Anonymity is a Warm Blanket

I don't want to be famous.

If life leads me down a path where I happen to be famous (doubtful), then so be it, but I sure as snot will not go looking for fame. You lose your privacy, too many losers feel the need to know every detail of your life, too many idiots feel qualified to judge others, and so on, and so on. Even if you find yourself in a position where people have nothing but good intentions, it can be a crush, and you can't do anything anonymously in public. Who knows how much of an idiot I would turn out to be if I were surrounded by the same people as stars like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. I once flew on a plane sitting next to a sitcom star from the '60s. She aged well, and you could still recognize her, and more than half the people in the small puddle jumper recognized her as someone familiar. The poor lady wouldn't have gotten a moment's rest if some fan had set next to her. No, no, that's not for me. I will happily go through life where most people don't know me from Adam.

I don't want to be super-rich.

Sure, I'd like to be a bit more financially secure than I am now. But there is a point where one is comfortable and secure, and the rest is just more of the same. When you have a lot of money and people know it, most want to get it from you. You don't know who is being your friend to be your friend, and who is in it for the money (most would be in it for the money, of course). People will come out of the woodwork to sue you at the drop of a hat just to get money, even if you haven't done anything to deserve it. And you and your loved ones will constantly be the target of all kinds of thieves and con men.

Take for example, the fellow in West Virginia who won 315 million in the Lotto around Christmas of 2002. He took the lump sum payment, which ended up being 113 million, after taxes. Since then, he has been arrested for drunk driving, gotten caught up in all sorts of crap with strippers and drugs (including some fellow being found dead in his house). He's been sued for all sorts of things, and now he doesn't have anything in the bank, because some people started writing checks on his account. This unknown fellow has been consistently in the news because of all these things that have been happening to him. Some of these things he has brought on himself by his own actions (power corrupts), and some of these things have happened to him because of the money.

No, if I win the lottery, a few million should be just fine to handle my needs for the rest of my life. Even that amount will bring me the attention of some unscrupulous types, but I hope that I'd be able to at least handle that kind of trouble. Well, then again, I'd probably need another million or two just to send a couple of kids through college...

---jps