You could use a simple and safe job as a leverage for other opportunities. Not sure how much of the following could apply to your situation.
Generally, sometimes you have an idea of a project which gives you (a) a lot of money later, but no money right now, or (b) a lot of other utility, but no money. If you need to pay your bills, you need to take some job. But sometimes the job is exhausting, and you have no more time or energy left to work on your project.
One solution is to try making a lot of money, and later take some free time and do the project. A typical failure mode here is that many people, when they start making more money, also increase their expenses (having children increases the expenses, too), so the “later” never comes.
Another solution is to find a job that is paid less, but leaves you enough time and energy for your project. A typical failure mode here is procrastination; you make less money, but you actually don’t do your project. Another failure more is having a wrong model, so the less paying job actually does not leave you enough time or energy.
Example 1: A person took a job of a night guard in a factory. The job required them merely to stay all night in the empty factory, and every hour or two take a flashlight a take a five-minutes walk around the factory to check if everything is okay. The pay wasn’t good, but paid their bills. They had to reverse their day/night cycle, but they had a lot of free unsupervised time during the working hours. -- The person took a notebook to their work, and during a few years they wrote a few successful novels, and became a superstar in their cultural niche.
Example 2: A person took a part-time job as a programmer, to pay their bills, and uses the other half of their day to program mobile games. They really work hard on their games (but still have a lot of free time), and experiment with different approaches. At this moment, after a year of this approach, they have released two games which together provide them a passive income of $50 a month. Which is not much per se, but it’s the first two games they ever made. There is a lot of uncertainty here, but under some optimistic assumptions, if this passive income persists, and if their following games will provide more money or take significantly shorter time to develop, they could retire in ten years or so ($1000 a month is the average income here, so they are already at 5%). And the backup plan is to find a new job, developing mobile applications. (Being employed as a developer and developing in your free time may be legally risky; consult this with a lawyer. In this specific case the job is unrelated to mobiles, and the contract allows side income from non-competing projects.)
Example 3: A person made and saved some money, then took a few months of free time to make a computer game. Spent the whole time reading web; accomplished nothing. After a few months they updated, and humbly returned to the usual rat race.
Example 4: A person took a less paid but more simple and pleasant job (the estimate was based on a past experience of the same role in another institution, not available now) and wanted to make a computer game in their free time. However, in this specific institution the role actually was neither simple nor pleasant. (It turned out that the previous experience was very exceptional.) After a few years the person updated, and humbly returned to the more exhausting but better paid kind of jobs, having lost a lot of money in the opportunity costs during those years. With a little job-hopping they discovered that there was also a significant variance in that kind of jobs (despite having the same job titles and almost identical wages), and found something that seems like the local minimum in difficulty.
It saddens me to admit that the examples 1 and 2 was someone else, while the examples 3 and 4 was me. :(
So, if there is a chance of having a free time during your job (I am not sure if this applies) or working a shorter schedule, you could use it to make some project, or to learn new things. There are many free online courses: if you’d take them seriously (as in: two or three hours a day, every day, and do all the homework), within one year you could learn a lot.
Okay; I’m not saying this is necessarily a good strategy—it failed for me; but on the other hand I personally know people who have succeeded; the critical factor is probably conscientiousness vs. procrastination—but I think this is another option you might want to consider. Your local alternative doesn’t have to be only “library”, but could also be “library+project”.
That person fails precisely in the “have a small safe income to pay your bills” part.
He also horribly fails at updating. His whole plan seems to be writing emacs tutorials and selling them for money. (I didn’t read the whole website, maybe there are more plans, most likely not better.) Besides being an obviously bad business model, he is actually very bad at writing; which means he can’t even show his tutorials to a potential employer and expect to get a technical writing job or something like that.
This is something that cannot happen in the “library” scenario. At least not soon; maybe a few years later, if the library job becomes unavailable. On the other hand, it can happen in the “moving to a larger city where no one responds to my job applications” scenario, if the potential employers keep not-responding, there is no income, and the rent goes up. But I didn’t want to discourage; it only takes one job offer to get out of that situation.
For another horror story, I personally know a guy who decided that he will refuse all programming job offers until he gets an offer using SmallTalk (because “Java is only for idiots”, although he made decent money from it in the past). He had a lot of money when he decided to do this, now, a few years later, he is homeless. True story. (If you ever visit Slovakia and find a homeless guy with a notebook, that’s probably him.) Again, he failed at having a small safe income. That’s the point. You either have some way to pay your bills, or you quit your plans before you hit the bottom and break your legs.
Most people seek “paying your bills” and “making a carreer” in the same package. It’s probably a good strategy in many cases. But there are other options, too.
