Rough Living: Tips and Tales of a Vagabond

Part 7: Stop Being a Wage Slave - Part 2

One aspect of this site is to share my work as a writer through the years. I’m sharing the audiobook version of Notes from Nowhere (2020) in weekly installments for paid subscribers.

This series of posts are from the first book I wrote, Rough Living: Tips and Tales of a Vagabond (2003 & 2012 revised) Here is the first in this series - the Introduction. In a sense, the success of this book set me on the path I’m on, or the failure of this book - depending on how you look at it.

In the paid subscriber section - I offer expanded content- as well as links to where you can get the full PDF versions of the book for free. I’ll offer commentary on the parts of the text we cover. In addition, paid subscribers get valuable updates on new ways to do things more than two decades after first publication because keep in mind, I wrote this in 2002 so much of it has been absorbed by the world and some of it simply doesn’t work any longer. The world has changed dramatically since that time. We may not see it clearly, like a person who looks in the mirror every day and doesn’t see themselves aging - but the change is profound. This is one more reason to become a paid subscriber - you will get the value of modern perspectives and tools. Your subscription will pay for itself.

This week in the paid section - more ballsy moves and why they can pay off in a big way.

Free subscribers will get pieces of the original 2003 text itself, delivered weekly. Share it with a friend. Allons-y!

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Look what you have been doing with your work. You’ve been working five days to give yourself two days off. You’ve been working 50 weeks to have 2 weeks off. Wouldn’t you rather have it the other way around? You can. All there is to it is to do it. Find your passion income.

Starting A Business Isn’t The Answer
A lot of people dream of starting their own business. Starting a business is a lousy answer to freedom. When you start a business you chain yourself to the employees, the clients, and the idea. Most businesses fail and the reason why is because people have no idea just how much work they have to put into them.

My advice to you is not to start your own business. Maybe you don’t know what to do with all those hobbies you can’t figure out how to freelance with watching soap operas, reading, or playing World of Warcraft, but the answer to having more time for your hobbies is NOT to start some other business so that you can have more time. If you can start a business around your passions, that just might work, but otherwise, avoid this bad idea like it is the bubonic plague.

You can find ways to make money doing what you love. Watch soap operas and then record a podcast about what happened for those who didn’t see it but want to stay caught up, learn how to gold farm in World of Warcraft and sell the gold for real cash (Check out the work of author Julian Dibbell to see how that can actually make you rich), or sign up for one of the many reading for dollars programs on the internet. Maybe you start slow, but you can do it.

Passive Income= Freedom From Worry
If you want something really great to dream of, think about how to set up passive income streams for yourself. There are ways that you can work hard now and profit from it forever. It’s actually not hard to do.

If you don’t believe me just look at how bloggers like Jeremy Shoemoney and Darren Rouse are doing it. These guys have done it and they will explain to you exactly how you can too. Not with their passions, but with yours. The techniques work. You might have to work your ass off at first, but the rewards are worth it and you aren’t working for someone else, you are working totally for yourself.

I don’t know about you, but I work harder when it’s for me than I do for anyone else.
Once you’ve figured out that you can make money consistently and for all time by using the skills you already have, you will find that quitting your job is one of the best things you can do for your family, your self, and your life.

In fact, you may not want to make your passion your income. You may be afraid you will taint it with money. That can happen. Indeed it has happened a lot, but it doesn’t have to. The key is to set up your passive income and incorporate these passions into it. You could even call it passion income.

I’m convinced that we all have our passions for a reason. It’s like digging a tunnel. As you start it seems like it doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, it doesn’t. You sweat, you toil, you get dirty. You wonder why you ever started in the first place. Of course, most tunnels are there so that you can go through the mountain instead of over it and in the process save yourself some sweat. But the tunnel doesn’t dig itself. Once you reach the other side though, you never have to dig it again. You never have to go over that mountain again. And you never know, you might strike gold when you are halfway through even though it wasn’t what you were looking for in the first place.

