I expect the sarcastic replies (Nords - goats at a nickel a herd?)...
Was it the sarcasm or the herd of goats that brought my name to mind?
My focus has always been on the dissatisfiers. These days I can barely stand to [-]find[/-] put on socks & shoes & pants & collared shirt and drag my butt to a country club ("all the way across the island") for an investor's meeting. Even worse, I usually have to skip my afternoon nap. But the coffee is good.
I won't return to rush hours, uniforms, mandatory training, department-head meetings, performance reports, or even regular working hours. I enjoy writing & reading, but I don't feel the need to seek financial compensation for it. One of the big reasons that I enjoy surfing is because I refuse to seek financial compensation from it.
Several times a year I'll encounter the chance to earn at least $75K annually. Once in a great while I'll see an opportunity that might move into the seven-figure range. But then I realize that I don't need the money, I don't need to figure out how to give away even more money, and I don't want to change my lifestyle.
I think my watchstanding days are over, but I still occasionally miss the mental challenge (and the hunter's satisfaction) of the submarine operations that we don't discuss. I also enjoyed doing ship's drills and even engineering drills (because you get to use all the gear in all of its modes) but I don't miss the midwatch casualties one bit.
The things I enjoy the most these days are being a good spouse, a good parent, and a [-]good[/-] better surfer. I enjoy hanging out with personal-finance writers, whether it's in person or online. I also really enjoy seeing the "Aha!" light go on over a servicemember's head when we can help them work through a financial independence question.
1. Because I am a strategic thinker, which Board members need to be.
2. Because I have experience serving on the Boards of non profit organizations.
3. Because I have met some awesome Boards and understand what good governance can achieve.
4. Because public companies remunerate their Board members (sometimes very well), compensating for the potential liability.
I've seen good boards and not-so-good boards. One thing I've noticed about boards is that when the company (or non-profit) is succeeding, nobody holds a tickertape parade for the board members. (Nobody stuffs the board's pockets full of stock options, either, unless the "board member" is a full-time company exec.) But when things get bad and the CEO's been run out of town, the board is always the focus of Harvard's next case study on negligence & incompetence. That's as it should be, but I'm not willing to put in the vigilance for that result.
My bad board experiences outweigh my good ones, and I have no desire to try to change the balance. I'd go even further to suggest that when a company has to work through every other eager volunteer before they get to my name, that's not a good thing...