I knew a guy who worked for government. He told me he only worked one hour a week. (His work consisted of receiving a Word document with some information, converting in to HTML, and publishing on the website.) He spent rest of the time browsing web. When he discovered that the new version of Word has a “save as HTML” function, so his one hour of work becomes literally ten seconds, he became depressed, and later changed jobs. I kinda didn’t understand him. If I had that job, I wouldn’t quit. Instead, I would use this free time to do my hobbies and projects. Like translating Sequences, making websites for my friends, writing textbooks, learning new programming languages, making computer games, etc. And I would gradually prepare an exit plan, so that one day I would quit the job, but the next day I would activate AdSense on the dozen websites I would have made before, and activate purchases of virtual goods in the mobile games I would have made before. (To make it legally okay, that I wasn’t making money while working for the government.) These are lost opportunities. And maybe… maybe not… the library is one of them.
He also horribly fails at updating. His whole plan seems to be writing emacs tutorials and selling them for money. (I didn’t read the whole website, maybe there are more plans, most likely not better.) Besides being an obviously bad business model, he is actually very bad at writing; which means he can’t even show his tutorials to a potential employer and expect to get a technical writing job or something like that.
The comments in the lengthy HN discussion suggest that his tutorials & other documentation are well-written, it’s just his personal stuff which is written in his horrible idiosyncratic style.
Viliam_Bur:
Thank you for the suggestions and the examples. I have decided to take the job and spend a couple of years gaining experience here with a pay rate that, while not large, is enough. The job is not such that I can sit on my laurels, so I will be active in the community which will encourage my own personal development and establish contacts. I’ll still have free time to write and practice new skills. And, though the money is actually less than I originally was told, I should still have at least two hundred a month to add into my investment porfolio. Not much, but if I can get the right funds going, I shouldn’t have to worry too much.
Lumifer:
Thank you for the link. Such a situation is the exact one I wanted to avoid. And still want to avoid by ensuring that whatever I do next, I do it now. Not later.
An idea: Write on a paper your specific expectations about what you expect to happen in three months, six months, a year, two years. Make it four different papers, and put them in a place where you will find them; make a calendar note to read them at that time. Compare the outcomes.
The idea is that if your strategy wouldn’t work, this is the way to know it. (As opposed to, e.g., keeping expecting that “one more year” and the things will improve. If nothing of your plans becomes real in one year, or if nothing finished successfully in two years, you are living an illusion, and it’s time to give up.)
You could use a simple and safe job as a leverage for other opportunities. Not sure how much of the following could apply to your situation.
Generally, sometimes you have an idea of a project which gives you (a) a lot of money later, but no money right now, or (b) a lot of other utility, but no money. If you need to pay your bills, you need to take some job. But sometimes the job is exhausting, and you have no more time or energy left to work on your project.
One solution is to try making a lot of money, and later take some free time and do the project. A typical failure mode here is that many people, when they start making more money, also increase their expenses (having children increases the expenses, too), so the “later” never comes.
Another solution is to find a job that is paid less, but leaves you enough time and energy for your project. A typical failure mode here is procrastination; you make less money, but you actually don’t do your project. Another failure more is having a wrong model, so the less paying job actually does not leave you enough time or energy.
Example 1: A person took a job of a night guard in a factory. The job required them merely to stay all night in the empty factory, and every hour or two take a flashlight a take a five-minutes walk around the factory to check if everything is okay. The pay wasn’t good, but paid their bills. They had to reverse their day/night cycle, but they had a lot of free unsupervised time during the working hours. -- The person took a notebook to their work, and during a few years they wrote a few successful novels, and became a superstar in their cultural niche.
Example 2: A person took a part-time job as a programmer, to pay their bills, and uses the other half of their day to program mobile games. They really work hard on their games (but still have a lot of free time), and experiment with different approaches. At this moment, after a year of this approach, they have released two games which together provide them a passive income of $50 a month. Which is not much per se, but it’s the first two games they ever made. There is a lot of uncertainty here, but under some optimistic assumptions, if this passive income persists, and if their following games will provide more money or take significantly shorter time to develop, they could retire in ten years or so ($1000 a month is the average income here, so they are already at 5%). And the backup plan is to find a new job, developing mobile applications. (Being employed as a developer and developing in your free time may be legally risky; consult this with a lawyer. In this specific case the job is unrelated to mobiles, and the contract allows side income from non-competing projects.)
Example 3: A person made and saved some money, then took a few months of free time to make a computer game. Spent the whole time reading web; accomplished nothing. After a few months they updated, and humbly returned to the usual rat race.
