“The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track.”

– Old German joke

Recently I attracted a new breed of hater who started messaging me about my site. Rather than doing anything outlandish he went the passive aggressive route. Essentially his entire argument was that activities like writing Amazon reviews, or authoring SEO articles for obscure start ups was immoral and unethical.

My only question is: to who?

The entire argument about morality is stupid. Outside of a few things most most ethical decisions are entirely dependent on how a person sees the situation. One of the old pope’s wrote an erotic novel, another was a pirate. Both of them were,at one point, the figureheads for Christianity and its morality.

By the same token I’m sure that someone would find my “is that really ethical” inquirer to be some kind of blasphemous heathen. A group like the Amish would have considered it sinful for him to be using a computer within his own home. Since the email arrived on a Saturday, we can also guess that he broke the Sabbath, a sinful violation.

This issue also goes to a broader issue, why would you ever care about what someone else does?

Outside a few things like pedophilia, there aren’t a whole lot of activities that I’d feel inclined to try and lambast someone for.

If you’ll notice, my site never falls on classic blog filler “attack” posts. There’s no story that says “some and so is a fraud,” or “stupid businessman starts futile company.” I’d rather spend my energy working on myself than looking for random people to point and laugh at. Media and blog attacks are usually made by people who themselves are failures and want to pander to others like them. There’s no need to seek people out and try to lecture them, or convert them to your way of thinking. Medieval inquisitors  could only “persuade” people after pouring molten lead in their eyes, a passive aggressive email will do nothing.

Lastly, who says that any of the businesses that I work with are scams?

Some company in Bulgaria tat wants an article to promote their iPhone app could end up becoming huge. Flappy Bird was made in Vietnam, Apple started in a basement, you don’t know where the next big thing is going to emerge from. Just because something is obscure or didn’t launch in Silicon Valley, doesn’t mean that it is automatically a scam.

The argument that doing business online is somehow immoral or wrong is stupid. I’m working for small companies, not the dudes running that Nigerian Prince scam. If you’re actually that concerned about the morals and ethics of business you should quite your job and never buy anything again. It’s the only way to make sure that you never unwittingly finance another evil capitalist again.

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

– J. Paul Getty

Early this morning I watched a video about a simple side hustle that could easily generate $400 dollars a month. The idea was to collect wine corks and sell them on eBay. Lots of 2,000 typically go for $200.

While the idea wasn’t bad, there is a simpler and guaranteed way to do just as well. I’ve done it for years, and will keep doing it as long as someone will pay me. It takes, at most, an afternoon’s worth of work. This easy way to make $400 a month is incredibly straight forward: collecting aluminum cans.

To do this you simply go out, pick up cans, and take them to a recycling center. I’ve done it since I was eight years old.

Additionally, spring time is actually the best season to go pick up cans. The weather warms up and people start partying more. Also college is still in session, meaning that there’s a lot empty beer cans to be found.

Around this time last year I actually went out and picked up enough scrap metal to keep me from having to get a part time job while I was in school. Although I didn’t make a ton of money, I did do well enough to pay for food and going out.

Anyone looking for a side hustle without wanting to write an eBook or build a blog, should remember that there are plenty of random little jobs, like can collecting, that take zero time to setup and have no real input costs.

“No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.”

– Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

This month has sucked. My Amazon accounts all had their reviews pulled and I was flooded with hundreds of angry emails, I had an ear infection, I drove my car into a ditch, lost my debit card, got hammered with almost $500 in unexpected bills during a 24 hour period, a client tried to get his work for free, and one of my larger oDesk customers ran out of things for me to do. I ended up getting really disheartened and ended up trying to avoid doing any actual work. My inbox got flooded with emails, I didn’t answer my phone, and I flaked on a date so that I could hide inside and watch reruns of Cops.

Typically I don’t get stressed out about much, but this month nearly killed me.

When I went to school I really didn’t have any concerns. When I had a job my only problem was making sure that no one caught me napping in the bathroom. Now I have to find clients, deliver pitches to them, complete work, and still balance all my other activities. There’s a big difference between the plight of boredom and survival.

Rather than boring you with my existential crisis, I’ll explain what I did to get back on the ball.

Make work fun

I love writing. However, I hate writing most of the dull content that I get paid to make. A 2,000 word article on insurance is just as fun to write as it is to read. Because of this I ended up looking for something that I thought I’d enjoy writing. I ended up getting paid to write a short piece of goofy erotica. Having to write a campy D grade sex story is a thousand times more fun than any insurence company profile ever could be.

Get started

As Nas once said, “He who has begun is half done.” I quit procrastinating on the work that was already in front of me, instead of running from it, I sat down and worked until 2 am. I ended up finishing up enough stuff that I was several days ahead of schedule. I went from barley meeting deadlines to being all caught up by simply putting my mind to it.

By getting busy I ended up being unable to sit around and feel bad for myself. I was also able to build up enough momentum to tackle all of my more difficult and unpleasant tasks.