AndrewBrunelle.com

I was on the Steve Pavlina forum today and I ran across a post that asked if people are not making money from their blogs, is it simply a hobby?  Here was my response to that inquiry:

I would say it is a hobby if you’re not making money from it. And it’s not a bad hobby, either. I don’t currently make any money from my blog, but if I were to place ads on there or affiliate links, it would be against everything I believe in. I have a couple of writers working with me on a book on some of the ideas presented in my blog and I also make a decent living otherwise, although it is not extraordinary money, but it is enough for me to afford what it is I need.

My website is in the 4,000,000′s when it comes to traffic, so I’m sure not going to make millions from it at this point, but I do enjoy it, and the people who read it enjoy it as well. I’m not looking to become some sort of blogging superstar, because I know how much work that would take. And, to be honest, it seems a little upstream to me. Placing big ads on the site would be cumbersome and I hate programming with a passion, and ads for that matter. If I were to try and make money from my blog, I’m sure the money would be negligible, like $20 a month, maybe. And what would be the point of that? 99% of people (or more) will never make a living from blogging, and of that less than 1%, many of them make very little, probably less than I make at a job that is only in the $20,000′s a year. So, blogging is mostly a supplemental income at best for most of that 1%. Steve is an exception, mostly because of his knowledge and business knowledge. And very original and timeless content.

That is what most bloggers are missing, and it takes a long time to learn all of it. And it takes a ton of self-discipline and willpower. Things that most people simply do not have enough of. I’ve kept my blog going for at least 4 years, but there has been times when I didn’t post more than twice in a month. And my content is all over the place and I just don’t care about the money side of it right now, because I know I’m not there yet. Not only that, I find it rather peculiar that most people go into blogging for the money, and not for creative expression.

I’m no blogging expert, but I do see what it takes to have a successful blog. And I don’t think I have all those qualities yet. But for now, I’m perfectly glad having my blog be a hobby and not an income-generating source because it is something I enjoy doing and many people (although admittedly not as many as I want) enjoy reading it. If I could break the 1,000,000 mark in terms of traffic ranking in the future, I would totally start trying to earn money from my blog. But I would do it in ways that felt intuitively right to me, such as books I recommend and other things that support my beliefs and actions.

Anyway, good luck to all you hobbyist bloggers on making a living, but don’t put all your eggs in that basket until you actually earn money from it.

Blogging is a very tough field to earn money from.  I’ve earned nothing from this blog in 4 years.  But I don’t complain, because I haven’t really tried.  Money should not be the motivation for everything we do.  It should be contribution.  I make pretty decent money where I work, although it is not extravagant by any  means.  I can live comfortably, without ever having the fear of not having enough.  I’m a saver and a minimalist, so having a million dollars or $10,000 wouldn’t really change my life that much, although the quality of what I owned would probably be a bit better at $1 million.  It shouldn’t be about the money, people.  Sure, it would be nice to earn millions of dollars from a website, but if you start your blog with that intention, you will probably not succeed.  You should always focus on making the best contribution you can make, and if people will read it in droves, start monetizing.  You are then providing real value and should get paid accordingly.  But those who don’t make money should not be called hobbyists, but non-commercial bloggers.

This is an outlet for my expression.  And eventually, if I can make money from this, I will.  But  I know, based on my Alexa ranking, that I wouldn’t make nearly enough to make the effort to place all sorts of income-generating paraphernalia on this site.  Once I become a B-list blogger, maybe.  Whatever that means.  I know my writing is good, but not exceptional, and my ideas are not always original, but I view them from my unique perspective.  At least I’m not a mooching blog, who simply provides links to other blogs in an attempt to get trackbacks and be seen by more people.  I only link to things I find worthwhile, not the flavor of the month.  I believe people respect this blog and that, while not exactly successful, it is at least something I feel good about and it’s not something I loathe.  I know who I am, and I know what I’m about here.  At least I know that much, and if you want to call me a blogging hobbyist, go ahead.  But I won’t believe it, because I truly pour my heart and soul into this blog, and even though it may not make money, it is at least something I can say I have that is uniquely me.

