money

History Today – June 4, 2018

~ Georgia Tell ~ Leave a comment

This History Today series aims to document what life is like in this period of history. I update whenever I feel like it.

Aspects of daily life:

  • Facebook ads have always been a successful medium, but today was the first day they were able to successfully lure me into clicking on not one ad, but three. Technology knows me better than I know myself. It inclines me to clear my cookies and my cache, but I don’t think that would stop Facebook from knowing me.
  • I have a desire to share more of myself than ever in my life. Especially to strangers on the internet.
  • I heard a recap of the Hookup Hotline segment of 97.1 Amp Radio this morning on my drive to work. The date between a forward woman and a conscientious man went well, without a vocalized complaint by either party; they went to Malibu and had margaritas (or at least she did). I wondered how I would be on that segment, even though I’m currently engaged and not looking. Maybe it’s my love of adventure (and books) that has my mind twirling in maybes.
  • I replied to a poetry contest that I did not win, but was earnestly encouraged by. I said I was already editing. It’s the truth. I still wonder if I should enter more contests or self-publish. I love the idea of winning, but I love the power of doing it myself.
  • I did not hear about a school shooting, but I suppose that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.
  • I’m practicing a tighter budget again, not necessarily because I need to, but because I want to challenge myself.
  • I went to Disneyland yesterday. The tickets are $117 for a single park, per person. In high school, it was way less. They take pictures of you when you enter the park, instead of hand stamps. It’s to help with fraud, I believe.
  • You can’t seem to win on the financial front unless you’re lucky, smart, or hardworking. Pick two, minimum.

I saw more than three ads today about starting my own business. I know ads are targeted, but someone has got to be running these ads, which means there’s clearly a community for this sort of thing.

I once bought the book of one of these people. While there was some good information, there was nothing that I didn’t already really know.

Perhaps we need to be babied and told stuff we already know to break out and be the people we want to be. This includes me.

Currently, I’m going through changes in my life: a move, a slight change of jobs, and launching into the completeness of my being.

I’m going to try to make part-time work sustain me while I pursue things that I need a kick in the ass to do: write more and build an unrelated business. It’s interesting that trying for things that will benefit me are so hard to get underway.

Successful people in media seem to have a gusto that I don’t think I possess, but I’ve lately been coming to the realization that they are as lost as me. I just am a bit more obvious about it. My friends and loved ones do not have as perfect lives as their social media leads me to believe.

It’s actually a breath of fresh air when someone posts a negative thing about their life on Facebook. We are not perfect, though there is this instinct to curate ourselves until we are. I have it too.

Why It’s Okay — Maybe Even Great — To Be Average

~ Georgia Tell ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had a revelation. I think I just figured out the key to success as a moderately smart, moderately hardworking person who doesn’t really want a normal job.

The key is diversification. I’m always trying to find that one thing that’ll allow me to be my own boss or the intense amount of work it takes to crank out novels like I’m a rabbit popping out babies.

I’m not expert level at anything, as much as I would like to be. I’m not a genius. And while I’ve been bemoaning that fact for years, internally, it suddenly became clear to me just now that I don’t need to be a genius. I just have to be passable to get the life I want.

I’ve always heard that you should go with your core competency and stick with it — that’s my business school education. If I was great at corporate things, I should focus my energy on that. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine focusing all my energy on one thing, and I think that I’m like the typical person in that aspect. In essence, I don’t have the passion in any one field to have the patience for expertise. I am truly a jack of many trades.

And this might actually be a good thing in some ways. The single most impactful thing I learned in my finance class when I was in college was that if you had a monkey pick 40 stocks and put him up against a professional fund manager, the monkey will win most of the time in terms of long-term profit. That’s why so many people invest in index funds. They’re mitigating risk and reducing workload by spreading out their investment across an index.

But if I did that with my various hobbies that I would like to turn into income streams, it would essentially be the same thing, except instead of money I invest my time. The good thing here is that I’m only pursuing things that I find interesting, like: personal finance, investing, crafting, writing, real estate and education. I already like to research and do things in these topic areas. So my time would be investment but also entertainment.

I don’t working on things I love doing. And since I’m not an expert in any of those things, why not do them all a bit?

I made $37.95 from five months of having my book out and self-published. That’s about $7 a month for one book — the sales have been relatively spread out. If I write 7 more books, I’d get $56 a month — assuming that is a conservative rate. At 1/40th of what I need to survive, it’s not shabby. That’s a week worth of groceries if I’m frugal.

I see so many people saying that writing books isn’t worth it unless you’re going to be super prolific and an amazing marketer, but why? I write because I love it. Why not continue self-publishing? And working on all the projects I love? It’s fun, I’m not planning on quitting my job until my side projects can generate reliable income anyway.

There’s something to be said for pursuing your passions, even if you can’t strike it rich. Maybe all my passions can collectively support me one day. I’m aiming for it now!