peace or happiness. I’ve always loved Bukowski. He wrote about and lived in L.A., in the same neighborhood I grew up in.
Tim Ferris just sent this quote out on his newsletter, brought back memories:
“Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man, I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman…. I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind…. Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak and addled mind. But as I went on … it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn’t different from the others, I was the same… Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty…. Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt…. I re-formulated. I don’t know when, date, time, all that but the change occurred. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then- it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those…. I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness…. And finally I discovered real feelings of others, unheralded, like lately, like this morning, as I was leaving, for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there…. so still, I ached for her life, just being there under the covers. I kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. Feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.” — Charles Bukowski
Yes, freelancing is hard. it’s much more difficult and less steady than the good old paycheck.
The Traveling Web Developer
Every week I meet a new web developer or content developer or social media freelancer online who tries to make traveling their number one priority in life, using their freelance work to support it. That’s pretty hard to argue with, kind of a dream come true for many of us, a reordering of your priorities to being able to see the world while having an income at the same time.
I’m sure not all of them are as successful as they claim, but many are thriving. WordPress development seems to be a popular choice here. You can get $1,000 to $10,000 to build a site that takes 1-4 weeks if all the stars align correctly.
And there are a lot of WordPress sites to be built. That could all change, but for now a laptop, lots of free software, and a Mai Tai is all you need. And instead of a boss, you have clients. People get very creative in mixing travel with freelancing – Winnebagos, third world countries, cabins in the mountains. This could also possibly be done when creating a startup and being a real entrepreneur, but it’s much more difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it.
The Traveling Travel Blog Blogger
This growing sub-genre of freelancing seems to be growing quite quickly, a lone person or often a couple will start a blog about their travel experiences, logging each day with words and pictures. They try to use the revenue they make from selling ads and their travel photos to finance the journeys.
It sounds like another dream come true. It’s difficult to see how you could make enough to live on just blogging, unless you were really good at it, but I’ve seen hundreds of these lately. Most admit on their websites that they supplement their blog income with money from travel-related sponsors, building websites, and even taking jobs on the road (like teaching English or working as SCUBA instructors).
Whether they make much money or not, power to them for the choice they made.
WHAT WOULD SETH DO?
Seth Godin is another one of my favorite pundits on several topics but definitely a bold leader in talking about differentiation, hacking the core and freelancers. He has a great way of explaining the problem with positioning yourself as a freelancer. Basically, Seth’s theory is that if you’re performing any job for someone else that is not extremely unique, your employer or client is incentivized to replace you with someone cheaper.
Why? Because they can. Why shouldn’t they?
It’s just smart business. He covers it in his book We Are All Weird. Another way to drive the point home is to look at offshore freelancers. Almost any replaceable skill can now be found in India or the Philippines for $5-10 per hour. So it boils down to offering a service or product that is either in higher demand than supply, or that you yourself are able to offer cheaper.
We have a giant contingent of freelancers in the workforce marketplace now, due to large companies drastically decreasing the amount of people that they are willing to hire as full-fledged employees with benefits and longevity. This makes it even harder to differentiate yourself.
The lesson here is that even in the field of software development, which thousands are flocking to currently, you must differentiate yourself. Avoid being seen as a commodity.
This site [ tomnora.com/blog/ ], is my new Command Central for all my work related content –– Podcast, Business Writings and Rants, Tech Advice, Design Thoughts, and all things related.
I will also post excerpts from my books HACKING THE CORE and the upcoming CEO book.
Occasionally original art and photography will be showcased, my own and others. Here’s a sample…