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I just saw this video about a 1928 time traveler appearing in the extra footage of a Charlie Chaplin film.  Or so we are led to believe.  It looks like a woman talking on a cell phone.  She is holding something white and rectangular in her hand.  She is definitely talking, but she is wearing old time-y clothing and it could obviously be a gag.  I immediately discounted it as something that could be explained logically or rationally, because quite frankly, time travel scares the hell out of me.  If time travel were possible, it could create some very scary consequences.  Even if one person could travel through time, it would create chaos if they did certain things.  The only way it could be feasible is if the person didn’t make it obvious he/she was from the future and didn’t do something that would alter the whole history of the world.  And even a small change could alter the course of the world, as seen in the theory known as the Butterfly Effect (not the movie).

If someone like me truly found a way to travel through time, I know exactly what I would do.  I would go back in time, gamble on things I knew were a sure thing, put that money in an account, and come back to the present day and live off of it.  Who wouldn’t?  I don’t think it would be wise to travel too much back or forward in time, because it would be a bit irresponsible in my judgment.  I would spend my time after making an amazing amount of money, after interest, to contribute positively to the world and since I would have all the time in my life, it would be easier than doing this kind of thing in short bursts in breaks between working and sleeping.  But I don’t even think I would actually want to travel through time.  It’s just not something that would be fun for me.  I would rather have the ability to stop time than travel through it.  Then I would be able to do things without destroying the past or altering the future, which I don’t even think it is possible to travel into the future, because it doesn’t exist yet.  And it never has.  It goes well with my logic and my sense of reality.  If the present is all we truly have, then that is the only moment we can control.

It’s hard to believe that something like stopping time is possible either, but it also could be, but I don’t know.  I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be open to anything being possible in this present moment, but to truly believe it is harder than it looks.  If this reality is truly a dream, then anything is possible, although it is our beliefs that will constrict us.  I still don’t truly believe that this reality is a dream because there are too many external things pointing me away from that, but then I have to realize that when I am dreaming, it feels real to me.  Even the most absurd thing seems real at the time, unless I’m lucid.  We even hear it in nursery rhymes, such as Row Your Boat:  ”Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”  That sounds more like a spiritual quote than a nursery rhyme, doesn’t it?  Something just feel on my desk without any provocation.  That was intense.  I guess I should take that as a yes.  Life is but a dream.

But how do I control the dream?  How do I become the master of my reality?  I guess life didn’t come with an instruction manual, so perhaps I need to figure out most of this on my own.  Or with help from others.  Or both.  That this world is some kind of projection of consciousness, and that I am the primary consciousness, but not me as my body, but me as the whole container in which reality is taking place.  This is hard enough to grasp intellectually, never mind emotionally.  To truly just dive in and accept this as fact is as daunting as accepting any other spiritual notion as fact.  Because you aren’t dealing with objectivity here, but subjectivity.  And that is something that takes a little while to get used to.  Sure, you can say that it makes some sense, but you have to truly believe it and it has to be on autopilot as your default way of thinking before you see what kind of results you can get with it.

There was a time back in 2006 where I truly grasped this for a couple of weeks and it was strange to say the least.  It was weird simply because there were a few instances of people I didn’t know giving me money for reasons that made little sense to me.  First, it was getting more tips at work.  At the time, I was working as a bagger in a supermarket.  I was getting at least $2 for bringing groceries out to people’s cars.  And then a couple days later, I received $5 from a man who said that I helped his mother the week previous, which was odd.  And then someone dropped 5 $100 bills on the ground and I was overjoyed, but then I thought that I’d better tell him what he just lost, because it wasn’t the money that was important.  It was the fact that I manifested it.  So I gave it back to him.  And then I got scared.  I thought about what it would be like to keep seeing all this money that I wasn’t expecting passing through me.  And then I thought about what kind of responsibility it is to have all this power over my own reality.  So I stopped all that nonsense, or so I called it.

