It’s 9:38 PM. I’ve indulged in a little cheap wine, if you can use the words indulge and cheap in the same sentence. I enjoyed a bit of a buzz for a good hour; but as with all artificial stimulants, the buzz is wearing off, and I am coming back down to earth. I am not a drinker in the sense that I don’t imbibe alcohol every day, or every week, or every month, or every 3 months for that matter. Every once in a while I’ll pick up a bottle from the supermarket. Yes, I know, I give myself away there. Only poor people buy wine from the supermarket; but then again, I did confess from the start that I am pitifully poor; and that is what "The Moneyless Life" is all about, an accounting of life at the bottom of the pit.

I am no wine connoisseur. If it’s red and sweet I’ll probably like it., all the more if it takes my cares away for a little while, although I am aware that drinking for the purpose of getting drunk is something that, well, drunks do. If the wine I’m drinking is good wine or bad wine I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Frankly, I wouldn’t know good wine if I was swimming in a sea of it; but I’ll go out on a limb and say that if it costs $7.99 it’s probably not a wine you want to brag about while chit-chatting idly at a party with the likes of Frazier and Niles Crane. But I hardly need to worry about that kind of embarrassment as money and the lifestyle that comes with having money is not part of my present or my past. I don’t keep company with people who have their own wine cellars and sniff their wine before taking a sip and hold the wine on their tongues for a moment before swallowing.

I grew up poor in a poor country where the fight for basic survival left no time, energy, or opportunity for concerns with knowing what type of glass goes with what type of wine, how, after pouring yourself a glass of wine, to let your wine "breathe" for a moment, to allow the complexity of the flavors to come through , how to sniff your wine glass before taking a sip etc. If you’re poor seen doing any of these things, you’re more like to be laughed at and called pretentious. After all, this height of refinement is a mark of affluence. A poor person acting like some high-classed rich person letting wine breathe to allow complexity of flavors, such a person is ridiculous at best. And what’s worse than having people laughing at you for carrying on as if you’re some refined gentleman or lady while drinking from a $5.00 bottle of wine?

No, I make no show of pretending to be part of the "fine wine" culture. Hell, I even added a couple teaspoons of sugar to the wine because it wasn’t sweet enough and I wasn’t enjoying it. But I’ll admit, it was nice to unburden for a brief moment. I can almost see why some people, rich and poor, drink themselves into a stupor.

As for my money making adventure, I raked it a whopping $3.58 yesterday and so far today $1.09 cents. And the new website I’m trying to sell isn’t go very well. I’m being made offers from $50 - $150 for a website that I would charge at least $2500 to build. It’s a nutty world; but I’m not even stressing over it. I know this is all going to pay off.

It is 7:28AM. I am sitting here trying to figure out where to begin my work day. It’s not that I don’t have any work to do. Far from it. I just don’t feel motivated to do it. I’m not seeing the point of it at the moment. I know, of course, that the point is to continue to strive because I guarantee I won’t be making money if I just sit around and do nothing, whereas, as long as I keep working, the possibility that I might make money continues to exist. The possibility that I might make money - I suppose that is what I’m having a problem with, working for a possibility of making money as opposed to actually working for money.

I know I have the power to change my circumstances by going out and putting myself on medication for my social anxiety so I can function normally and be able to get a "real" job; but again, I have no real interest in working for someone else. I have been working for myself for nearly a decade and I have an ambition to succeed working for myself. That is my goal, to achieve success, to have my hard work pay off; so quitting on myself in defeat and going off to help someone else achieve their goal of success by lending my time and energy to their cause would be my idea of failure. But in the mean time it can be excruciatingly difficult to deal with the reality that nothing is coming out of anything I do.

Yes, I’ve made money enough that I haven’t gone homeless yet and I always have food to eat and my utilities have never stayed off very long after a disconnection; but having to get anything disconnected to begin says much more than the fact that I’ve been able to get them turned back on within a day or two.