At this point it seems like maybe you are getting something for nothing as other people pay you to use your tunnel, but in fact, you worked your ass off to break through the other side. Your reward is that it continues to serve you. Just don’t give up!

The truth is by reading these words you have already picked up the pick and shovel. What are you going to make your passive income with? Where is your tunnel taking you? What mountain are you going under instead of over?

You’ve got to figure that out. I can’t tell you. Look at what you really love. Can you dig it? Can you dive into the work it will take. I know you can. Whatever it is you love the most is the key to making your passive income. I don’t care if you love teaspoons and bottle caps. There is a way. You have to find it. Dig man, dig!

What you don’t want to do is be dishonest about what it is that makes you happy. Maybe you are the fart king and nothing makes you happier. Don’t hide that from yourself. Just admit it and think about ways you can make those farts pay. Think they can’t? You’re being lazy. Want proof? Go to Google and look up ‘iFart’.

Nobody has to know what really makes you happy except you, but that thing is the key to your future prosperity. It may sound ridiculous, but it is totally true.

There are many buses that all lead to the same destination and in this case that destination is freedom from being a slave. I’m telling you, you’re passion is the key no matter how strange it may be. It’s you, accept it and go with it. It’s how to tunnel your way to happiness.

Here are three buses that can take you to the state of liberty you desire. There are more, but these are the ones that carry the most passengers to the state of grace. Read on oh mighty farter!

Unless you take the first swing of the pick right now, you will continue to be miserable. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their own happiness. Do it while you still hate your job. The timing is perfect.

Let your hated employment shelter you while you dig the tunnel that leads to your enjoyment. Maybe your tunnel leads right to this hammock laid out under a lauhala tree in the Hawaiian Sunshine. Or maybe it leads someplace even better.

Bus #1 (Belle)

The first bus heading to destination freedom is freelancing. The term comes from back when men in shining armor fought each other to determine who would serve and who would eat. Those who were not affiliated with a specific house or Lord were known as free lances. Pretty cool, right?

Are you ready to get your freelance game on?

What does it mean to be a freelancer? Well in simple terms what it means is that you don’t work for anyone but yourself. The most common ways people break into freelance work is in the fields of writing, photography, graphic design, computers, web design, and illustration.

If you want to start out as a freelancer and you have these skills, you shouldn’t have a hard time finding work. Each of these fields have literally hundreds of websites dedicated to helping freelancers. You can find clients, learn about your trade, and even find out about the necessities of taxes, insurance, and the process of doing the work itself.

You can do this. Some people say that freelancing is less secure than having a boss, but as a freelancer, I have many clients, none of them can take away my total income. Can you say the same of your boss? I couldn’t. I’m in complete control of my work. If I don’t like a client, I don’t have to work with them again. In fact, I have more than ten streams of income as a freelancer right now and none of them know each other. I’ve told two clients in two days that I can’t work with them any longer because their rates are too low. You can’t do that with a regular job. You know why? Because you are the expendable one.

So, what’s your passion? Do you really want to know?

It’s simple. If you could be doing anything at this moment, what would you be doing? That’s it. That’s your passion. Now comes the harder part…how do you turn Guitar Hero into a career? Hopefully very few of you actually chose this, but my friend Julian did. You know what he did with it? He started giving Guitar Hero lessons and people are paying him for them.

Don’t worry though, passions change frequently and as a freelancer, you aren’t trapped in just one passion. You can change with your passions. Once you figure out how to do it, it can never be taken away from you.

To start earning money this way you don’t need money, you don’t need employees, you don’t need a business plan, you don’t need anything but you and your passion plus a desire to find a way to make money with them. Get out of what is necessary and into what is fun.

Bus #2 (Turtle)

Although I still don’t recommend starting a small business, maybe it’s for you. I can’t know for sure and the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of successful small businesses out there. Personally, I think they succeed because of a combination of luck, resources, and tenacity. Maybe you have what it takes.

