Making the Easy Money

Being self employed, it can sometimes be difficult making ends meet. Quite often, the business just doesn’t come in fast enough and it can be hard paying those bills on time. At some point, it might be tempting to go out and get a part-time job doing something else.

I know this is the situation I faced – I needed to make some quick cash so I took on an extra job bartending in the evenings and on weekends.

First of all, I had no idea what I was doing, so it took a lot of time and energy learning the skills I needed to do the job correctly.

I worked many extra hours in addition to my daily contracts – at the time, things were slow and I figured the money would come in handy. So what happened?

Well, as it turns out, I worked so much over-time at the part time job, I was constantly tired and basically slept any spare time I had.

I was too tired to do much of anything. The worst thing was I didn’t put any time into my side projects, which were very important to me. I was just too tired!

Suffice it to say, they were put on the backburner and suffered tremendously because I was working all the time.

My day job also started to suffer because of my constant fatigue.

So, what is worth it?

Well, I did meet some great people, made lots of new contacts and learned some new skills. I also went out of my comfort zone and did something different from what I’m used to.

I can now check one more thing off my life’s ‘to-do’ list.

But, my ‘side projects’ got really far behind and it took me a long time to get my focus back and get back into the swing of things.

Also, I realized my income wasn’t that much farther ahead. After tallying up my earnings, the extra money bartending was offset by the loss of income from my day job from being too tired.

So, I decided to quit and put my energy back into my daily contract work and my side projects.

Did I learn a lesson? Absolutely!

In life, we will frequently be tempted by the easy money in the short term, which may not be good for us in the long term.

It’s important to focus on the goal at hand – be disciplined and try to avoid the distractions along the way.

If you stick to what you want out of life, the money will follow.