I guess maybe I wasn’t ready for such a strong transition, and it was scary in its own way.  There were other things that happened that confirmed that this life is indeed subjective.  They were not completely quantifiable or objectively measurable, so I can’t really show them to you, but there were definite shifts taking place that were good, but very unsettling.  It was like my whole reality was changing, while at the same time, you really couldn’t see it objectively, but only through what objectively minded people would call coincidence, but which I was too subjective to call a simple coincidence.  In the subjective world, there are no coincidences, and everything is a projection of the wider consciousness.  That consciousness which is you, as the whole dream world is you when you are dreaming.  Those other people and places in the dream don’t exist outside of yourself.  They are simply a projection of your consciousness, and that is how subjectively-minded people view the world.

Now, whether or not this is pure self-delusion or completely true, it doesn’t matter.  What matters are the results you get with the beliefs you use.  The more empowering your beliefs, the more empowering life you will have.  If your belief system tells you that this or that is not possible, then you have a limiting belief system.  With the subjective system, it is the same.  Your beliefs limit your experiences.  If you don’t believe something is possible,you won’t see it and if you ever do see this impossible thing, or someone who has seen it, you’ll come up with a rationalization to discount it, and that will only strengthen your current beliefs while remaining closed to new ones that could expand your experiences and empower your life.  Just the belief in life after death (or an afterlife for better choice of words) can open the door to a spiritual world you probably never experienced before.  I have had a couple of experiences dealing with the spiritual realm as a child that totally convinced me that there is an afterlife in some form or another.  I had deceased relatives communicating things through a Ouiji board that I had totally forgotten they did for us.  ”Remember the soda and ice cream.”  I still remember it to this day.  My great aunt and uncle used to bring us soda and ice cream every week.

An objectively minded person would say that this happened because of a subconscious thought about that and our fingers moved to those letters because that was what we were thinking about below our level of thought, but all that does is close doors, rather than open them.  I had other experiences like that with the Ouiji board, but they weren’t as memorable, although I’m sure they were just as strange to an objectively-minded point of view.  It is the objective, civilized point of view that has discounted the spiritual world and the subjective world at that, because they believe that anything can be measured and will be the same for all observers, but that is kind of a religion in itself, isn’t it?  It is an act of blind faith, because everyone perceives different phenomena differently, at least sometimes.  And some people base their lives on things that other people don’t even think exist.  So how can an objective universe be 100% true and unquestioned for so long?

The only thing that can define the universe for you are your beliefs and your experiences.  Your beliefs supercede your experiences because you can’t have much experience without beliefs to put them into context.  So, choose your beliefs wisely, and try not to be too close-minded when it comes to exploring new beliefs.  The more empowering they are, the more accurate they are.  By accurate, I mean in harmony with what reality truly is.  If a belief helps you function better in reality, then it is more accurate than what beliefs you had before.  So, toy with your beliefs and stretch your reality because if you spend your whole life in one box, you’ll have lived a life of ignorance and missed opportunities.  Just give it a shot and see what happens.  You’ll be surprised.

Edit: Just to clarify, in case some of you were wondering, it’s not either or. Subjective reality contains objective reality within it, as subjective reality is all inclusive. If you believe in an objective universe, you are using the subjective model to create that objective world for yourself. Subjective reality is all-encompassing, so it is the most open belief system, as it contains all beliefs. So don’t think I’m hating on objective reality. I just feel its a bit incomplete. That’s all.

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I hate to say it, but anarcho-primitivism is the only sustainable way of living.  And when I say sustainable, I mean over millenniums.  Over millions of years.  I’m just being realistic here.  I’m taking the philosophy from Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  Ishmael was a wonderful book about what we have done to this planet and there is no denying it.  Who cares about inner peace when the outer world is a desolate wasteland?  We can recede into faux spirituality, but we are denying that our existence is also physical.  While there is a spiritual component to the world, it is not where we live.  We live in the physical part.  We can connect with the spiritual parts, but overindulgence in this will lead to a disconnection with the physical world.  Why do you think people who supposedly reach enlightenment spend most of their time meditating in caves?  Because seeing the world for what it is drops them out of that state.

