Adam had always had high aspirations for his life. From a young age he had been extremely hopeful and ambitious. But life never worked out for him.
He had always had remarkable intellect but was always very risk adverse. Everything was always calculated so that he would not get hurt or potentially loose position.
Life was a competition where one decision could change your life forever. Adam had wanted to be a CEO, a Medical Doctor, or a Lawyer, someone that was a real shaker and mover in the world.
Yet he was never willing to actually take the risks to get what he wanted. He always got a little too much in his head about risk. Was it really worth ten years of his life to become a Doctor?
What if he went to school and got a biology degree and his grades and MCAT weren’t good enough to get him into medical school. Or even worse what if he got into medical school and failed out before graduating and ended up with 100s of thousands of dollars in debt and a useless biology degree.
Then his life that had started from a slightly above average position would have fallen to a below average position. Then he would have to scramble to find a job to pay off that debt and his whole life would be burdened by it.
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With this in mind it was clear this was not a great path for him. Then to be a CEO he did not have the contacts for that surely a business degree and a Masters in business administration from an Ivy league school was common enough that it was no guarantee of successfully paying off the tuition.
Even a lawyer entailed a low level of guaranteed return on investment. With this in mind he had settled on a degree in accounting from his local state college.
This was a surefire return on investment and made the most sense to him he could have a good life without the risk. So he ended up after a not too challenging few years in college and a masters in accounting getting a so so job at a local paper mill.
He had pretty decent pay, good benefits and he knew what he was going to see when he walked through the doors into work every day. However, deep down he always expected that life would somehow be more.
There was an innate bitterness in him that life should give him more because of who he was and because he wanted it too. Likewise in relationships his bitterness always seemed to leak through and ruin it.
Since he was so discontent with himself and his own life it was hard to appreciate those around him. So he ended up with a slew of mostly short term girlfriends that always eventually got tired of him and left. Also any friends slowly faded out.
He continued like this for the next ten years he was still in the same so so job. He was out of shape; getting older and beginning to realize that he was no longer a young man full of potential he was rapidly approaching a middle-aged man with a middle of the road life. Any type of power would have worked but he had ended up with next to nothing.
Life for Adam was always a little hollow and less than he had hoped but somehow it was about to get way more interesting. Nothing makes you more grateful for a life of mediocrity than when a portal full of goblins opens inside of your apartment.
