“Good things happen to those who hustle.”

– Anais Nin

Apparently my old boss died. While I didn’t like my job, I thought he was a decent guy. On the day I quit he told me that I could come back and work for him at any time. Like I said, he was a good dude.

When I had a job I had to leave for work at 5 am and I wasn’t home until 5 pm. Between going to the gym and working on my projects I didn’t have much time left over. This used to make me really mad and it actually damaged my self confidence. While everyone else was goofing off at school or going on summer vacation, I was working.

It took me a lot of time and effort, and more than a few sleepless nights, to make my side business take off. Actually, I don’t even have a business per se. I started off with Amazon affiliates, then moved to writing eBooks, after that I transitioned to writing reviews, now I transcribe meetings. I couldn’t actually tell you what I’ll be doing in the next six months, but it’ll probably be something different.

With each job I’ve been able to earn more and work less. This morning I got all my work done before 9 am. After I post this I’ll be checking my email and then going for a nature hike. Since the weather has warmed up, I’ve rediscovered my love of walking through the woods.

On Saturday I’m planning to go explore a cave. On Monday I’m taking the day off to go throw paint on a canvas with some artistic girls. As cliched as it might sound the best things in life don’t have a massive price tag. They’re available to anyone who has the freedom to capitalize on them.

“The difference between a cute girl and a hot girl… The cute girl still looks good the morning after.”

– Hunter Moore

I’ve been getting a lot of search hits for “hot girls doing drugs,” “hot to meet girls who do drugs,” and “how to get girls to do drugs.” Like with “dogs f*cking teens” or “raped by a gay dinosaur,” Google has randomly decided to send these searchers to my site. As such, I’ve decided to make today’s post into a public service announcement.

There’s a pretty common misconception that girls who do drugs are inherently more attractive. From personal experience I’ve never met a girl who did drugs and didn’t have acne or look relatively lousy when she wasn’t wearing makeup.

Additionally, party girls tend to eat garbage and use their looks to coast by. As anyone who’s ever attended a ten-year class reunion can attest to, most women who spent their youth doing coke and living it up age poorly.

A few years ago I read a 4chan post about a guy who started lifting weights to get girls. Once he got big and started picking up women he discovered something that disappointed him. When he was treating the gym like a part-time job and being healthy, the girls he’d wanted were getting faded and eating late night fast food.

At the time I didn’t get what the guy was complaining about. After reading his story I went back to lifting weights and working on improving myself. As time passed and I got invited into better social circles I kind of got disappointed. After all the time that I’d spent becoming an interesting guy, I discovered that most party girls didn’t have much going on aside from getting thirsty dudes to comment on their social media content.

In the past two or three years I’ve secretly been keeping tabs on most of the party girls I know. At the risk of sounding like the angry basement dweller, most of their lives have actually become worse. They’ve gotten knocked up, prolonged their college enrollment for a worthless degree, or they’re still working at some dead-end job in the mall. Outside talking about parties that they’ve went to or are going to attend, there’s not much going on.

I’m going to guess that most guys who get into self-improvement, myself included, probably have the secret desire to use their new-found resources for picking up girls. While there’s nothing bad with doing so, there is eventually a point where it becomes somewhat disappointing. I wanted to be the guy who wanted to people to know that he was having sex with hot girls. That’s pretty much what I spent my whole summer doing. By August I ended up realizing that I was happier lifting weights and doing my own thing than I was making sure that everyone knew I was hooking up with party girls.

The moral of my rambling story is this: There’s nothing wrong with getting into self-development in order to try to get girls. However, there is a point where you’ll outgrow this. Going to the gym, developing a side business, or working on your hobbies will eventually have far more of an allure.

“There’s only two people in your life you should lie to… the police and your girlfriend.”

– Jack Nicholson

Sometimes I like to reflect on my old escapades. While I have a lot of crazy stories, there’s one in particular that I’ve always enjoyed. I think the story holds a special place in my heart because of the fact that it was a spectacular disaster that still managed to be incredibly fun. The event in question was:

The first time I ever went out solo

It was a boring summer night in Iowa. I was 18 and there was nothing to do. Most of my friends were on family vacation, or had other obligations that evening. I was intending on staying in and reading blogs. Around 8:30 at night I stumbled on an article about going out by yourself. The author explained that anyone who was confident could go  to a bar or club and have a great time.

Five minutes later I was headed out the door. I drove for 15 minutes to go to a nearby college that my friends and I used to party at in high school. While I didn’t know if anything would be going on, I figured that it would be worth a shot.

I ended up getting lucky. I saw a house with a massive line in front of it. I waited my turn, paid a two dollar cover charge, and walked inside. In hindsight the party was pretty horrible, but at the time I couldn’t believe it. I’d just walked into a random event, it was something I’d never even thought possible before.

Despite being incredibly nervous, I still managed to walk around and talk to people. Eventually I struck up a conversation with some girl as we both waited in line to use the bathroom. While we were talking, I was interrupted. Her friend rushed in, grabbed her arm, and swept her away.

I felt completely heartbroken. I’d gone out by myself, met a random girl, and hit it off, what were the odds that something like that would ever happen again. Wallowing in my sadness, I ended up walking to the house’s back door and sauntered outside.

As it turned out, I got really lucky.

Right after I walked outside several police cruisers turned on their lights and descended on the party. Already being in the backyard, it was easy for me to sneak off the property and watch from afar as everyone was rounded up and hauled off to jail. Because I hadn’t been drinking, it was pretty easy for me to get back across the street and walk back to my car.

As I drove home I just kept laughing. I couldn’t believe how crazy my night had been. I’d gotten into a random party, talked to a girl I didn’t know, and almost gone to jail. I figured that it would be hard to top an evening like that.

I was wrong.

