About
October 12th, 2009 by Clayton
Have you ever worked a job that you hated? I mean REALLY hated? In the summer of 2008, I had one of those jobs. I took the job because they lied to me and then when I started working, I had to violate nearly every personal value that I hold dear. It sucked.
It wasn’t long before I stumbled across The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. I got the audio book version and listened to it over and over again in my commute to and from work. That book is probably tattooed on the inside of my brain.
I did my best to employ what he talked about back then. I had a few pathetic attempts. But soon summer ended and I had to go back to school to finish my masters degree.
I graduated in May 2009. There are no jobs in sight, thanks to the recession. I’m choosing to see it as an opportunity, though. It’s my chance to put Lifestyle Design into action and start living the life that I want.
I’m nearly broke, living in Seattle with my girlfriend, who has a job that pays only a little bit of money.
Basically, all I’m starting with is a MacBook Pro, $2000, and a hell of a lot of ambition.
In 2009 I:
- Finished grad school and got a masters degree
- Moved out of Arizona to my hometown of Seattle with my girlfriend
- Decided to try my hand at starting my own business
- Got LEED acredited
- Gave up coffee for lent (I’m not religious, I just like personal challenges)
- Did the Tim Ferriss diet and lost 12 pounds
- Started a blog
- Built several websites
For 2010, I’m working toward:
- Building several affiliate sales websites to earn money. The first goal is to pay rent with them!
- Move to San Francisco with my girlfriend
- Travel for about one month to Thailand
- Do NaNoWriMo in November
- Try to outsource and automate my business once it starts becoming profitable
- I also want to meet other people on a similar path toward cubicle independence
My goal for this blog is to document my journey so that others may use it to encourage them on their own quest to freedom from corporate work. I also want to use it to meet others on the path as well. This blog is an experiment to see what I can achieve starting with almost nothing.
From time to time, I plan on doing several different experiments and challenging myself to different things. I will be documenting these experiments on this blog to prove or disprove them and draw any useful conclusions from them.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Hi Clayton
Found your site via your fabulous “rejection letter” post on the Tim Ferriss blog.
Just wanted to give you a cheer for giving this a go…I meetlots of people who are finding it much harder to leave corporate hell than they would have found it simply to follow their own path in the first place. Good luck, and have fun-freedom is worth it.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:04 am
@Clare,
Thank you for your comment. I’ll agree that doing your own thing can be a little frightening. Especially when contrasted with the feelings of (perceived) safety and security of living in “corporate day care.”