Yes, it is my own choice to live life on the edge. At the end of the day, social anxiety or not, I have other options, but I chose to continue fight what some might call a losing battle. So I really don’t have a right to complain. If money is my objective and I’m not making money doing what I’m doing, I ought to do something else; but therein could lie the problem. I want money, yes, but it could be that what I really want is to succeed and money is obviously the measure of success, so I want money to make money to prove that I am successful at what I do.

But what do I do anyway? And could that be the problem? Could I be investing time and energy into something that really has no hope of making the kind of money that would enable me to call myself a success? I’ve gone through a number of different business ventures. I was most successful, in terms of making money, when I was developing and selling dating software; but the stress from that got the better of me. I got out of it and tried my hand at running websites instead. I didn’t make the kind of money I was making at the height of my success selling my dating software (I wasn’t making major bucks then either), but I was still able to manage to pay the bills for the most part; then I sold my dating websites. Now I am left with a bunch of websites that only have "potential to make money", and with a spouse who can only contribute between $600 and $800 per month to help pay the bills and with that relationship being so uncertain and always on the verge of termination, I’d say I’m facing a bit of a crisis. And getting more and more depressed about it, losing my motivation to continue to fight, that’s certainly not going to be helping.

Oh, and by the way I made $2.56 yesterday. Moving on up (sarcasm)….

I finished yesterday with $2.33. The sale of the website I was trying to negotiate did not go through. You win some. You lose some. I could have sold it had I been asking $500 for it; but it’s a website into which $2000 and a year of development was invested. I would sooner hold on to it and try to see what I can do by way of turning it profitable for myself than sell it for $500 in desperation to raise money to help pay the bills. I have put another site on the market that I’m very reluctant to sell. If I get what I’m asking for it great. If I don’t get what I’m asking for it I won’t sell it. It could be a site earing up to $5000 per month for me in year’s time. Not a fortune but $5000 per month will add a little much needed security by comparison to my present situation. I won’t be able to buy the dream house; but I might be able to start saving towards it.

It’s been a slow day for me so far today; but not as slow as it was yesterday. Yesterday was not a great day for me at all. I forced myself to work as best I could. It was difficult to make the effort. I’d say I gave about 50% yesterday, which is to say I worked 50% fewer hours than usual; but 50% of 16 is 8 and the standard workday is 8 hours long; so technically I put in a standard workday’s worth of effort yesterday.

It is 3:19PM right now. I’ve been up and working since around 6AM. I started my day with cold pizza. Not necessarily a wise way to start the day. I’ve managed to update only 1 site so far today mainly because I’ve been doing some modifications to it in the hope of making it more appealing to the potential buyer.

I was having a conversation with someone about the trend in the buying and selling of websites. They suggested that I put too much work into the sites I try to sell. Buyers tend not to be willing to pay much for a site unless it’s already generating revenue. They don’t care how my time you spent building the site, how much money you spent on it, how great it looks. If it’s not a profitable business they want you to hand it over for ten bucks. With that in mind, the individual I was talking to suggested that since buyers appear only willing to spend a hundred dollars or so, I shouldn’t put more than a hundred dollars worth of effort into building the sites I put up for sale.

It’s an interesting way of looking at it. I could probably build 10 simple sites per day and try to sell them for $100 each. It would certainly be an interesting experiment to see if I could actually manage to build 300 websites in a month and pull off making $30,000. Maybe I’ll do some research, see what people are buying. I need to get out of this money-less life after all. I need to start making money. I’ve had enough of not having any control over the level at which my life is being lived.

It is 7:06 AM. I have awaken today feeling uninspired, and that’s never a good thing. The significant other and I fought last night after I finally went to bed. We have differences of opinion as to whether marital partners have "rights" as opposed to "privileges"; but I am trying to counsel myself out of focusing unnecessary energy on my dissatisfaction with my marriage. What’s the use of spending the day thinking about how unhappy I am with my partner? All that will do is what its already doing, depressing me, making me angry; and how can I hope to get the most of my workday if I’m working under the influence of depression and anger. No, I don’t think it’s beneficial to me in any way to focus my mental energy on anything negative and uninspiring.

