“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

– Muhammad Ali

Once upon a time a young man bought a gym membership. He quit watching Netflix and started spending his evenings learning how to bench and squat. He went to the gym every day, ate a high protein diet, and started to care about his health. During this time a lot of his friends got upset and started to mock him. They said things like “I guess you’re too goo to eat pizza” and “you’ve been to the gym every night, but you’re still scrawny.”

The young man had to make an important decision, he had to chose between doing his own thing or returning to his friends. After some deep though he decided that “friends are f*cking gay.” For the next two months he did everything by himself. He went to bars alone, he ate alone, and he lifted alone. At the time he thought that he was a one man army, reliant on no one and fully control of his own destiny.

I was that guy. From December of 2012 until the beginning of March I spent most of my time by myself. While I wasn’t antisocial, I ended up doing my own thing and parting ways with most of my old crew. Although I had big plans for my year and felt that I needed to work free of criticism, I was also scared. Failing with my goals would be a lot harder if other people knew. They’d smirk and smugly tell me that I shouldn’t have tried in the first place.

In March I ended up becoming really good friends with another guy who went to my school. We became lifting buddies and hung out almost every day. Although my friend transferred schools and I dropped out, we’re still pretty close.

From the beginning of March until the end of July I went to bars and clubs almost every weekend. Since then my interest in nightlife has dropped to almost nothing. Over the weekend I tried to figure out why.

Going out was fun because it was something I always did with my best friend. It didn’t matter if we got blown out by girls, or if the party sucked, or if the bar was a sausage fest. We still had a lot of fun. There was a night where everything was dead so we left early and got Jimmy John’s. While we were there a drunk guy came in, tried ordering tacos, and then argued about what chain restaurant he was in. We ended laughing about it for the rest of the night.

Going out was fun and didn’t feel like work. I also got better at stuff like lifting. Having a partner to compete with made me put in extra work at the gym. It provided motivation.

Nowadays I have a new lifting partner, some great mentors, and plenty of friends. Working with others and sharing goals feels natural to me. However, when I first started to improve myself I thought that I could do everything on my own. Going your own way is still something that I think is important, but it isn’t as effective as having a good friend or quality mentor. Having someone else will help push you along and make the journey more enjoyable.

“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

– Abraham Lincoln

I never get why people bash on the United States. I’m not talking about foreigners who criticize the country’s foreign policy either, I mean actual citizens. The guys who declare that fat chicks and leftoids have ruined the country and that the only safe haven left is Turkmenistan. Other than the cold weather I actually like America and think it’s a great place.

The United States is massive, each state is essentially the size of a European country. Every state has its own culture, customers, and even dialect. Someone from Maine isn’t going to behave the same way that a person from Texas will. Anyone who complains that America sucks, usually still has 49 other states to try out. I live in the infamous and dreaded “fly over,” a supposed cultural wasteland. If you drive 20 minutes north of my house you have posh Scandinavian restaurants, Korean Barbeque, French Bistros, Indian food, and a bunch of other places that I can’t even think of right now. If you drive 20 minutes west you have rodeos, monster truck rallies, and gun shows. That’s two different worlds within an hour’s distance of one another.

If I wanted to I could go out and get a tedious job that paid well. As much as I might bash on working for someone else, I would rather be overpaid and bored than grow up to work in a crowded sweatshop in Mumbai. Checking emails and taking naps in the employee break room is infinity less soul crushing than spending 12 hours a day trying to assemble iPhone parts while getting yelled at.

The last three girls I went out with were from Mexico, Germany, and California. That’s variety. Had I grown up in Turkmenistan I’d probably only be able to date girl’s from Turkmenistan. Had I grown up in Saudi Arabia or India I wouldn’t have been able to date anyone and my parents would have arranged for me to get married.

The argument that America sucks, or that there’s nothing good in the United States is stupid. In a country of 313 million people and 3.8 million square miles there’s always something to do. You don’t even have to travel cross country to find a fun activity. 45 minutes from my house there’s a place where I go wakeboarding during the summer. At the end of the day I usually go to a massive bar that’s on the waterfront and eat nachos while I watch the sun set. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do.

If I drive eight hours west I end up in the South Dakota Badlands. It’s a place that looks like the surface of a distant planet. A far cry from the woods and hills of Iowa.

If you can’t have fun in America you aren’t going to have fun in whatever third world country you flee to. Even outside the two national Meccas, Los Angeles and New York City, there’s still plenty to do and see. You can travel two hours in any direction and be inside an entirely different world.

“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.