One thing is certain, you still need to make sure that the business is built around whatever your passion might be. While you don’t need a lot of capital to start up a small business, it helps. According to the Small Business Administration, most start ups don’t make a profit during the first 12-18 months they are in business. So having money to run the business with is important. It might be though, that you only have to invest in something as simple as business cards. Once you have the cards, you really do have a business. It’s like magic.

You don’t need any down payment, no office, no car, no secretary. Trent Ham has a blog called The Simple Dollar in which he explains dozens of zero start up cost businesses. Maybe yours is there.

A good book to start with is Chris Guillebaeau’s $100 Startup. You’ll find more resources listed in the appendix.

Bus #3 (Paradise)

Let’s just say that you don’t want to freelance or run a business. What in the world are you going to do? Well, the answer is hop on Bus #3 to destination Freedom and start working towards earning a passive income.

The main idea of a passive income is to reduce your hours and increase your income over the course of your life. Easy, right? In fact, it is. The main thing you will face when creating a passive income is determining which route is the right one for you. If you focus on each stream in turn, optimize it, and do a little maintenance now and then, you will be surprised at just how successful you can become. I recently met a blogger who earns $20,000 every month from passive income.

Usually if it sounds too good to be true it is, but in this case, it’s not. People are really doing it. Normal people. People who started with nothing. Here is an example that comes from my own passive portfolio. I bought a domain name for $7 a few years ago and parked it on Google Adsense for Domains. Today it brings in upwards of $500 every month. I don’t do anything except collect the money and look at the stats. That means I’m making $6000 a year for doing absolutely nothing. How would you like to have that situation?

Passive income can be found through blogs, affiliate programs, joint ventures, e-books, social media applications, Twitter, Facebook, and plenty of other ways. I’m putting a number of resources in the Appendix if you want to check out some of the opportunities that exist.

Starting Your Life Anew

Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but you don’t have an excuse to continue being miserable anymore. You have the knowledge. You have the resources. You have what it takes. The possibilities are endless and all you have to do is discover them. There are more ways to make money from what you love than there are ways to rise in your current career. Get ready to change your life.

Will you take Bus #1 and freelance with your passion?
Will you take Bus #2 and start a small business against my advice?
Will you take Bus #3 and start creating your future passive income?

It’s up to you. I’ve given you the system map. Now all you need to do is figure out which bus will get you there. Or maybe, you’ll do all three or combine all three bus routes into one as I have done. As much as I hope you eventually will quit your job, you don’t have to do it right away. In fact, it might be better if you don’t quit for a while so that you can start to see the potentials without the worry. Choose your bus, step on board, and see where it takes you.

Maybe it will take you all over the world like it has me. Maybe it will lead you to the love of your life, just like it did for me. Maybe you will find exactly what you never knew you wanted just as I have. I hope so.

The thing is, it’s nice to wake up and do what I want. You can have this too. Don’t forget to give importance to the things that you love. Your passions are the reason you are here. I’m sure of it. When you give your energy to your passions you will feel more alive, more vibrant, and better able to deal with all the challenges that life is certain to throw at you.

How To Stop Working For Someone Else

The way to stop working for someone else is as simple as finding out that you really only need to work for you. If you get it, I won’t be surprised to hear that you quit very soon. Maybe you need to give notice, or maybe you don’t. Either way, I’m sure if you get it, you are going to quit it.

I met an Australian man in Hawaii who was working in construction. He asked me what he should do and I said he should quit. Later, I saw him looking happier than I’d ever seen him and he told me he had quit. That night his boss came and pounded on my door. I opened it and the guy punched me in the nose.

A bloody nose was a small price to pay for liberating someone who thought he was trapped. My friend told me how he was considering suicide and instead, I convinced him to suicide his career. He did and I can tell you that the results were good, despite my bloody nose.

Like him, you can quit. You can start your own business, take up freelancing, or start to set up your passive income streams. Just don’t tell your boss where I live when he asks why you quit. ;)

I think though, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Start saving up some money to support yourself with before you turn in your notice. Make a plan for how you will free yourself and start thinking of yourself as already liberated. You will immediately feel the difference.

