This week at work I had a lot of places to go.

Monday I went to Corona
Tuesday I went to San Diego
Wednesday I went ot Long Beach
Thursday I went back to Corona
Friday I stayed home

Sounds a little bit like the litle piggy game.

Anticipating that I would be going so many places, and since i was on the longest drive of the week, I counted up how many miles I’ve travelled since I took my current job.

If I count up the commute time to get there and the driving I do once I am on the job, I’ve travelled 33 thousand miles in the last year and a half.

That’s a lot of miles.

I shoud get something for that….Like frequent flyer miles. I once took a trip to Europe for 35 thousand frequent flyer miles…

But maybe I am being a greedy american. Driving around doesn’t work like that. Why should I deserve free stuff for just going around and doing my job, the job that I am pretty fortunate to have?

People don’t give you stuff for nothing; businesses will give you free stuff because they get something out of it. Like in Vegas–they will give you a free dinner or a free hotel room, but only if you gamble and therefore lose money.

It all comes out with them ahead.

And so, the rich people, the ones with money to be milked, get the “free stuff.”

Suddenly, i realized that I _am_ a rich person.

I’ve seen emails where they ennumerate the way the majority of the world’s population lives. Things like water and clothing and medicine are all in scarce supply.

and at the end, they say “Everyone in America is in the top 5% of the richest people in the world.”

And it never feels real. Come on, it doesn’t. Yeah, I’ll read it. I can click the little X in the right corner of that email or webpage to make it disappear and then roll my office chair away from the corner desk in my cube to get up and fill my water bottle from the water cooler around the corner, next to the elevator.

and instead of feeling grateful for the easy life I have, I will be wondering if I can fine a cheap Nalgene water bottle on overstock.com to replace the less-than-optimal water bottle I currently use.

wow.

And when I am driving in my new GMC van with the V8 engine, airconditioning and CD player, I think about how I can get it to connect to my ipod, which it currently does not.

I am the wealthy. I am the very wealthy, along with all the rest of Americans. We are the ones who can be milked. That’s how the business world goes around.

It is still a long day, driving to San Diego and then getting up and driving to Long Beach the next day. It is a more pleasant feeling to be grateful for what I have than to be dissatisfied about what I do not have.

But that doesn’t mean that my ears don’t ring after 6 hours of hearing the engine roar, and my backside doesn’t get tired of sitting in the same position.