(That no one talks about out of fear)
Quitting your job for internet money is a kinky fetish.
The lifestyle is glamorized as hell. Having quit my job for wifi money, I’ve seen the unsexy side.
I know, poor Timmy Boy, right? You okay sweety? You want to blow your nose on a hundred-dollar bill you poor thing?
Yes, I’m fine. Thanks.
Let me give you the other side of the story. It’ll open your eyes and help you think about your online journey
It’s somewhat hard to relate to my former colleagues now.
I call them to shoot the sh*t and I can sense a degree of distance. They just don’t know what it’s like to make money online and spend a good amount of your day connecting with other creators, sharing strategies, and crafting digital offers.
They live in a world where they get told what to do and the main outcome is to make their employer more revenue. They thrive on office politics and who’s the next person to leave their job for a competitor.
I used to care about these trivial things. Not anymore.
Making money online forces you to trade normality for a level of freedom most people can’t contemplate. That can make you feel like an illegal alien.
I love a good piss-up.
Hand me a non-alcoholic lemon water and I’ll become the life of the party, fast. The truth is when you work from home on an internet business, you don’t get these fully paid-for social events anymore.
They’re harder to come by. You have to seek them out.
When you do finally attend a work function type event it’s easy to feel out of practice. You suddenly become shy or don’t know how to talk about anything other than the creator economy.
Socializing is underrated.
Humans need connection. And real life connections, too, where you can shake the other person’s hand and feel the sweat on their skin.
I love self-education.
While being trapped in a bus with other humans like sardines can seem like hell, the upside is you can’t do anything other than listen to podcasts.
I miss listening to an entire episode of the Tim Ferriss show each day going to and from work.
I miss the depth of conversation with The Diary Of A CEO podcast. I miss the walks to the bus stop. I miss the built-in exercise that comes with going back and forth to work 5 days a week.
Commutes create focused attention. Podcasts help you understand the world 10x better than 90-second addictive cat videos on TikTok.
If you were to ask me the best part of any job I’ve ever worked, it would be my work colleagues. I tend to become friends with people I work with.
It’s fun to hang out on weekends. Work often used to feel like an extension of my weekend. Around the festive season we’d go to the movies and watch Star Wars. Then we’d go get juicy, sloppy hamburgers. Again, a normal job had the socializing built in.
I’ve found when I go to actively seek out socializing I tend to put it off and never get around to it. The false narrative in my head is that there’s too much online business work to do.
It’s not the end of the world though. Soon I will join a WeWork and find a new tribe of people to spend time with while I work on my internet hustle.
Junk food is bad for you.
That’s why at home I don’t have easy access to it. And I live in a poor suburb next to government housing so there’s little in the way of restaurants.
When I had a job there’d always be some celebration for a new company milestone or a person’s birthday. It gave me an excuse to let my hair down.
The cool part is I got to try lots of food from other cultures, because Australia (where I live) is culturally diverse.
It wasn’t uncommon to have Indian, Asian, American, Australian, New Zealand, and European cuisines all on the same table.
Now I don’t get access to that. I eat rice and vegetables for almost every lunch. I drink no-life water.
What all these points have in common is loneliness.
If you’re not proactive about how you live your life away from a job it’s easy to become lonely. At the start it won’t matter too much. But if you let it persist, you’ll wake up not feeling motivated.
It’s important to socialize and not just live in the metaverse of Zoom calls and Slack chats all day.
Every decision has trade-offs. There’s no perfect life despite what Instagram and TikTok influencers tell ya.
I love what I do even with the downsides. Freedom to think is far more powerful than what I’ve lost.
Choose the trade-offs that work best for you.