While my adventure would become a cherished memory, it was actually one of the tamest evenings of my life. Since then I’ve had a thousand evenings that have surpassed that night in every way imaginable. I’ve been to private mansion parties, gotten into scuffles with criminals, and done way more than hold a five minute conversation with a girl.

Conclusion

The first time I ever went out solo wasn’t the best night of my life, but it was one of the most important. As silly as it might sound, I gained a lot of confidence from going out alone. It also laid the foundation for a skill set that I’d use for years to come. Additionally, I learned another valuable lesson from my experience. I discovered that my perception of the world was limited to what I knew. Two minutes before I read about going out alone, I never imagined that doing so was possible. My entire world opened up by simply thumbing trough some blog posts.

It’s easy to think that you have it all. Your world’s only as big as you think it is. Even doing something as simple as picking up a book, or trying something new can open doors that you never even knew existed.

“Today is Valentine’s Day – or, as men like to call it, Extortion Day!”

– Jay Leno

Last year I spent Valentines Day at the gym and then went home to work on my programing skills. This year I’ll change it up a little. I’ll hit the gym early and then go home to do some oDesk and design a video game. The only person I made a card for this year was my Grandmother and it involves Hitler, not exactly romantic.

Valentines Day is to relationships what New Year’s Eve is to drinking. It’s amateur hour. Dorks come out of the wood work. Every girl gets ambushed by her guy “friends” as they use the holiday to come out of the closet and announce their feelings for her. Every single dopey dude sits down to write bad poetry and compose a Bruno Mars/Drake Spotify playlist.

I missed out on the whole sappy Valentines Day experience. At 18 I was reading In Mala Fide and The Freedom Twenty-Five Lifestyle Guide. I missed out on ever going to a romantic comedy and Olive Garden, or writing a flowery poem about love. By February 14th of my freshman year of college I’d already traveled abroad and taken on a lot of new responsibilities for myself. I was pretty confident with myself and had outgrown a lot of my childish ways.

Very few people ever realize that I’m only 20 now, and I’m often confused with being far older. Even as a kid a lot of things that concerned most people seemed obviously inconsequential to me. While I had trouble articulating why, I was able to tell that things weren’t as they actually seemed. I remember being twelve and getting in huge trouble for stating that I thought America might actually be a dictatorship, and people were just too oblivious to notice it. Eight years later Edward Snowden proved me right.

I don’t know if I actually dislike Valentines Day, or if I secretly envy the people who enjoy it. To me the holiday represents something that I missed out on. It’s easy to mock dudes for making expensive dinner reservations and getting excited about going on a date, but it’s something I’ll never be able to do. I started too young and crossed the point of no return years ago.

There’s an old Chinese curse that states: “May you get what you wish for.” When I first heard it, I laughed. I thought it was stupid and couldn’t understand why getting what you wanted would ever be a bad thing.

In reality the curse has occurred in almost every aspect of my life. When I thought having a lot of sex would make me happy I was wrong. I ended up just as unsatisfied as I had been before. When I thought that starting my own business would be the end to all my problems I was wrong. It solved the issues that I’d had up until then, but it ushered in new challenges for me to deal with.

Virtually everything that you ever master or transcend will only unlock new difficulties. The idea that life is a narrative and that beating the odds will see you relaxing on a beach for your remaining days is stupid. New problems will emerge and you’ll need to face them. You might catch a temporary break, but there will be something new to battle. There is no magic cure all for your life’s problems.

“My uncles, who are farmers in Minooka, Illinois – I grew up with them and their pickup trucks and mustaches, and to me that was masculinity: big hairy sweaty guys who could pick up a bus.”

– Nick Offerman

Iowa is an icy and cold place. Contrary to popular belief it’s terrain is also very dynamic. Bluffs, cliffs, and massive hills dot the countryside. Without spoiling where I’m from, I live pretty close to the Minnesota border.

While the countryside is very scenic and draws tons of foreign and coastal tourists, it’s also incredibly dangerous. Once the snow falls it becomes easy to slide out of control. Every year at least a few people plummet to their deaths, drive into rivers, or fall down massive embankments. The massive cliffs also make cell reception near impossible, more than a few people have wrecked their cars and been forced to walk for miles in the snow. Growing up, my dad and I once got caught in a blizzard during the dead of night and ended up walking for three miles until some drunken snowmobilers gave us a ride back to our house.

Taking a third word bus through mountainous terrain scares me less than driving in my own zip code. Every road is surrounded by cliffs and hills and a lot of roads aren’t even paved. One wrong move and you’ll flip off the road, crash into a tree, and explode into a fireball.

While driving on Thursday I hit a patch of ice as the road curved. I tried to compensate but over estimated my turn. Seconds later I was flying off the shoulder and down a gully. After a mile and a half hike, I was able to call for a tow truck. The driver arrived, hooked a cable to my car, and had it pulled out in under ten minutes. He then gave me the bill. His base fee, which didn’t include mileage or the job itself, was over $100. I immediately learned something.

The lesson

The tow truck driver could charge whatever he wanted thanks to supply and demand. Since I don’t own a crane, I wouldn’t have been able to get my car back without him. He could have charged $1,000 and I would have had to still pay him. Because his service is actually essential, he can charge whatever he wants.

The second thing that I realized was that a guy who’s living revolves around pulling cars out of ditches can make more money than most “educated” people. While he, I assume, might not have know as much about the history of the Sudan as an African Studies major might have, he had a far more practical skill set. Woman’s Studies majors and art students are a dime a dozen. They can also be replaced with Wikipedia, or a basic Google search. No matter how advanced technology gets, there will always be a need for someone to pull cars out of ditches.

Rather than being mad at the bill, I thought it was cool that I learned a few things. A man with a practical service is able to make far more than most college majors could ever hope to.