This is part 1 of a 3 part story about briefly working in the oil fields of North Dakota and eastern Montana. I have a lot of takeaways and lessons learned that I’ll share after the story is complete.
Owning my own business has always revolved around about the opportunity it provides rather than the actual work itself. University professors spent 4 years telling me and my classmates to find what we were passionate about, to find something we love, and ‘you’ll never work a day in your life’, and this advice was accepted as sound wisdom by my young ears. I graduated bound and determined to start a business centered around my passions – at the time it was going to be either something running related or a donut shop. Eager however as I was, my startup equity consisted primarily of a Ziplock bag of quarters I had been saving for such a time as this; and I realized I was going to need to acquire some more money before I really started pursuing self-fulfillment in my career. I’ll ‘never work a day in my life’, just a little later on than I had hoped.
I did a couple of quick Google searches for highest paying jobs that didn’t require experience and stumbled on roughnecking in the oil fields of North Dakota. The more I read the more interested I became. Dangerous working conditions, high pay with lots of overtime, and wild living conditions; it was the gold rush of my time and I couldn’t afford to miss out on it. I told my roommates about the opportunity of a lifetime, and the three of us decided that after graduation we would drive to North Dakota and see if we could strike it rich.
As traveling companions our total assets were severely limited. I had inspiration, my Ziplock bag of quarters, and a potential job interview at a drilling company that I had arranged online. One of my roommates had an old 80s Bronco that we weren’t entirely sure would make the 940-mile journey, and our other roommate had just enough money to help cover gas on the way out. Our journey really was a do or die mission even though we maybe didn’t have a great understanding of that at the time.
The Bronco ran strong albeit without air conditioning, and we slowly chugged across Idaho and Montana to finally arrive at the border of North Dakota in the town of Williston. Upon arrival the circumstances of our situation started to become apparent in a more tangible manner. We had no money, we had no jobs, and we had no place to live. I remember feeling of nervousness settling in for the first time when I used my bag of quarters to purchase cheeseburgers for us at McDonalds. This whole trip may have been a little bit extreme of a decision, and a normal job back home, fulfilling or not, was becoming more and more attractive by the moment.
We had enough money for one more tank of gas in the Bronco and we were determined to make the most of it as we drove around jobsites looking for job openings. My interview wasn’t for a couple of days, and after spending the day dropping resumes off at the offices of some of the more well-known drilling companies, we drove to the outskirts of town and found a camping spot on the side of a dirt road. North Dakota as a state is a pretty boring place as it is but being stuck on the side of the road living in a tent is a great way to really accentuate the boredom to unbearable levels.
I think at one point in my life the nomadic, carefree life of the homeless person was severely romanticized in my mind; and this stint of living on the side of the road did an excellent job of bringing some realistic perspective to that notion. The boredom is excruciating, a warm shower is a luxury never to be taken for granted again, and the lack of food is a constant concern. We bathed in the river within shouting distance of a real live homeless man, and it gave some earnestness to our situation.
I have to take a moment now to clarify that while we were truly without money or a place to live, we had the support of our family and friends, this was a situation that we had willingly taken upon ourselves, and that if life truly took a turn for the worse, we would have some sort of escape path that we could turn to. While our situation was uncomfortable, I do not want to be dismissive or make light of those legitimately suffering through hardship. The decision to suffer willingly is at the center of a very different storyline than that of those who suffer not of their own accord.
No roof over our heads, no food to eat, and the vast flatness of the great planes stretching out before us in every direction; while overwhelming at times, did give an opportunity for a raw experience of life that is hard to explain. The juxtaposition of grit and perseverance with survival and success resulted in a special motivation and clarity that I have rarely reencountered since those days. In hindsight, our days of ‘grit and perseverance’ were merely a blip in our story but at the time it was more than any of us had been faced with, and even in the midst of possible failure the daily decision to push forward was empowering in a special kind of way, and still affects the decisions I make to this day.
“The only difference between me and a homeless man is this job. I will do whatever it takes to survive. Like I did when I was a homeless man”
Creed Bratton