One of the hardest problems for the un- and under-employed is finding the will to get off your ass at all. Even though the workday at a crap job can grind you down, it still forces you to get a good 8 hours of labor done, even if its for someone else. I’m not sure that I even wore pants for eight hours today.
I spent a small part of the day working on this site, and a little bit on the upcoming webseries Higher Inebriations, but spent most of my time listening to podcasts and waiting for new posts to show up on my RSS feed. I did a lot of meta-work, but that doesn’t add up to much – changing wordpress settings doesn’t make more blog posts show up, nor does futzing with google chrome extensions make more interesting reading material appear.
But anyone who’s ever had a crap job will tell you, its much harder to go to work on a Monday than a Thursday. Mental inertia seems to be one of those things that can build infinitely, so each day you do nothing just makes the next one even harder. Sometimes you just have to make work happen, even when there’s nothing to be done, so that you’re not too drowsy when something good comes along.
The upside to this is that inertia goes both ways – an mind at rest tends to remain at rest, but a mind at motion tends to continue in motion. This blog and my assorted hustles, schemes and Million Dollar Ideas are dumb hobbies that make no money right now, but all it takes is for one to make a splash for them all to retroactively become the groundwork for something worthwhile.
Do something today that feels like work, and when real work comes, you’ll be prepared.