my lack of education, I used unorthodox ways to solve problems that other men, because of their education and preconceived bias and ideas, could not see.
Or perhaps I succeeded because I hadn't tasted failure yet. I always had the feeling that I must not pursue success, and so I resigned from one successful job after another, becoming, quite unintentionally, a quick fixer-upper rather than a steady, greasy-pole-climbing company man.
Of greasy-pole-climbing company men I knew a few. Two of them I even hired to carry on after I had done the hard work in the first five months, after which they continued the established routines and reaped the benefits for another five years. Nobody reaped the benefits after I had opened the Athens office for a Saudi Arabian commodity trader and resigned eighteen months later, because for an Arab it's all about trust. After altogether three years with him I had become his trusted adviser, so that when I resigned, he simply closed the office down, and all his dealing went back to the chaos they had been when I first joined him.
In retrospect, I can see now that many employers took advantage of my youth, of my inexperience in selling myself, and delighed in my always wanting to be the fastest and the best in everything I did. I have no regrets. I did what I did because of who I am, and I probably would've done the same had I realised that I was being taken advantage of.
It has been an amazing journey. I loved it and I still miss it. Would I do it again? Anyone looking at my bank balance would tell me, "You've done enough!" but it was never about the money. It was always about the excitement and the thrill and the adrenaline rush. So, yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat but could I do it? Do I have enough heartbeats left? Anyway, I am a different man now with little hair left and fewer teeth, and the world is a different place too, with little need for a man with no more than a 'summa cum laude' from the School of Hard Knocks.
And, yes, there were two more exciting challenges once I got home - click here and here - but what they lacked were the foreign location and the foreign language and the constant insecurity that whipped me along. Once I was home, I had weekends and superannuation and award wages and, if all else failed, a regular cheque courtesy of Centrelink.
It was a paradise - a Fool's Paradise!
