The Necessary Unpleasantness

WHAT IS THIS COLLECTION OF NOTES ABOUT?

Part narrative of a roughly 20-year period when I grappled with what I regarded as the "necessary unpleasantness" of trying to make money, and partly a report with insights I picked up along the way.

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On Sunday, 7 December 2014, I wrote:

A strange thought recently occurred to me: to position myself as someone who gives advice on the subject of making money from home. I even thought of building up, like hundreds of other so-called internet marketers, a mailing list of people to contact every time I write a new piece on the subject, or when a new product comes on the market that might be useful to my readers.

Why shouldn’t I do it? Because it is a tainted subject? Because some sellers of information on how to make money from home are common criminals?

Okay, it’s not really a complex matter. If someone had asked me ten years ago if I would like to one day be in a position to give practical advice to people on how to make a little extra money, I would have delivered a monologue in the living room without a moment’s delay on how much better the world would be as a result.

I don’t even have to make money with it – 99% of the time it can just be my contribution to helping other people. I mean, don’t I already have many years of personal experience? Have I not gained a truckload of knowledge, enough to do something like this? Why should I stand on the sideline if I can provide advice to people on this topic – or warn then what not to do, or serve as an example of how to not go about doing things?

WHO IS THE WRITER?

Born on 29 June 1971 in Pretoria, in the Republic of South Africa.

Went to South Korea in June 1996 to work as an English teacher.

Worked in Johannesburg for six months in 1998.

Departed for Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, in January 1999.