Mikko explains: "Imagine how happy your family would be if you were unemployed and suddenly told them that Walmart was willing to pay you $9 an hour to stock shelves. Now tell them you are going to play a game of skill for a performance-based commission of around $3,000 per month, and see how badly they'll react. A few of my family members were downright upset by this, and for years I kept getting weekly calls from them that Walmart, Target, and Home Depot were hiring."
"I also had to field questions about when I would stop playing to get a 'real' job," Mikko added. "Once, I won entry into a fairly large tournament with a prize pool of about $10k," Mikko told us, "but since it fell on a family-outing day, everyone expected to see me there, even though that money would have paid the rent and daycare for an entire month, which were due in a week. My fiance had to answer a dozen 'Where is Mikko?' questions, and when she told them what I was doing, they'd go, 'Pfffft, that's not work! He should have been here.' My family thought I was off having fun somewhere, even though some of those times I was miserable, or tired, or sad."
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As opposed to the Walmart job, where everyone absolutely knows you're miserable, tired, and sad.
And, really, how is that last part not exactly like having a "real" job? There's just no pleasing some people.
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