Dave: Good call. I’m an ENTJ on the MBTI, although my wife says the better acronym is PRICK.

I bailed the corporate life in 1997 and never looked back. I went solo with my own consulting practice (management, finance and accounting) and wound up buying a construction company in distress, which I’ve now built into a blast engineering and construction firm. It’s been 12 years of back breaking work and has been pretty hair raising at times, but I agree with you, it’s far, far better than the alternative and I wouldn’t change things at all.

I know the looking like a idiot part, believe me. I’ve gotten the skeptical looks from colleagues, friends and family, especially after turning down a cushy corporate job when times were tough and money was tight and sticking to my guns really did make me feel like the Lone Ranger and not in a good way.

But I’m doing my thing and my way and I don’t have to look at some shit for brains corporate apparatchik with a friendly smile when I’d rather nail him in the head with that overpriced corporate motivator paperweight. You know, the one about “Teamwork” or “Adversity” or whatever the hell cloying, insipid cliche is supposed to divert our attention from the mind-numbingly stupid cube farm existence we now inhabit.

Sorry. Let me turn that rant off for you. I’ll tell you one thing, Dave, I think Old Blue Eyes hit the nail on the head: “The record shows I took the blows, but I did it my way!”. Screw the rest of those cowards.