Operation Achieve Anything: Day One-Hundred-Five, Dateline 4-15-2018
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“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”
Happy Sunday Crickets!!! Welcome to day number one-hundred-five of Operation Achieve Anything. The fact that it’s Sunday means we’re at the official end of another week making it fifteen since I started this project. Oh, what a week this has been. As you may know, from reading these post, I currently live at home while I try to work through a mid-life crisis that caused me to abandon the life that I once loved while living in Seattle.
Things are pretty nice here. I live in the garage that’s set up like a studio apartment where I earn enough money to scrape by while I attempt to figure out how to generate a livable income off of my writing. Other than the fact that I entertain my nephew throughout the day and watch prime time TV with my mom on weekdays, I’m pretty much left alone.
I feel so weird writing this at my age, especially since I ventured out on my own at a pretty early age, but the fact that I’m back home makes it feel like people treat me like I never left in the first place, especially when I say something like, “My mom was out of town for the week, allowing me to…” but here we go. With her out of town, instead of watching prime time TV, I double down on my work, since it’s impossible for me to enjoy my alone time unless I feel like I’m making progress.
My initial plan was to start a new project, in an effort to create another distraction and give me something else to do with my time. I was all set to spend the first couple of days watching and reviewing as many episodes of SNL that I could in order to free up even more time to do the research required for this new project minus the TV breaks. I was then going to spend the entire week building up a backlog of content for this new challenge so that when I do actually start it I’ll be way ahead of the game.
Unfortunately, right when I sat down to get to work, I got an email from the company that often hires me for one-off paid jobs saying that they had another gig for me. I wish I was in a place where I could turn paid work away but that not being the case, I signed in and worked until I maxed through my daily allowed allotment of work hours, which in this case was five hours a day. Usually, these tasks only last a couple of days, but that usually enough to pay for my weed and maybe a take-out dinner or two.
Fortunately, this was the first time in quite a while that I was able to work a full-time schedule since I also landed a second gig to fill in any of the gaps. Though this meant that I didn’t have time for the upcoming challenge that I still plan to start someday, the idea of how much money I was earning lit a brand new fire under my ass that brought back some enthusiasm that I thought I had lost, which was why I wanted to start this other blog challenge in the first place.
With every passing day, I started to get more and more excited as I calculated my growing income and started to think about the things that I could buy. At first, I did fall into the trap of the desperate, focusing only on things that would add some short-term comfort into my life, like new a new pad for my chair and an ergonomic mouse.
Then, as more and more money started to come in, I started to think about investing the extra income into areas that might help me to finally monetize this webpage because now that I’ve worked through many of the mental issues that caused me to snap, its time to start really focusing on my goals and not just letting them sit in my head a fantasy.
This got me looking into classes that I could take as well as small things that I could do to get a head start on the things that I plan to start as soon as I get my paycheck. The first thing I did was try to add a few ads to the site and was shocked to find that I earned a couple bucks on the very first day. Granted, when I say a couple bucks, I’m being very literal but this got me thinking that if I were to get TheWickerBreaker.com back up to the visitor numbers from back when I was actively doing promotion, I could easily make enough to at least act as an encouragement that if I keep it up, I could actually fulfill my dreams and turn this site into my full-time job, even if it only equates to a minimum wage existence.
This brought back some much-needed enthusiasm into my life that’s not just a fleeting manic episode where I can often get super excited about something that I plan to write, only to crash super hard when the reality sets in that merely adding more content will never lead to more pay unless I put some effort into the marketing and business side of the craft.
The fact that this new found enthusiasm has more than a fake it until you make it feel, the example above fits right in with yesterday’s assignment that started the Achieve Anything… book’s themed section based on enthusiasm, where I was supposed to reflect on what it means to me and what brings out enthusiasm within me.
Normal, I’m not a huge fan of this book’s themed content but sometimes, like when the book focused on how important the way you accept failure can help lead to success, I feel like an expert on the topic and feel more enthusiastic about adding my two cents on the subject, minus all of the self-help bumper sticker talk, which is kind of how I feel right now.
For today’s assignment, I’m supposed to do more reflecting on enthusiasm only I struggle to see a real difference in the task being asked of me. I’m not all that concerned because, as someone who is bipolar, I have a lot to say on the topic because I not only know how enthusiasm can be very motivating but there’s also a tipping point to where the energy involved can reach a tipping point to where things can get a little out of control when it’s not focused in the right direction.
As always, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to see what I manage to come up with. Until then, it’s time for me to wrap this up with my usual sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