Choosing The Day To Start

You aren’t really a prisoner to your job at all. You can leave any time you want. You don’t have to stay there. In fact, you can call up the boss and quit right this instant.

Don’t ever forget that.

When I talk about choosing the day to start, what it really means is picking the day to quit. When you quit working for someone else, you are starting to work for yourself. Don’t make a big scene, the best thing to do is to explain to your employer that you are heading out on your own, tell them that you enjoyed your time with them, but you no longer have to have the job. Never burn your bridges because you never know, you might actually change your mind, but I hope not.

Do it sooner rather than later. I would suggest that you wait no longer than six months. That should be plenty of time to get your plan straight. In fact, if you do it in half the time you originally plan for, you will find that you actually get everything done in half the time too. Long deadlines make us all lazy.

How To Start Really Living

The hardest thing for most people to do is to start saving their money instead of spending it. In fact, money is a lazy way of keeping ourselves occupied. Start cooking at home, stop wasting your money on things that aren’t important. You’ll find that taking a run outside is far more satisfying than using the treadmill in the gym.

You’re saving to start your independent life. Isn’t that worth it? If you have a family, explain to them why it is important to start living a simpler life. If you have debts, find a way to put them off or pay them off. Saving money is easy, just spend less than you earn.

How To Earn More

If you want to earn more money, put more work in. Instead of writing five articles a day, write fifteen. Instead of waiting to start your logo business, have the cards made and start handing them out. You’ll be surprised how a little effort can yield big results.

Take at least a couple of hours a week to focus on your freedom. Make it happen now in however small a way. The longer you wait, the less likely it is to happen. Maybe it means spending less time at the gym or not reading that novel you were planning on, but we’re not talking about fun times alone, we’re talking about building your passion income! Isn’t it worth it to miss the big game on television so that you can have your freedom sooner rather than later?

How To Spend Less

Spending less is the hard part for lots of people. Americans in particular are very wasteful spenders. Don’t be offended. I’m American and it took me a long time to get my spending under control too.

The way I did it was to create a book in which I wrote down every cent I spent for three months. At the end of each week I would add up what I spent my money on. I was amazed to find that rent was not my biggest expense. Instead it was totally non-essential items that cost between $1 and $15 but in a month added up to nearly twice my rent. Coffee from Starbucks, a Sunday Matinee, a bag of chips, candy, and tons of other little things. I was really amazed. I was also ashamed. I started to watch where I spent my money so I wouldn’t have to write it down in the book. I was tempted to even lie to myself about it and not write things down.

Don’t do that. Be honest about your extra meals, gadgets, and extravagances. Don’t buy on whims. Do you really need that new coffee mug? Write everything down. You will probably be as surprised and ashamed as I was. It adds up to way more money than you think.

So once you are doing that, you can decide what not to spend money on and what to spend money on. It gives you the chance to choose, if you have never done this, you aren’t choosing with knowledge, you are like Gollum groping for his precious ring in the dark.

Do you want to liberate yourself? Or would you rather have a latte?

Making It Happen

I was lucky. I found my first freelancing gigs within hours of deciding to do this. My passive income streams took months to yield any results. As to small business, I guess you know how I feel about that but eventually, I set one up.

The point is that you shouldn’t expect things to happen for you right away. Maybe you will get lucky like I did, but from what I have seen on the internet and heard other folks say, it often takes people months to find their first clients.

Be patient. If you still have your full time gig, just work steadily and don’t give up. I know you can do it. Take the time to make it happen. Tell your family and friends what you are doing. If they don’t support you, consider getting rid of them. Really. If the people you love don’t support you following your passion then they don’t really love you. Uh-oh, first I told you to get rid of your job, now it’s your friends and family!

Wake up early, go to bed late, skip the golf course on weekends, and work during your lunch hour. You are doing this for yourself and if you aren’t worth it to you, then chances are you won’t succeed. One of the greatest things you can do in this life is work hard to achieve your dreams.

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