I’m still figuring things out.

In the past few weeks I’ve felt stress from a multitude of areas.

1. I don’t really have a job. I’m teaching guitar two days a week at a local music school. I love doing this. It’s a new challenge to maintain young kids’ attention, teach them, and try to keep their enthusiasm up throughout the lesson.
2. I’ve got bills that need to be paid. In order to do that, while I continue to apply to jobs (I’ve applied to 15+ part time jobs, none of which have even contacted me back) I’ve begun flipping stuff on eBay. The risk here is that I’m unsure whether the items will sell fast enough in order for me to pay my bills.
3. The one job I really, really wanted–an entry-level job at Book in a Box—I made it into the top 1% of applicants out of thousands of applicants. When I received my rejection letter, it admonished me to be proud of the fact that I’d made it that fair. It pointed to the fact that there will be future opportunities for me to reapply and that if I continue to hone my skills that there will likely be a spot for me in the company, further down the road. I am proud of making it that far, but I refuse to tout it as an accomplishment. I will celebrate it as one of my first real failures, though. And I know it will take many more in order to become “successful.”

One of my responses to failure, and desperation, has been to throw myself into the things I love, while also applying to many more jobs, and many freelance gigs, in the meantime. I’ve been applying to audiobook production, because I have experience recording music, and I think those skills will translate well into audiobook production.

I’m also continuing to create music and videos on my YouTube channel. Alongside my goofy Leon character-based videos, I started putting up “meditation music” videos, because for some reason meditation music videos get millions of views. And if I don’t get millions of views, this still pushes me to compose more music, so it’s a win-win situation. Or, as Tim Ferriss puts it, I’ve set the game up so that I win even if I lose.

The most stressful part about all of this is not knowing whether I have enough short-term income streams to last in this longer-term play. Gary Vee is all about the long-game. I just hope I can last that long.

 

Just wanted to check in. It’s my birthday.