[eslifka]

Your comments ring very true to me. My father decided he'd rather stay in a relatively low chemical engineering job rather than push up the corporate latter into a black tie management position. As a result my friends all had much nicer toys and bigger houses, but they rarely saw their parents. On top of that my friend's parents never seemed happy, ever. Whereas my father has always been one of the happiest people I know. Throughout my highschool years he'd tell me stories almost nightly of something interesting he'd done that day. Now that I'm older and nearing the end of my own degree I have no doubt I'll keep the same perspective: stick with doing what you love no matter how much you make off of it.

- I should clarify that we didn't live anywhere near poverty. My father wasn't putting us in a bad situation to keep the job he loved. We were just significantly lower than the people around us, and as a result he didn't have many friends among his peers (by that I mean parents in our suburb) because they looked down on him. So that situation may not have any real bearing on this discussion since he didn't seem to be facing a hard decision: give up the respect of a bunch of career pushing suits or hate his life and his job, hmmm.