LSD, Part 2

Alice and the Caterpiggle

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important — creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” ― Steve Jobs

When I got out of high school, all I wanted to do was make money. I heard these stories about self-made millionaires who started with nothing but an 8th grade education, and I thought I could do that, too. Took me eight years to figure out that I wasn't going to get rich on my own.

I think part of the problem was that my dad threw over his engineering career to become an apple farmer, and that was a frigging financial disaster. Permanently soured me on farming and being broke, so money became my focus.

On the other hand, I suspect that one of the reasons my dad bought the orchard was because he wanted us to understand what was real and what was bullshit. That lesson may have had some impact.

The reason I didn't get rich was because I wasn't that concerned about money. Oh, I wanted money when I didn't have any, but when I had enough for my immediate needs, any number of things became more interesting. Basically I was a gear head with no business sense, as opposed to a people person who could sense a money making opportunity and had the drive to pursue it.