I just received a bonus. The first from a full-time role in many years.
It was far more than I made in an average month or two or three when I was working for myself. Great, right?
And yet it still left me with some weird mixed feelings.
I am grateful, truly grateful. But it's thrown me a little. I've been dabbling with the world of side hustles and working for myself for while, with the ultimate goal of not wanting to rely on a day job for my freedom.
But having been back in the world of the cubicle for about nine months, I've lost a bit of focus. There's less hunger. Less intensity. I've lost a bit of mojo.
My fundamental philosophy relates to not relying on "the Man", the government, anyone else. That requires being in a position to dictate personal and financial freedom. Working for myself kind of gave me that, limited as the income was.
Getting a regular income is great. I just have to make sure I don't get complacent and forget that I can't rely on a job. Things always change. The world of work will move on with or without me. That's why I know that I need to get back to building my side hustles, particularly as income generation has been pretty average in recent months.
One advance I did have this month was the building of my website (finally). Now I need to build up the blog and monetization strategy. Fundamentally, it's geared around what I've learned through my career coaching / resume writing side hustle, and focused on the finance industry (which is my background). So we'll see how my site
Finance Job Hunter gets on. Slowly but surely.
And so to this last month:
Resume Writing: $71. I really didn't make much time for resume writing this month. I couldn't motivate myself, to be honest. The background work, the after-work calls, the re-writes. When I'm ready, I know the work is there. I just need to get psyched up and throw myself back into this.
Additional Writing: $0. I've had a few writing offers in recent months but none of them appealed. Too much time required for the money they were willing to pay. But I still want to have this as an income generator in the future. This isn't going to be about selling my soul to Freelancer or Upwork for less than I'm worth. No, I'm keeping in mind specialist content providers like
Copylab that would pay pretty well.
Stock Dividends: $0. Ok, this approach does work. It's just that dividends don't get paid every month. I've bought some more stocks this month and plan to buy more with my bonus. As a result, I'll expect this figure to pick up a fair bit later this year.
Interest: $17. It doesn't look like interest rates will be rising fast anytime soon so I can't expect this to kick on. But it's there.
Ebooks: $0. Not a good month. The first month in a while I haven't sold any. I blame those damn Amazon algorithms. They keep changing. Anyway, my books
have been ticking over for a while now, making me a few dollars in the process, so I can have months like this once in a while. I am looking to add more ebooks to my existing collection (
Beginner's Guide to Online Side Hustles,
Cryptocurrency Job Hunting for Non-Techies,
The Simple Guide to a Winning LinkedIn Profile and
Craft a Winning Resume).
Coaching: $0. No sessions over the month again.
Other: $0. Familiar pattern.
Total: $88. Well, that wasn't a great month was it? My lowest month on memory.
But that's fine. I'm all about the "slow and steady" approach. I'm convinced that once I get all my ducks in a row there will be a meaningful shift.
So, hopefully, I can build a bit of momentum with
Finance Job Hunter. I'll keep working on it and keep experimenting with my other income streams.
