I recently wrote a short article on LinkedIn. I like it, so I’m posting it here, as well.
Recently I had a brief chat with someone I did not know on the internet. I told him I intend to make money doing something I love, and not to waste my life at a job I hate just for a paycheck to get by. He said something to me that I’ve been pondering ever since. This is the gist of what he said:
“It’d be awesome if I could make money playing video games. But I’d definitely get sick of them after playing them for eight hours straight a day.”
I didn’t say anything about it, but this remark deeply irked me. Here was a man who saw life the old way, through old-fashioned eyes. To him, the rest of his life was going to be him working eight hours a day at a job he hated to make enough money to afford to live and to play his video games. Work was an eight-hour count-down, play was the thing he was working for. He didn’t dare even think about combining the two, or else all his joy would be taken away. From what I could tell, he wasn’t happy with it, but he wasn’t actively seeking a way out of it, either.
I didn’t mention to him the hundreds of YouTuber’s making an income posting gaming videos.
I didn’t mention to him the fact that he could package his gaming knowledge into an online course and sell it directly, creating a passive stream of income.
I didn’t mention that I literally typed “How to make money gaming” into my google search bar and several options, ideas, and how-to’s popped up.
In this day and age, with the internet at our very fingertips, to look me in the eyes on my online avatar and tell me via an instant messaging system that you “wish” you could make money doing something is a sign of naivety.
Just for the heck of it, I searched up “How to make money petting cats.” Wanna know what popped up?
Do not sit there and tell me you “wish” you could do something, or that you “can’t” do something. Guess what, five years ago I “couldn’t” design and build my own website. Now I’ve built two. Four years ago I was still barely able to keep a consistent rally going on the tennis courts, now I’m a certified tennis instructor. Five months ago I didn’t know how to format a Kindle eBook, now I have published one.
There are an unlimited number of paths you can take in life. Don’t cheat yourself out of one you might actually enjoy.