Human beings cannot bear very much reality.  It’s not our fault, though.  If our reality was like it used to be tens of thousands of years ago, it would be easy to live completely in the world as it is.  But now, we have so many atrocities perpetrated on the human race by the human race, not to mention what we do to animals.  So, I guess it’s easier to pretend everything is all right then to really face up to what the world is.  It’s easier to remain blissfully ignorant, although I wouldn’t call it bliss.  I’d call it purposefully naive.  What is your reaction when I tell you that your shoes were made by child wage slaves in China or India?  How do you feel that slaves have to extract sugar from sugar cane in a very industrious process for little or no pay?  Does it make your blood boil that 1% of this world has over 50% of the wealth, and most of that came from stolen land?

Sure, I don’t know how to go back, or even if we call it back.  I would call it forward, with the similar lifestyle to hunter-gathering, but with the consciousness of post-civilization.  It’s a paradox, but it would take a more conscious approach and it would have to take the awareness of the entire population, and a much smaller population at that.  We’re not there yet, but once we realize that the world we live in is toxic, is completely and utterly out of balance to the millionth power, then we can start balancing again, but it will take centuries to come to this realization, and centuries more to actually get there, barring a gigantic crash, which is bound to come in the next 100 years or less.  It will be inevitable that we will live at a much lower standard of living soon, but it will be better for us in terms of self-sufficiency and autonomy.  We will be forced to adapt to the world around us, not force the world to adapt to our artificial needs and wants.

My position is extreme and I know that, but if you look at the history of human beings,  my position is actually the most natural and the least extreme.  We lived like this for millions of years, and only in the last 10,000 years have we started to live like this, or 50,000 years depending on your beliefs.  So, it’s not like I’m proposing ideas that haven’t been done before, and the ideas I’m proposing we could have stayed with forever, but something called grain agriculture derailed us and put us in a place off to the side, where we deplete the land and use everything for our own selfish needs.  So, I am rebelling against the system, and I do have a vision of the future.  I am a rebel with a cause, not just someone who hates the system, but doesn’t have anything to replace it with.  I want people to know they don’t need the system, but they are conditioned to become dependent on it by our upbringing and the public school system.  There is another way, it’s just too bad we weren’t taught it when we were young.  Learning a new way of life when we’re older is much harder and much more taxing on our systems than learning it from a young age.  So, it will most likely have to be the youth that brings us back to a better way of living, but we have to teach them well.

I don’t have anything against anyone in particular.  It is the system that has created people to be the way they are.  I don’t judge anyone, because it’s not really their fault.  It is the system’s fault that encourages narcissistic and pathological behavior, and it is even rewarded with success.  And it is the very core of this system, that started with grain agriculture, the zero-sum game, conquer our neighbors mindset that is the whole problem.  And if we drop that and live cooperatively and sustainably, with a deep appreciation and reverence towards nature and our wonderful planet, we can finally start the process towards a completely free and natural existence.

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I saw a documentary called Meltup this morning.  It was about the financial system in the USA and how doomed it is in the next couple of decades.  There will either be hyperinflation or a serious deflation of currency, but the most likely outcome is hyperinflation, due to constant bailouts and printing of more money.  The Federal Reserve has interest rates at 0%, which creates a disaster for our currency values.  Our money will soon be worthless, and that almost makes me want to invest in something like actual gold or silver, but it’s not like I can buy a whole lot of it with $10,000.00.  What the government did was make it seem like we got out of the recession when all they did was prolong the downside and make the downside much, much worse when it comes.  It is like they are kicking the can down the road, but every time they kick it, it gets bigger and bigger.

I didn’t think it was right to bail out all those companies deemed “too big to fail.”  If we just would have let them fail, we would have been much better off in the long run.  Why were certain companies, who didn’t actually provide any real value, other than making money off of money, be too big to fail?  It’s not like they were producing goods or manufacturing anything, other than financial papers.  That is the main problem in this country.  We don’t produce anything here anymore.  Try finding an American-made television or clothing.  It is almost non-existent.  We’ve shipped everything overseas to people who will work a lot harder for a much lower wage.  I even saw a  promo on television for a show about people who work for us in India called Outsourced.  America has pretty much lost the will to create anything itself, and our economy is suffering for it.

