I often find myself looking at my ideal life as if it is a galaxy away, but if I look at things less emotionally, I see that I'm much closer to my ideal life than I am from where I was 5 years ago.
More than half way there.
Half way to an IDEAL life. Not a DECENT life. IDEAL means, like a dream, everything I desire, at least in the current moment. Of course dreams change and evolve and we always find new things to desire, but stability and freedom have never been closer for me.
In the noise of my desire for more freedom and stability, it's too easy to forget how far I've come.
I somehow managed to find a lifestyle that is said to be impossible here. I found a way to legally live as a freelancer in a country that does not welcome foreign freelancers. It took a lot of hard work, building up a reputation and legal research, but I did it! It may be a short term visa, but that should change soon!
I managed to build a following for my writing and my music. It may be nowhere near the tens of thousands that we've become accustomed to thinking we need to successfully live off our work, but it's a meaningful following.
There are people who are more engaged and people who are less engaged. There are the 5 to 10 people who comment on most of my posts. That sounds like a small number but it's a big deal! Most people in the world writing a blog online don't write to anyone, their work goes completely unnoticed. There are also likely 2-3x more people who don't even comment.
There are another 50-100 people who will skim through what I share on Instagram and give it a like. They don't read my blog, but they listen to my music share it with friends.
Some from both have read my novel series.
Yes, it would be easy to get discouraged by my book sales. In the course of 2.5 years, I've made less than $100 from my novellas. But 60-70 people have read at least one of them. That's something!
5 Years ago, I had a mere 3 people who were paying attention to what I'm doing.
The numbers shouldn't really be important, but we want to feel like we are making a difference in the world, and even more immediately, we want to solve our financial woes and be able to survive in this world without worrying too much about how we are going to do it. The dream is to make money doing what we would do for free.
This feels like it's still a very far way away, but actually, it wouldn't take much for me to earn more blogging than I do from my salary from a regular job. That's the perk of being an early adopter. Once something catches on, you have a huge head start.
So on a good month, I can earn around $200 from Hive every month. If the value of hive increases back to around $1.30 which is what I believe it will be worth once bitcoin really starts to pop off, that'll put me at around $800 a month from Hive.
Then assume that Leo continues to increase their user base and as a result, the demand for Leo causes it to recover back to around half the price of Hive. It's hard to calculate because the tokenomics of the two coins are different, but let's say I am able to earn the same amount in dollar value at Leo that I earn at Hive, which is very possible.
$1600 a month. Even in an expensive city like Tokyo, that covers all my basic expenses. Rent, Food, Utilities, Transportation and Insurance.
So if any of that comes to pass, I will just need a 30% increase in my hive earnings to earn as much as an entry level employee in Japan, just doing something I love for an hour or two a day!
I realize that there are many assumptions I am making here, but this is not something I am counting on, I am just exploring possibilities in order to look at things a bit more optimistically.
Even if I made that much, I wouldn't quit my job or even work less, because I don't want to put any selling pressure on Hive/Leo until both are very well established above $1 each with a user base 10x the size it is now.
But those crypto savings are slowly but surely piling up and becoming more valuable over time. My efforts are not in vain. Not even close!
I'm actually just a bull market and 1/3 of the way away from earning a double salary every month, working half as much as most of the people I know, doing work that is meaningful and fun and enjoying more and more of it.
If I were to spent more time in other parts of Asia, I wouldn't even need Hive or Leo to increase that much. A 2x and a slight increase in my daily earnings in both tokens and I am totally set.
None of this will have required a million followers or even 10,000. Maybe 100, or 500 or 1000 at most. That's it. That's the world of decentralization that we are moving into. Slowly more and more of our collective attention will be chipped away from the biggest names and it will move towards people closer to us. In the process, the ability to earn through crypto and other means will increase which means we will be able to rely on smaller audiences to survive.
With this in mind, I am even more energized to earn on Hive, not with the intention of quitting my day job, but with the intention of getting to the real forefront of this trend, because not only does it benefit me, I also believe in it.
I believe that we shouldn't have to impact a million people to make a living sharing ideas and being creative. If we can impact 100 lives positively, we are already doing great work. If we can impact 10,000 even casually, we are doing great work. That should be rewarded as such, and it will be.
So I won't quit my day job any day soon, but as the world becomes increasingly difficult to navigate in the old system, I'm enjoying being here and at the forefront of this completely new paradigm of decentralization.
No need to worry, I just need to keep my head down and keep doing the work, enjoying every step along the way!
If you are interested in blogging here and earning some change while sharing ideas and making friends, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter (@ ipluseverything)
ブログで自分の思っていることをシェアしながら小銭を溜まったり新しい友達をできたりすることは興味あれば、InstagramやTwitter（@ipluseverything）でメッセージを送ってください。 英語のオンラインレッスンの興味ある人もどうぞ、メッセージをください^_^
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Join us in the Deep shitdiscord channel to talk about deep shit, art and culture differences
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazon
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
