What is "My Truth"?

[The Grand Nudger]

Me, no. Though I'll consistently offer the same advice in different words. Its a self help thing, which is sort of oprahs thing - so it makes sense you heard it there. There's not much to be skeptical about. It's the sort of boilerplate no shit slogan that folks make millions thinking of creative ways to rephrase. That one might not be a fad, it's stuck.

Rapid pcb shops make small batch and custom printed circuit boards, generally for use by military partners or before a thing goes into mass production. Sometimes when someone doesn't have a mass line and doesn't need a bunch of boards and is willing to pay alot for each one tomorrow. Clean rooms, security clearance, ndas, noncompetes, lots of nasty chemicals and a huge stream of industrial waste up to and including mixed metal in an arsenic/g5 slurry that has to be piped and processed or shipped to someone who will (this is what I went to school for - it's a huge cost, you could run every other pcb shop out of business if you can handle the waste at a lower price point). More specifically to the thread, it's what I did before and after the service, what my dad taught me to do the way that some peoples dads teach them to fix old cars or frame a house. Hence the expectations.

Just wasn't me. It was making me unhappy. Very unhappy. The culture, the process, the environment. I what I enjoyed about it was working with my dad - but I'd left our little shop behind me personally and professionally by that point. To the people who cared about me and my ability to continue to provide..any notion that I was going to step out of that and do something like sustainable ag was a ludicrous and expensive pipe dream. In alot of ways they were right. It cost more than I expected, it made less than I'd hoped, and I found plenty to be dissatisfied by in the process. I don't give them shit for wondering how or why a kid like me would end up..or want to end up..on a farm in the middle of nowhere. They didn't see that it was just another waste processing scheme.

-but I had to do it. It wasn't really much of a choice for me. That's the kind of thing the term refers to. Oprah and self help didn't invent it, oprah and self help make money because so many people are in those situations, be it a job, or a town, or a circle of friends, or even their public persona set against their private nature.

If you wanna cash out on being a lawyer and become a clown - thats your truth, live it.
If you want to sell your house and do a little valhallan flight, that's your truth, live it.
If your clutch of friends is a catty trainwreck you never really wanted to be a part of and you dream of ditching them, that's your truth, live it.
If you really want a boyfriend but teh gayness is double plus ungood - that's your truth, live it.

You can see how other people being "skeptical" is immaterial to any of that, I'm sure. Does it sometimes stand in for things people won't succeed at - such that when they say "I'm going to do/be x" you say "I don't believe you"? Sure, it must. I didn't get into this to do exactly what I'm doing now, it's still a work in progress. However, trying and failing is still living your truth. Other people might suggest that you keep doing what you're doing and have fun with your toys on the side (that was the suggestion I got) - but you know you can't. FWIW, like I mentioned above, it was all a product of trying to be the thing I was expected to be, it's just that I found something in that attempt that made the initial goal completely and irrevocably worthless to me. I could cash out now and start my own shop without help, and be richer for it, but I won't.

(they still grumble, they grumbled while I was down there a couple weeks back about when I was going to give up this silly shit and come home to the space coast, teased me about the tiny fish up here, that sort of stuff, lol)