Money for money's sake...

Lately, as previously mentioned, I have been spreading myself incredibly thin across a wide spectrum of income-generating endeavors and have yet to begin narrowing my pursuits to those most crucial and most lucrative of efforts. Until today, that is. I had a bit of an epiphany today. I realized that the reason I'm having trouble with the idea of all of these side gigs in addition to the day job and the musical endeavors is that I have strong feelings about the notion of pursuing something solely because it will generate income. That strong feeling being that pursuing something solely based on the amount of income it will generate is detrimental to a fulfilled life and is also, not me.

Perhaps it's that when pursuing something because of the money it would generate, you are often, in fact, pursuing money and not the thing itself, therefore your dedication to becoming good at that thing can only be halfhearted due to the sheer wont of laziness and leisure that more than likely has generated such a strong desire to pursue money as a thing in itself in the first place. For what does money allow us in the end? Leisure. To spend your life pursuing only money, or money as fulfillment, and not something more wholesome such as a career doing something you enjoy, is to spend one's life pursuing laziness and leisure. These are great things at the right time, no doubt, but a life with only laziness and leisure is not a fulfilled life.

That having been said, if I'm not enjoying a pursuit, or I don't feel I'm going to enjoy it, then it's not worth continuing to pursue, regardless of how much potential income it could generate and regardless of how easy it is, or may seem.

I already know that I don't find life enjoyable when I'm not pursuing my main interest of composing. Nay, I feel quite hollow if I'm not pursuing music. And pursuing music successfully is something that one could only do because one loves to.

So why am I wasting my time trying to find ten dozen ways to generate income while I job hunt, none of which is music related? I'm not in such dire straits just yet that I need to be thinking about thirty different back up plans anyway. Just a few that I can actually, and feasibly, devote time and effort to, and that I enjoy enough to justify devoting a portion of my day to them. But, if none of these is music-related, my supposed area of expertise, then what the hell am I doing?

So, new goal: find out ways to generate income doing something you enjoy while scaling back those things that you can identify as a waste of your time. Oh, abundant free time.

I'll keep doing the ChaCha thing because I was accepted as a guide today but I'm going to have to get good at it for it to be worth my time. The thing I like about it is that, on their website, they don't tell you that you'll make so much money, or that you'll be able to quit your day job. They're honest and up front that it's just a part time side gig for even those who devote a great deal of time to it, so it's easy for me to be realistic about it. And you can get paid whenever you like, not when you reach $100 or anything like that. I also like the research part of it, when it's a decent question. I could write an entire blog entry on the questions, ranging from silly to stupid that I see, but...another time.

I'm going to also keep pursuing finding a job here and there pet sitting as well. I got some hits on the web site for jobs in and around Manhattan. I still need to finish my profile and once I do, I'll start applying. I like pets.

The movie extra thing, I decided, is not for me. Never mind that Talent 6's website was not very useful and I was unable to find any paying extra gigs. And I don't think I'll check out the other casting agencies either because it occurred to me that if I'm going to spend an entire day waiting to be in one scene, even if I get paid for it, that's a huge waste of my time. Doing any other "work-at-home," set your own hours type of gig, I'd be able to stop and write music if I got inspired. As an extra, though, I'd be stuck on a movie set for 8 hours and unable to bring work with me. Meanwhile, I'm sure I'd be going crazy waiting for it to be over. I hate being idle, unless I planned to be that way. It might have worked if I knew I was going to be unemployed for a long period of time and I knew I wouldn't be potentially spending my entire weekend on a film set, when I could be writing music at home.

Really, though, the point is that I'm going to give myself more time to write by slowing down all of this frantic searching for semi-lucrative side gigs. I'm incredibly frazzled for most of the day and I feel like my time is mostly devoted to half baked schemes, none of which ever comes to fruition, like a perpetual to do list where nothing ever gets checked off, and I'd much rather be hurling that frantic energy at some creative endeavor, whether or not it's going to make me instant money that I can spend on groceries and beer.

So without further ado...