[Rick Lee]

I struggle with this stuff every day. On the one hand, I work from home, sit out by my pool with a smoke and a beer, ride my awesome motorcycle in great weather wherever I want, pretty much whenever I want, take 1-2 overseas vacations per year for three weeks each, see my boss twice a year, talk with him once or twice a month. This is the stuff I dreamed about when I was driving a desk in downtown DC for years. Now I'm here, but I know I'm going nowhere career-wise. One thing I realized one day while staring up the humongous escalator in a DC Metro station was, even if I win, I'm still a rat. That motivated me to get out of the rat race. I still have to work to afford my lifestyle, but I love being left alone. I savor it. I not only don't care about that others think about me, I'd prefer they not even know who I am so they can't think about me. I'm trying to balance all those things, save for retirement, but bear in mind I could die way before retirement. So I need to make it fun along the way.