Operation Achieve Anything: Day Two-Hundred-Nine, Dateline 7-28-2018
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“It is our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth comes to the top.”
Good evening crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-nine of Operation Achieve Anything. It’s a good thing that the Achieve Anything… book is still focused on fantasy because last night I was fantasizing up a storm leading me to, once again, stay up late enough to see the sunrise. No, not that kind of nighttime fantasizing. The thoughts that filled my head were more along the lines of yesterday’ assignment where I was supposed to share my idealized dreams of success.
This timing couldn’t be better for this task because there has been a recent spike in Wicker Breaker readers, that’s starting to settle at twice the traffic that I was getting just a little over a month ago, continuing the steady climb that started when I decided to take on the daily SNL challenge. With more readers, I have more people clicking on ads leading the financial income from the site to almost double as well.
Granted, we’re still talking a dollar or two a day at the most but the fact that there has been a consistent increase in traffic and clicks ever since I added ads to the site, has me daydreaming about the day where I bring in enough to quit my day job. It actually would take all that much considering that my starving artist life has taught me how to get by with next to nothing. I fact, I kind of feel like a rich man while only bringing in around $1250 a month. That means all it would take is $45 a day to give me the freedom to walk away from the Mon-Fri 9-to-5 life that I can barely bear.
If I’m able to pull this off, it would mean that I’d have the same workload as far as the blog, but I’d have four extra hours a day to polish up the site and add other projects. Actually, it’d probably free up even more time than that since there is a lot that my work expects me to do off the clock, like reading work-related emails, training, and accuracy tests to see if I still have a job. Ah, the joys of working from home without being your own boss.
With the extra time and income, I would continue to make over my living space to make it mine, since I’ve been living with hand-me-down furniture for close to four years. I used to like it this way because not owning anything allowed me the freedom to move with ease if needed, plus, up until this latest gig I was only making enough money to cover the food that I eat and the weed that helped me to sleep.
I’ve noticed that ever since I’ve got this new job that allows me to enjoy more creature comforts, thanks to the paychecks, I’ve been in a much better mood. While I’m in a better mood, I create better content, which is why the first step in my fantasy day-job escape plan is focused on creating a cozy work and living space. I will continue to strive toward this goal whether or not I do may the great escape.
I would have to ditch the day job for phase two of my fantasy life, which mainly involves adapting my screenplays into novels while also taking a few classes to learn more about the marketing side of this site. Hopefully, between the additional content and marketing goals, I’d be attracting more readers while earning even more money through the ads as well as other money-making marketing ventures to the point where I could start to save up for my own home.
Again, this fantasy isn’t all that unachievable because, by buying my own home, I’m not talking a massive mansion after making millions with my words, I’m more talking a decent $50,000 place on the outskirts of some small town in the middle of nowhere in order to escape the big city madness. Up to this point, most of this fantasy is very achievable, and I can see it happening with time.
From this point on, the fantasies that I’m about to share will probably remain in the realm of dreams since it involves me having to count on other people, which, sadly, is pretty rough for me at this time. The first step in this pure fantasy world would be to earn enough that I could hire an editor/assistant to help me clean up this site’s archives while also helping me with areas of my life that I’m no good at and often try to avoid. In the fantasy, this would be the same person even though I doubt I’d be able to find anyone who would be excited to play those two roles unless I got to a level of success to not only take care of my own expenses but to also provide this person a livable salary for their work.
I think my self-esteem is too low to ever think that I’d ever get to the point of being a big money maker but it’s always fun to pretend. So, since I’d be making enough money in this fantastical goal to where I could afford an editor/assistant, I’d also be making enough to buy a run-down mall to try a couple of experiments on how to build a better world for both the employees and consumers. Since I’d own the land, I would allow locals to experiment with collective business plans in exchange for the rent.
The one rule that I’d have would be to make the business self-sustainable without constantly thinking about how to expand while hoarding as much money as they can. I see things like profit sharing or having specials like once the store makes its monthly goal, everything in the store gets a discount, and my ultimate goal would be to have a store minus any product built with planned obsolescence in its design. I also like the idea of having a food court that runs almost like a reality cooking game show to make things extra fun.
The idea would be to get back to making community more important than profit. Any extra money that would come would go toward developing more companies with similar community building goals with hopes to spread this type of living throughout the world. This wouldn’t be a cult thing where no outsiders would be invited. I’d much rather prefer that the locals who would need to help this idea grow would be more interested in heading out to start a similar system in some other town rather than turn it into an incestuous town where outsiders aren’t welcome, and nobody ever leaves.
My biggest dream would be to own a grocery store where every item got cheaper the closer they get to their expiration date to not only help feed the poor but also would save the store from having to get rid of so much waste. The products would all have some sort of RFID set-up so that people could see the deals through their phones or Google Glasses or whatever technology would help. There would also be both a food bank and a soup kitchen at the back of the store, to avoid even more waste.
The fantasy then builds from there until this tiny town could strive no matter what nonsense the rest of the world is up to. This way, I could have my own secluded house out in the middle of nowhere and not have to worry about ending up on the ID Channel due to a group of angry locals taking my life from not trusting the big city recluse in an effort to steal a few bucks.
Do I think this will actually happen? Probably not, at least not anything after the editor/assistant fantasy goal but even that is questionable. However, I am pretty confident that in the near future, I will be earning enough to be able to bail out on my part-time gig. That would be enough for me to live out the rest of my life as a happy man because all I really need is a bed, food, and something to write with in order to be content. Well, after the rent and bills are taken care of, but even then, I’d be happy to live in an RV or a van as I ride out the rest of this existence.
I think that fulfills yesterday’s task, now let's get on to the assignment for tonight that is again based on fantasy. All that I have to do for this one is blast some of my favorite music for at least a half-hour with my eyes closed and then when I’m done, I’m supposed to share the visions that the music inspired. Of course, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s post to see what I manage to come up with. Until then, it’s now time to wrap this thing up with my usual saying of, 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.