And what is our solution to this problem?  Print more money.  That is what we do.  We just keep printing and printing and printing money until it looks like the problem is solved, but it only creates a much larger problem down the road.  Any good economist would know this and it makes common sense to anyone with half a brain.  Ron Paul was right all along about the Federal Reserve, and I knew this years ago as well, but for some reason, nobody is doing anything about it.  Nobody cares enough, or nobody has the “power” to do anything.  The middle class will become the lower class and only the very rich will be able to afford anything.  What will happen then?

People will probably start growing their own food.  That is my prediction.  Hopefully, Monsanto doesn’t burn all the non-terminator seeds so that we can get back to what this country used to be about: farming.  Today, less than 2% of US citizens farm.  It used to be close to 50% back when  our country was first founded.  We don’t even know how to grow our own food or do anything it takes to ensure survival if we suddenly were unable to afford food and shelter.  We are the most helpless and dependent people in the history of the world.  This is why a financial crisis is so scary.  Most people won’t know what to do when the money runs out and they are no longer giving out food stamps.  Many people will die, while some will survive.  The people who survive will be the ones who at  least know how to meet their most basic needs, especially without money.  With money becoming pretty much irrelevant, we’ll depend more on our neighbors and communities for help, rather than the almighty dollar.

Through dark times emerges a new light.  We will be experiencing new things and learning at a rapid pace.  We will learn how to live like we once did and it will be good for our autonomy.  If you know how to create a shelter and find wild edibles, you will be miles ahead of the average citizen.  Knowing skills that will be useful after the crash is essential to surviving it.  We will have to make sacrifices and live way below our current standard of living.  SUVs will go from being transportation to being shelter.  Most houses will be in foreclosure, and there will be so many that the banks will simply stop forcing people out of their homes and just allow them to live there for nothing.  Otherwise, it will be millions of homeless with millions of empty houses.  Not exactly something that looks pretty, but it is a distinct possibility.

Buying some land outright would be a good solution if you have the cash.  Land with some drinkable water and a place where you can plant fruit trees and other foods.  At least if your land is paid for, it will be harder for the government to take it away.  If you don’t owe anything on your house, it will be much harder for it to be repossessed, unless a gang of vandals does it.  But most Americans are so far in debt that they could never pay off their homes in the next few years and will probably default on their mortgages regardless of a huge financial crash.  So squatting will probably be their only option, even if it is in their own delinquent homes.  Land ownership may be a complete joke if you really think about it, how this land was stolen originally from the Native Americans, who did not believe in land ownership.  But it will certainly be a big help if you do own some land with no debt on it, because then society will not be able to take it from you, unless they truly go mad.  Which is definitely possible.

I’m just trying to be realistic here.  I don’t want to sugar coat what is going to happen.  I think the more people that know, the better off we will be when it does happen.  It could be a slow, drawn out crash over the next 50-100 years, or it could happen in as little as 10 years.  It is going to happen regardless.  And if you can learn the skills to survive it, and thrive in it, then you will be at the top of the pyramid when it all goes down.  You will be able to help people transition to a different way of life, and possibly save quite a few people from death.  You know the Bible quote, “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime.”  It is so true in these trying times.  You are better off learning skills than investing in gold or silver because once you run out of it, you have nothing.  But skills never do deplete, so they are invaluable.  Get ready for the crash, people.  It’s coming whether you want it to or not.  It is better to plan for a grim future and it never to come than not to plan for it and it does come and destroys your life.

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I feel inspired to  write something here today, so here it goes.  I want to write something original.  Something that is truly me.  So, who am I and what do I have to share?  I am 24 years old, brown hair, blue eyes, around 6 feet tall, 175 lbs., a brain cancer survivor, a deep thinker, an introvert, a comedian, a writer, a blogger, a Nazi sympathizer (just kidding), a left-hander, a French Canadian ancestor, a CVS night shift employee, a minimalist (to a certain extent), an anarcho-primitivist, a personal growth enthusiast, a curious mind, an avid reader, and a naturalist.  I think I’ll stop there just to be polite.  I am not always all of these things, but from time to time, I am these things.  I am also more than these things, but not all the time.  We all are who we perceive ourselves to be, and as others perceive us to be.  It is a mix.  It is only in combining what you perceive of yourself and what others perceive of you that you can get a true picture of who you truly are.