Example 4: A person took a less paid but more simple and pleasant job (the estimate was based on a past experience of the same role in another institution, not available now) and wanted to make a computer game in their free time. However, in this specific institution the role actually was neither simple nor pleasant. (It turned out that the previous experience was very exceptional.) After a few years the person updated, and humbly returned to the more exhausting but better paid kind of jobs, having lost a lot of money in the opportunity costs during those years. With a little job-hopping they discovered that there was also a significant variance in that kind of jobs (despite having the same job titles and almost identical wages), and found something that seems like the local minimum in difficulty.
It saddens me to admit that the examples 1 and 2 was someone else, while the examples 3 and 4 was me. :(
So, if there is a chance of having a free time during your job (I am not sure if this applies) or working a shorter schedule, you could use it to make some project, or to learn new things. There are many free online courses: if you’d take them seriously (as in: two or three hours a day, every day, and do all the homework), within one year you could learn a lot.
Okay; I’m not saying this is necessarily a good strategy—it failed for me; but on the other hand I personally know people who have succeeded; the critical factor is probably conscientiousness vs. procrastination—but I think this is another option you might want to consider. Your local alternative doesn’t have to be only “library”, but could also be “library+project”.
And here is a warning tale, hot off the presses: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/xah_as_good_as_dead.html
That person fails precisely in the “have a small safe income to pay your bills” part.
He also horribly fails at updating. His whole plan seems to be writing emacs tutorials and selling them for money. (I didn’t read the whole website, maybe there are more plans, most likely not better.) Besides being an obviously bad business model, he is actually very bad at writing; which means he can’t even show his tutorials to a potential employer and expect to get a technical writing job or something like that.
This is something that cannot happen in the “library” scenario. At least not soon; maybe a few years later, if the library job becomes unavailable. On the other hand, it can happen in the “moving to a larger city where no one responds to my job applications” scenario, if the potential employers keep not-responding, there is no income, and the rent goes up. But I didn’t want to discourage; it only takes one job offer to get out of that situation.
For another horror story, I personally know a guy who decided that he will refuse all programming job offers until he gets an offer using SmallTalk (because “Java is only for idiots”, although he made decent money from it in the past). He had a lot of money when he decided to do this, now, a few years later, he is homeless. True story. (If you ever visit Slovakia and find a homeless guy with a notebook, that’s probably him.) Again, he failed at having a small safe income. That’s the point. You either have some way to pay your bills, or you quit your plans before you hit the bottom and break your legs.
Most people seek “paying your bills” and “making a carreer” in the same package. It’s probably a good strategy in many cases. But there are other options, too.
I knew a guy who worked for government. He told me he only worked one hour a week. (His work consisted of receiving a Word document with some information, converting in to HTML, and publishing on the website.) He spent rest of the time browsing web. When he discovered that the new version of Word has a “save as HTML” function, so his one hour of work becomes literally ten seconds, he became depressed, and later changed jobs. I kinda didn’t understand him. If I had that job, I wouldn’t quit. Instead, I would use this free time to do my hobbies and projects. Like translating Sequences, making websites for my friends, writing textbooks, learning new programming languages, making computer games, etc. And I would gradually prepare an exit plan, so that one day I would quit the job, but the next day I would activate AdSense on the dozen websites I would have made before, and activate purchases of virtual goods in the mobile games I would have made before. (To make it legally okay, that I wasn’t making money while working for the government.) These are lost opportunities. And maybe… maybe not… the library is one of them.
The comments in the lengthy HN discussion suggest that his tutorials & other documentation are well-written, it’s just his personal stuff which is written in his horrible idiosyncratic style.
Viliam_Bur: Thank you for the suggestions and the examples. I have decided to take the job and spend a couple of years gaining experience here with a pay rate that, while not large, is enough. The job is not such that I can sit on my laurels, so I will be active in the community which will encourage my own personal development and establish contacts. I’ll still have free time to write and practice new skills. And, though the money is actually less than I originally was told, I should still have at least two hundred a month to add into my investment porfolio. Not much, but if I can get the right funds going, I shouldn’t have to worry too much.
Lumifer: Thank you for the link. Such a situation is the exact one I wanted to avoid. And still want to avoid by ensuring that whatever I do next, I do it now. Not later.
An idea: Write on a paper your specific expectations about what you expect to happen in three months, six months, a year, two years. Make it four different papers, and put them in a place where you will find them; make a calendar note to read them at that time. Compare the outcomes.
The idea is that if your strategy wouldn’t work, this is the way to know it. (As opposed to, e.g., keeping expecting that “one more year” and the things will improve. If nothing of your plans becomes real in one year, or if nothing finished successfully in two years, you are living an illusion, and it’s time to give up.)
An idea I plan to implement tonight. Thank you Viliam_Bur.