I was thinking the other day about my current financial situation, and how it has drastically changed in the past year. I went from making nearly $60K a year ago to probably less than $20 this year, and that is quite a drop if I do say so myself. But this is not something that is specific to me, or my career path, but is somewhat an occurrence happening all over this country right now.
The question is - what can I do about it, and how important is it in the grand scheme of things? Yes, money is important since we need it to survive. You know, putting food on the table, gas in the car, and paying the mortgage and other bills. Other than that, is it the most important thing in our lives? In some ways, we measure our success by our income. I think way too much importance is place on it myself.
Money seems to be the yardstick we measure our success with - and each other. How much do you make? What is your home worth? What kind of car do you drive? These kinds of questions may not always come out when we first meet people, but they are certainly on most people's minds. When you meet someone for the first time, questions like "what do you do?" are really just veiled inquiries about how much money you make, although an interest in your career is certainly thrown in there for good measure. It is engrained in our national psyche...
Not that we can change that any time soon, but the way our economy is going, changes are under foot. In case people haven't been noticing, we are in a long-lasting downward trend here in America, and the manufacturing jobs are nearly gone. Many companies struggle to stay profitable, and new opportunities are the only way to stay afloat for most people.
Maybe it's time we changed our focus? Instead of focusing on jobs, the economy, and our struggle to keep up with the "Jones" next door, why not focus on family, friends, and relationships instead? Instead of using money as our yardstick to measure success, how about another scaled altogether? So when you meet someone instead of asking what they do for a living, or how much they make, we may ask "how are your family members doing" or something similar. Maybe we could get back to hanging out with friends, real friends not the ones on Facebook, and try forming real bonds with people instead of struggling to move up the ladder financially all the time.
While we're at it, why not start measuring our health quotient too? How many times have you been to the gym this week, have you gotten your blood pressure back down again? It seems to me that these are much more important questions than the same old thing - did you hear so-and-so got laid off last week? The plant is laying off again...OK, we still need jobs. But we will get by, on less. Our quality of life won't suffer that much if we all make less money, but it will suffer if we don't start thinking about how important our families are to us, our friends, and the people in our communities as well. We're all in this together aren't we?
I would love to hear feedback on this, positive or negative.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
My gut-wrenching realization...the Truth
Much has happened since I last wrote in this blog - what can I say? I can't possibly catch up with one post, but I need to start being more consistent with these posts. The main reason I haven't posted anything is that I'm seriously getting to the point where money is an issue, not enough of it in other words.
How did this happen? I was totally confident that I could make my business model work, creating websites using Wordpress and monetizing them with affiliate products and Adsense banners. Yes, it did work to some degree. However I didn't see the huge gains toward the end of this year that I saw in the beginning of the year, and I can't blame anyone but myself. Google Panda may have had some hand in it, but my ability to provide useful content and products that people want is the most important issue. Building a business is easy, with the right business model. The devil, as they say, is in the details!
Over the past year since I was laid off from my job (October 8, 2010 to be exact) I haven't confidently set out to build enough web content and sites to provide myself with a replacement income. Things were going well, money was coming in steadily, and meanwhile I had my savings to live off of to pay the bills. I can do this, I told myself. I wasn't expecting to have a dropoff over the Summer in income, as it seems they case when folks are busy having barbecues and going swimming rather than sitting behind their desks on the PC all day. My income dropped, and I worked harder and harder to make up for it, researching other methods and niches, searching for that "magic bullet" to make up the difference in cash flow.
Alas, I hit a ceiling at around $1,000 per month - not bad, but not enough. As my savings ran dry, my feeling of panic and desperation grew. At this point, I started looking for a "real" job. Yes, my dreams would have to be put on hold somewhat. At least for a time, while I return to the land of the zombies that get up at the crack of dawn and shuffle off to jobs they hate every day. OK, some exaggeration I admit. But that is the way I see it! I have always believed that once you find your "true calling", or "life's purpose" or whatever you want to call it, the money would never be a problem as long as you were true to yourself and believed in your purpose. So what happened?
In actuality nothing really happened, I still believe in all of that. I still believe that I will be able to make it my life's purpose to build a business online, using my wits and words to make a living. How can I still believe in that after the past year? Easy, I still believe that because I know it's true that you never fail unless you quit. I have never quit this game, and never will! Setbacks? Sure, we all have those once in awhile, but you can't let that get you down. Everything I have learned in the past year has gotten me that much closer to realizing my dream, and I'm not about to let it go now, or ever. I'm that much more determined to stay the course as they say, and build my business while I build my dreams.
So with that said, I must get back to work. I have my list of things to accomplish today and it's a long one! So back to it, time to make the doughnuts, whatever you might say. I still believe, and that is the only thing that matters...
One of my favorite quotes:
How did this happen? I was totally confident that I could make my business model work, creating websites using Wordpress and monetizing them with affiliate products and Adsense banners. Yes, it did work to some degree. However I didn't see the huge gains toward the end of this year that I saw in the beginning of the year, and I can't blame anyone but myself. Google Panda may have had some hand in it, but my ability to provide useful content and products that people want is the most important issue. Building a business is easy, with the right business model. The devil, as they say, is in the details!
Over the past year since I was laid off from my job (October 8, 2010 to be exact) I haven't confidently set out to build enough web content and sites to provide myself with a replacement income. Things were going well, money was coming in steadily, and meanwhile I had my savings to live off of to pay the bills. I can do this, I told myself. I wasn't expecting to have a dropoff over the Summer in income, as it seems they case when folks are busy having barbecues and going swimming rather than sitting behind their desks on the PC all day. My income dropped, and I worked harder and harder to make up for it, researching other methods and niches, searching for that "magic bullet" to make up the difference in cash flow.
Alas, I hit a ceiling at around $1,000 per month - not bad, but not enough. As my savings ran dry, my feeling of panic and desperation grew. At this point, I started looking for a "real" job. Yes, my dreams would have to be put on hold somewhat. At least for a time, while I return to the land of the zombies that get up at the crack of dawn and shuffle off to jobs they hate every day. OK, some exaggeration I admit. But that is the way I see it! I have always believed that once you find your "true calling", or "life's purpose" or whatever you want to call it, the money would never be a problem as long as you were true to yourself and believed in your purpose. So what happened?
In actuality nothing really happened, I still believe in all of that. I still believe that I will be able to make it my life's purpose to build a business online, using my wits and words to make a living. How can I still believe in that after the past year? Easy, I still believe that because I know it's true that you never fail unless you quit. I have never quit this game, and never will! Setbacks? Sure, we all have those once in awhile, but you can't let that get you down. Everything I have learned in the past year has gotten me that much closer to realizing my dream, and I'm not about to let it go now, or ever. I'm that much more determined to stay the course as they say, and build my business while I build my dreams.
So with that said, I must get back to work. I have my list of things to accomplish today and it's a long one! So back to it, time to make the doughnuts, whatever you might say. I still believe, and that is the only thing that matters...
One of my favorite quotes:
“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or a curse”
Hope to talk again soon - until then remember, don't let anyone ever steal your dreams. Especially you!
( and you can quote me on that )
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