A Penny Saved

The novelty of having a “grown-up job” grows old quickly, doesn’t it? I mean, I’ve only had mine for six weeks now, and already I’m looking for alternatives. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job, as that sort of thing goes. But I can’t help but notice that the days are already whizzing by faster than ever before, in a seemingly endless cycle from Monday to Monday. I know part of it is that I’m older now. But another part of it is the monotony. Get up, go to work, do work, eat lunch, do work, go home, do “real person” stuff for a few hours, go to bed. I can easily imagine the next five or ten or forty years of my life slipping away before I know it.

But what can be done to counteract this? I’ve been giving it a lot of thought over the past week. First, I had to decide what I value. One of the things I value is my own time:

I want to spend less time watching television and on the internet, and more time reading books, writing and drawing, and talking with my friends.

I want to work hard at work, but not spend more time at it than I have to.

I want to develop alternative streams of income, so I can become, over time, less dependent on my day job. For me, this includes such things as developing my own website for my comics and other creative works, perhaps doing freelance web design, and investing.

Earning a huge salary isn’t something important to me, and I have no intention of climbing the corporate ladder. However, financial and temporal freedom are important to me. Things like creativity, self-sufficiency, friends and family, and supporting my community are important to me. In order to put more emphasis on those things, I’ll have to restructure my life.

Expect more posts on this topic in the future.