More Million-Dollar Questions than Answers

I keep for­get­ting this is my per­sonal blog, and keep writ­ing long-form arti­cles that I slave and slave over. Part of this is because I enjoy craft­ing some­thing good, the other part is because I know how bad my spur of the moment, unedited posts can be. As a writer who wants to get bet­ter, it’s embar­rass­ing to see rub­bish I write posted on the World Wide Web for all eternity.

But I’ll try this. Because I know my friends read this, and I’d like to share what’s in my life from time to time and maybe get some advice. And I also know how much I enjoy catch­ing up with them on their own blogs, so hope­fully they’ll enjoy read­ing my blog too.

Work, Ful­fill­ment & the Big Bucks

I love my job at Hard­ware Zone – a great mix of tech­nol­ogy (a love) and writ­ing (a big, big love). Or at least, I used to, until the great pile of non­sen­si­cal projects came rain­ing down and took time and effort away from writ­ing a few things really well to writ­ing a lot of things really bad.

Plus, a cou­ple of big bills got me down lately, and brought home again the hard point that I’m not mak­ing enough of the bucks, and that no mat­ter how much I love what I do at HWZ, it will never get me to where I want to go finan­cially. And I want to change that, not just for me, but for my fam­ily, and espe­cially my dad, who’s going through his own tough times.

Some­times, I just feel like Jerry Maguire, you know?

It feels like this is the one area in my life where I expe­ri­ence lack. I love what I do, I love my fam­ily, I love my rela­tion­ship, I love my car, I love love love. But this is one area that just hasn’t hap­pened for me.

But. No blame. While I believe in the hap­haz­ard slings and sor­rows of out­ra­geous for­tune (some peo­ple seem to have all the luck, while some just don’t), I also believe in tak­ing per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity – I may not be able to do every­thing, but let me do what I can. A friend told me long ago that the secret to her suc­cess was just that she made it a pri­or­ity, I real­ized then and I real­ize now that mak­ing the big bucks just hasn’t been a pri­or­ity for me, and if I don’t change that noth­ing will change.

Money or Value?

Here’s another point of view. Mega-rich blog­ger Steve Pavlina writes that his secret to mak­ing the big bucks isn’t a focus on money, which is in fact a mis­take. His secret has been to focus on cre­at­ing and deliv­er­ing value. The more value you cre­ate, and the eas­ier you get it out there to the masses, the more value – a.k.a. money – you’ll get in return.

Makes sense to me.

But if I believe that and I apply it to my own life, the results I’m get­ting would mean that I haven’t been cre­at­ing and deliv­er­ing enough value. Not for lack of try­ing, I’ve been doing my best to cre­ate more value at work, but maybe my prob­lem isn’t in the cre­ation bit, but the deliv­ery part. After all, no mat­ter how much value I cre­ate, my deliv­ery sys­tem is botched: the return part is bottle-necked by salary classes and oh-too-small bonuses.

Turns out full-time mag­a­zine writ­ing in Sin­ga­pore isn’t the path­way to millions.

So what do I change? What do I do? Any ideas that don’t involve MLM, sell­ing my soul or body (hur hur)?

Some days I feel like chang­ing the title of this blog to ‘more ques­tions than answers.’

Related Posts

1. A Mil­lion Miles in a Thou­sand Years by Don­ald Miller
2. Why I Love Writing