I have no real interests or hobbies. If I was shopping for myself I’d probably just buy another book on “growing your side hustle” or one of the many “building a startup” books.
Revenue, monetization, and profit are always the primary driver for my activities. Whether or not I actually care about a particular topic is sorta irrelevant. And my frustration is that depending on who I talk to, I get entirely different perspectives on whether this going to facilitate my success in life or not. For example, people who are like my business/money focused family applaud my efforts. They don’t understand how this is bad.
“Dave, how is spending your free time trying to make more money a bad thing? You can use that money to pursue your hobbies or interests.”
“Yeah uncle, but I honestly don’t know what my hobbies and interests are besides things that make more money.”
“Great Dave, so your passion is making money!”
“But I don’t want that to be my passion!”
But if I talk to my more passion focused friends, I’m sorta self-judging in my head.
“Dave, I’m working on a youth charity. It’s soo many hours of long work and stressful, but really rewarding.”
“Oh umm…that’s great Pam. But that’s a lot of work, and no money? Like…is it really worth it? Imagine if you turned it into some type of education business. What’s the market like for that? You could charge at least $300 per student.”
Ugh, this is what gives me migraines. My 25 year old anxiety is telling me that if I pick the wrong strategy then my future is forever doomed. I also have no idea where this obsession began. I didn’t grow up poor, so I can’t use that as an excuse for my obsession. I think it might have to do with imposter syndrome and feeling like I have to prove myself. Basically, if I have lots of money rolling in then I can say “fuck the system” and not be criticized. I falsely feel like people can’t judge me if I have my own business that’s making Elon Musk level income.
Or maybe it’s simply because I live in the United States, and that’s just our culture here. Plus with all the uncertainty, you never know when debt can hit you. Poverty, streets, homeless shelter, etc.
But this just all feels wrong to me. It feels like I’m digging myself into a bad hole. What if my time was used toward genuine activities and interests? I could also have a chance at financial success with those. I just don’t know what those genuine interests are. All I know is that when I chase after these money quests, I always feel cheated in the end.
Let’s walk inside my mind for a second.
So I work on coding side projects outside of work. Do I love coding and problem solving? Eh, I’m not really sure. But, I do love the idea of one day rolling in cash from some tool or app I built. Therefore, I’m going to spend my time trying to find a niche market that I can penetrate with some basic app/program that I can at least charge $100 a month for. Then I just need to spend a couple of hours everyday scouring through Google trends, Reddit, or Exploding Topics to find something people are currently into. Then maybe set up a landing page, and see if people enter in their credit card info. Or how about I search the Apple App Store and find some shitty app that people pay big bucks for and copy it? Oh wait, hold up, snack boxes are trending! Okay, so I can just set up a service for $20 a month to send people almonds, right?
Trust me, it gets worst.
I make videos on YouTube. I have a little over 200k subscribers currently. Do I like making videos? Eh…I’m not really sure. Truthfully, most days I would rather not engage in the activity. But influencer sponsorships pay a lot! Also, adsense is a really nice passive income source. So what I need to do is spend my time studying the YouTube algorithm so I can produce videos that get more views. More views equals more money!! Oh and remember when I made videos on Android? Yeah nobody cares about that niche anymore. So I’m going to use tools like TubeBuddy or VidIQ to see trending topics that people are watching. Okay people are all talking about Among Us right now. So if I make a video that’s at least 10 minutes long I can stick a mid-roll ad into it too! Don’t forget all the long-tail keywords. Wait, my website hardly has any ads on it right now. I’m missing out on extra income! I need at least a sidebar ad and also a footer ad.
Guess what? After two days I lost motivation in the Snackbox idea. As for YouTube, I made videos on the “well researched SEO friendly topics” and they performed horribly. It was like another slap in the face saying “Dave, this is what happens when you chase money without regard for interests.” But….but…all the entrepreneurs say just having interest in building a business is enough!
Yeah, so I don’t know what to say or how to end this. I’m just hoping that by sharing my obstacles and fears I get some helpful incite; or at least connect people who also share this struggle. I feel like it’s one of the many problems that’s not addressed adequately and leaves us just desperate for answers.