Today is the 19th. I have 12 days left before the rent is due; but I think I’ll have enough funds between what’s left in my bank accounts and what the hubby will contribute to manage to pay the rent and at least one utility bill.

If I can get through this month I’m hopeful my fortunes will begin to make a positive change and next month I won’t find myself with 12 days to go in the month and no money to show for the work I have done. I use the word "hopeful" but I’m aware that if my fortunes are to change they won’t do so as a result of sitting down and hoping.

My copy of "Trump: Think Like A Billionaire" is on my desk, opened on the section "How to Love Your job". Trump writes:

"Billionaires love their jobs–not because their jobs make them wealthy, but because they wouldn’t have become so wealthy doing something that they hated. You have to love what you’re doing, because then it won’t seem like work to you and you will bring the necessary energy to profit from it. That passion alone will take care of ninety percent of any problems with any job."

Do I love what I’m doing? I suppose I should ask myself that question. I get up every day and follow the same script; but am I ever really excited doing what I do? I have wanted to be a writer since age 11, and I’m doing a great deal of writing every day; but what I love to write are fictional stories and that’s not what I’m doing with my days. On my other websites, excluding this site, I’m mostly writing about things that don’t interest me so I don’t tend to have fun doing it. In fact I often find it tedious. Could that be the reason I’m not making money? Could my lack of passion for what I’m doing be coming across in my work. I might be doing the work, but am I doing it well? Should I be doing it at all?

I have been wondering lately if I should just try to sell all my websites and spend the next few months concentrating on my real passion, writing a novel and putting back the focus on that dream, my real passion, the thing I truly love to do, the only thing I really get excited about doing when I have the freedom to do it exclusively. In fact, I had gotten up one day not so long ago with a decision made to do just that, but then, as I prepared the first site to put up for sale, I realized how much work I have put into developing it and the other sites I would be trying to sell. The idea of giving them up started to feel not quite right, like I would be quitting on myself, conceding defeat. Maybe I’m not looking at it the right way. The reality is, I’m not making any money from these websites but I’m putting in upwards of 16 hours per day developing and maintaining them. It’s arguable that I’m just wasting my time every day that I get up and spend time on these websites.

If I sold the websites I would be able to put some money in the bank to keep me going while I write my book, assuming I would get the kind of offers for them I would expect; but what after the money runs out and I haven’t finished the book, or I’ve finished the book but no one’s interested in publishing it? What do I do then? I’m in an uncertain situation either way, but at least with the websites the odds are better than with book that I can make money. It’s a nice fantasy though, to be able to get up every day for the purpose of writing my novel, not to have any other distractions.

It is 11:07 PM and I am desperately sleepy but I had some other work I was determined to finish before I call it a night. My day was spent working as usual trying to make money online via a number of website ventures. I have been going since 7AM. I did take a scattered break here and there, but for the most part I have been updating one site or another, making blog posts, adding data, doing research, programming, dealing with the run around as I try to negotiate a website sale that I’m pretty sure will not go through.

My significant other did not have the day off today so I was able to work in peace at least until 7PM. After that I had to deal with the television running in the background as my office is a corner space in the living room. Not exactly impressive stuff.

As far as making money, I earned a measly, miserable 0.85 cents today. Whoopie….I had planned on making at least $5000 this month but so far it’s not looking like I’ll come close. On the contrary it looks like I’ll be having a bit of a financial crisis this month. If I don’t sell a website I won’t make any money because I do not currently have another means of income.

I do have some websites I could sell that I would definitely get buyers for if I sell them for $500 or less each; but these are sites I have put a great deal of time and effort into building and I can’t see myself selling them for $500. $500 dollars as a week’s pay is considered a low salary. I’ve been working on these sites for close to a year putting in overtime 7 days per week. I think I’d be crazy to sell any of them for the equivalent of a week’s pay.

I’m thinking right now that it would be fantastic if my hard work would start to pay off, not just because I would then be able to afford to take a much needed break, but because it would help me to stay motivated to continue to work hard. It’s difficult to persist in doing something when it seems like nothing will come of what you’re doing. Every day it gets harder and harder to see the point; but I continue to push because I really have no other choice.