This post was translated from French by Google Translate. If you see any errors, please let me know!
Every year, since 2002, I hear this phrase as soon as I take my summer vacation.
And that’s right, I’m lucky. I have three beautiful children, I am healthy and I do a job that I love. In addition, I own a sailboat, and I take two or three months of vacation in the summer to live there full time.
Several years ago, I worked for a multinational. I was doing a job there that I didn't like. It paid off, it's true, but not very rewarding. I worked for this company for a dozen years. Every day I felt like I was going backwards.
And then, one fine day, I quit.
I then devoted myself exclusively to my current passion, website development. What was just a hobby has become my livelihood. I made a choice.
I chose to be happy. I left everything!
Life, in any case mine, is a perpetual compromise.
However, the one I don’t do is infringe on my freedom. That of choosing my constraints.
It goes without saying that I have obligations, like everyone else. And like all business owners, I am accountable to my customers, my suppliers, my collaborators and the various levels of government. But, at all times, I retain the right to decide. To decide if I agree to work with this or that person or that company, to decide if I work 15 hours today and 4 tomorrow. To decide if I am working a lot of hours during the winter season so as not to work in the summer.
My vacation is paid. By me. And just me. Paid by my 80 hours of intense work per week in winter, paid by every weekend I worked, paid by all the phones I received after 10 p.m. (and answered!), paid for by all the sacrifices I have made.
So no, it’s not just luck. It is also choices. And a little courage.
Addition of September 14, 2021
I’m lucky to have a very interesting Facebook friend who hosts a show in his image: Faites du Bui (make some noise). I’m obviously talking about Jean-Simon Bui, from FM 93 in Quebec.
In short, this little article that you have just read has made its way to this show. So I did a little ten-minute interview with him.
In french only… sorry.

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