This is a very big deal for me, is not easy, and has been the product of literally months of soul-searching. Pardon me for rambling: to cut to the relevant portion, scroll down and look for the --- divider.

A part of the problem I have had has been reconciling my agreements with objectivism with my Christian faith. I will never be an objectivist; I believe the philosophy relies too much on reason *at the expense* of emotion. I personally believe that reason and emotion are the yin and yang, the essential duality which must be balanced.

For the record, I will never surrender my belief that there is a God and that He loves me and wants my happiness. Without this belief, the emotional side of me cannot do what my rational side feels I now must do.

I recently took a test at Walmart for career advancement toward management. I tried balancing my own views of leadership with regards to the questions, with how I thought Walmart would want a manager to behave. The test's conclusion was that I was "non-confrontational".

I spent most of my life as #2; I'm not ashamed of it, I was very good at it. I started working for my father 3 weeks before I turned 12, in 1974. I worked holidays, summers and weekends, and when grown I worked for him full time. Of all the characters in Atlas Shrugged, I believe I most relate to Eddie Willers and Phillip Rearden. I didn't make the decisions, but I got them carried out. I used to think of myself as a leader, because, like Dagny, I would stick my neck out and commit to a decision while my fellows were still hemming and hawing and weighing blame.
When I worked as a dispatcher for a delivery service, I ran the evening shift, but always with the responsibility and authority of the office manager as an umbrella.

I've said the above because it's essential to the decision I've made, and I want to make it clear precisely how difficult this is going to be. Plus it's a way of putting it off.

I don't want to be a #2 anymore. I don't want to be a beta male. I don't want to be the "best friend" of women I admire, anymore. I don't want to be the class clown, the company joke, the court jester, anymore.

When I was in high school, I was badly bullied. I had moved to the small town my freshman year.
Death threats in my locker, my head slammed into the locker room wall for looking "wrong" at an upperclassman; when the new class rings came out, I was the prime target for "biffing"; upperclassmen would turn their ring upside down as they walked down the hall, and as they passed lowerclassmen they'd smack them in the back of the head with the ring.
All this in spite of the fact that, due to my working construction all summer, I probably could have kicked the crap out of any of them. But beta males don't do that.
Of all that, the one event that sticks in my memory is the day I had the courage to ask out a cute redhead I hadn't seen in school before. It turns out, due to the dual nature of my highschool, that she was actually well known and dating the 6'6" waterboy for the football team.
The humiliation I felt staring at his belt buckle when he confronted me in the hallway, to laugh at the idea that I would ask her out, dulled with the passage of time. But I never forgot it. I intend forgetting it now.

I had a confrontation with my boss last night. He's a good egg, and I was at fault, but the confrontation was in part due to my listening and watching Atlas Shrugged so much (in fact, I was listening to the audio book at the time), and in large part due to another of my bosses and her effect on myself and the rest of the staff.
I had been put to work stocking the pet department. Part of my dissatisfaction is that I was hired as part of the wax crew, to care for the floors, and I have spent nearly two years struggling to be able to do just that. When, just as we had finally managed to make the floors something we could be proud of (prior to my coming the wax crew was detested by the rest of the staff, and had dismal morale), they hired a contractor (some of whose crew couldn't speak English) to wax the major portion of the floors, including places we'd just gotten to gleam, I'd had enough. I went Galt-in-place. I now do the minimum necessary to keep from being fired; I no longer give them the benefit of my mind, or of my initiative.

We have one new manager who feels the need to constantly prod her underlings; we're all given the impression that she thinks us incompetent or, worse, lazy.
So when I had paused by the fish tanks to catch my breath after transferring cat food from the dog food aisle to where it belonged, and my good boss teased me about us now stocking fish at night... I lost my temper. I turned off my phone, and spent the rest of the morning thinking. My situation has become untenable. I need to either fish or cut bait.

John Galt: I live in a place we call Atlantis, and I think you'd fit in there. It's a place where heroes live; where those who *want* to be heroes live."
I want to be a hero. The hero of my own life.

And so I come to it. Commitment is scary. Apologies for the rambling procrastination.

----

I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF MINE.

----

Thank you for your indulgence.