Some things are entirely objective regarding who you are, while I would say most of the things people use to describe themselves are subjective.  It is all in the eye of the beholder.  I can call myself a deep thinker, and you may even have some objective experience to suggest this, but how do you know I am a deep thinker, other than these blog posts?  You are simply projecting an image of me, of my mind, of my personality from my blog or from some other interaction.  You can label me any way you want, and it will be right for you, but may be completely different from someone else.  Other people’s feedback is valuable when trying to figure out who it is you are.  When people ask the question, “Who am I?” they often only ask themselves.  This is a misguided approach that will severely limit your perspective.  Without feedback from others, how do you really know how others perceive you?  You are simply in a world of your own making.

You can ask people to give you their honest opinion of you and see which adjectives they use to describe you.  Hopefully, they are not “failure, loser, and indigent.”  You are better off getting your opinions from people who know you well and are straightforward with you.  Just say you are doing some market research.  You want to know what 25 people think of you and then you want to see which adjectives came up most and determine how people you know truly perceive you.  Some people love taking part in a survey.  And it’s not like you’re lying to them.  You’re doing market research to gauge what people think of you, and combining that with what you think of yourself to truly get the holistic sense of self that we’re all searching for.

Everyone puts labels on others, especially during first impressions.  Labels like old, young, middle-aged, fat, thin, average weight, and so on and so forth.  But it takes knowing someone for a good amount of time to truly know who they really are.  If you went by first impressions all the time, chances are you would be relating to people as if you didn’t know them, even if you’ve known them for years.  That would certainly be suboptimal.  At our core, we are pretty much all the same, but in our outer layers, we are most certainly unique.

Our ego is our defining quality that sets us apart from everyone else.  The ego may have caused quite a bit of problems throughout history, but the truth is that we all have one.  Whether it is a strong ego or a weak one is up to us.  How well do we express ourselves?  How much do we value our egoic pursuits?  I would have to say that people with a very strong ego tend to do well in society because society was created by those with a strong ego.  People who won’t back down and will fight to the death for what they believe.  Then there are those with a weak ego, who just kind of fade into the background, are the spectators of this world.  You aren’t stuck with the ego you got as a child, so you can train your ego to be stronger or atrophy it to be weaker.  It’s all a matter of wanting it bad enough.

Most of us define ourselves by our ego, and others most certainly do define you by your ego.  But when you think of who you are as a person, you have access to your true self behind the mask of ego.  You know yourself better than anyone else does.  Sure, some people may recognize patterns about you that you may miss, but for the most part, you know who you are better than anyone.  It’s just that feedback from others gives you a clearer picture of who you are that you might not be consciously aware of.  And it helps you form a more cohesive self, one that combines all opinions that truly matter.  But your opinion is always number one.  Others’ opinions are supplemental, as they are only seeing a partial picture.  They only see what you project, and nothing more.  You know much, much more about yourself than people on the outside looking in.

So, what am I driving at here?  Here’s what I am saying.  When trying to figure out who you are, don’t just rely on yourself.  Ask others for their opinions of you and see what they say.  Some of the things they say may shock you, but that is just their perception of you.  While it is not a completely accurate picture of you, other people’s perceptions of you help to understand how others see you in this world.  But they don’t know all of you.  They know only what you project to them.  You know more about who you are because you have access to all of yourself, whether or not you acknowledge it.  Other people simply see the top layer, maybe 2 layers deep.  You see much, much more of  yourself.  So, while I don’t advocate just using your own personal opinion of yourself to truly know who you are, I also say that you should take others’ opinions with a grain of salt, but also use them if they ring true to you.  If one adjective or class of adjectives keeps popping up, it’s pretty obvious that is the person you are projecting to the world.  And you can tweak who you are on the inside and the outside.  But that’s a topic for another day.

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