Today is 11/12 and 12 is my favorite number
Either I paid more attention or it just felt like we got an influx of new people and lots of intro threads, and I got curious and went back and read my own, when I joined in 2015 : INTRO - The struggle for freedom
Unintentionally I went on a "BellaPippin rewind tour" and looked at my old threads, and learned a lot again. I also "watched myself" and I didn't cringe as much as I thought I would. I'd like to highlight a few things, feel free to skip:
**~Commence Bella's Rewind~**
Andy's Welcome message, always nice from the beginning.
Welcome Bel.
Honesty, gratitude, manners, desire to add value, desire to help others. Nice intro.
The world and this forum needs more people like you.
Vigilante always sharing his wisdom and lifting me up. He also gifted me my first sub so I could read THE thread.
I want you to read this book.
First Things First: Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill: 9780684802039: Amazon.com: Books
There's a simple concept at play here that you have to master.
Bella, you're living life in reverse. Your best energy should be devoted to the most important things in your life, and let everything else fill in around them.
You make it a point to keep FIRST THINGS FIRST.
Here's a great analogy :
Also, I moved your thread from SLOWLANE to Mindset, Motivation and Choices.
Don't ever start a thread in Slowlane again, Bella. Thats not you.
Lex has always been in my threads throwing ideas and good vibes. When I came back he lent me a hand and gave me his course so I could give UpWork a try. I'm not freelancing these days because the extra income came in the form of a big raise, but it was very helpful at the time.
The Slowlane is in the mindset only.
Laundromats can be Fastlane.
I'd love to read @BellaPippin s approach if she ventures into this.
No reason it has to cost a lot - that only applies to traditional laundromats.
But a Fastlane laundromat would operate a little differently I imagine.
Max is younger than me, he knows 500x what I know about business and is a total badass at taking risks. I went through your progress threads on the inside and man, I admire you. Just that.
It's a process.
And it's only a real failure if you don't take feedback. Keep going. Maybe this won't be a winner, but something eventually will be.
- Try
- Fail
- Learn
- Improve
- Repeat
- ...
- Succeed
I felt this comment by Jon was just a relevant now as it was when it was written. It might be relevant to someone else, too.
One thing I picked up on was a feeling of perfectionism in what you wrote, like you have to pick that 'one best thing to pursue.' I can relate to that, a lot. The truth, though, is that there is no such thing as the 'best option.' Even if there was, you change and everything and everyone around you changes - every single day. What was best today won't be best tomorrow.
So, pick a good option today. Pursue it, and see how it feels. Here's the thing, though: stick with it for a while. If you and the circumstances change, incrementally modify it to bend it in the direction you want to go, but don't totally change course. In all, be kind to yourself.
The best thing you could do for yourself with all of this, though, is to work through this stuff with a good therapist. I'm doing that, and it is really helping. Before you make a major decision, talk it through with your therapist to make sure you really understand your motivations for doing so.
AND I was honored again with another sub by @MJ DeMarco which I'm using to read read read.
Is this place the *** or what.
**~End Bella's Rewind~**
I wish this 30 y/o could tell my 26 y/o self "look, the next 4-ish years are gonna be hell, but you're going to come out just fine and stronger." Looking back at these last 6 years or so I went through a brutal life tutorial and there wasn't much mental/emotional room to do anything else but staying afloat and I still managed to slowly get my little associates, support myself and even climb to a very comfortable income and free myself from toxic people. I did well.
But now it's just me and myself, a Summit ahead, and a few (flexible) projects:
1) House-Hacking: Purchase a multi-family property to live in and rent for extra income. Build on that as desired to increase income from rentals. Currently reading The House Hacking Strategy by Craig Curelop as recommended by @JScott
- Goal: $15-20k for down-payment and cushion? Get it in 2020, NO BUTS, GET IT.
- Current: $4k.
- Tasks: Control spending to only the designated disposable income. I'm waiting on my first (new) paycheck to budget and see how much to assign each.
- Notes: Any extra income from any extra sources will go to these savings. Treat yo'self's come from disposable income only, financed by disposable income, or w.e just not from the savings.
2) Social Entrepreneurship: Develop a simple line of hygiene products through private labeling. Raise funds from revenue to rehab properties into centers where homeless people can shower and change clothes (guess who gets to own a mini-laundromat after all!) these centers have to be as self-sustainable as possible and/or run separately as a non-profit child entity.
- Immediate task: Find supplier and get some samples?
- ??? I have no idea what I'm doing
- Review Vigilante's thread again, yes
3) 10,000 Hours of Art: I paint as a hobby and will document on YouTube when I do so. There's no (that I've found) YT channels that document an individual's process through getting better at drawing/painting from the individual's perspective. Vlogs are very popular, they tend to be illustrators showing their process or their "day to day" studio/admin tasks for freelancing, but no process. My channel will serve as my own journal/chronicle but give people on the same journey something to relate and even join along. This is a secondary project, has no deadline and it's for my personal enjoyment only.
- Goal: Build an audience, ideally organically. I want my energy and focus going into the product line.
- Paint, draw or sketch and film something at least once a week. Do the least editing possible that makes it watchable.
- Notes: If this generates any type of income it will go towards the house savings, followed by the product project.
4) Miscellaneous: Anything that comes up extra I'll mention here. Like for example, omg it's 12:12PM I still have 50 custom-made urban sketch cases sitting in a box. I took some pictures of my friend using it last summer and maybe product ones or I might have to do those. I don't lose anything by posting them on eBay. That box takes a lot of room!
Ok, it's in writing, clear, defined for the most part...
**~Suggestions Welcome, as usual~**
I'm getting First things First by Stephen Covey on the Kindle, apparently I forgot to read it after Vigilante recommended it.
NO WORRIES Atlas Shrugged is still a go @Primeperiwinkle
~Bella
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