Been reading up on miscellaneous income at the IRS due to having to report my blog earnings now, which skyrocketed to $3.34 last year (adjusted for inflation).

When I scanned the list of the different types of income, I noticed this:

They really expect people to confess to a crime, on their TAX RETURNS? Seriously?

Anyhoo, I’m wringing my hand over doing taxes this year since it marks the first time I have to report an income stream outside of my full-time job. I like keeping things simple, so simple in fact that for 10 years or more I’ve only had to file a 1040A using standard deduction to get my refund. It takes like 5 minutes to do my taxes, but then of course I have to do my NY state taxes too, which typically takes me 5 weeks. You think federal taxes are complex? Come live here. You’ll never complain about the feds again.

Evidently I have to report ALL my additional income (not just the ones I got a 1099 for), including the $5 lottery scratch-off I won as a Christmas present. Sure, I’ll get right on that. I’m just righteously anxious to fork over what little of my money I have left so the gubmint can continue to hand out welfare checks to crack addicts. You betcha!

Seriously though, it doesn’t look like it will be too bad this year. I just need to switch over to a 1040 and there’s a line on it where I can report miscellaneous income. Next year though will likely be a completely different story. I can’t even wrap my mind around it, but the day might come where I may have to incorporate my blog as a business, because it’s getting to be THAT profitable. Habitation of Justice, LLC?

By that time I’ll probably need a tax advisor or some dweebie expert to walk me through incorporation and doing my taxes, and just hope they’ll be reputable. All this business crap gives me a serious headache. I just wanna blog and whine about about my lack of a love life in peace, ya know?

Tags: blog, business, earnings, federal taxes, income, incorporation, irs, report, state taxes, tax return
Categories: Blog Fog, Comic Relief
 
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Another Thanksgiving draws near, and once again it’s time to reflect on what I should be thankful for.

… well I got nothing.

No seriously, I do have a lot to be thankful for, especially this year. This was after all the year I finally became debt free, after having paid off my credit card, car and my college loan. It was the year my earnings from this blog reached inconceivable heights, making it possible for me to travel more frequently now and enjoy life in a way I never could before. For this I have you, my readers to thank. I still can’t quit my job just yet, but the extra income coupled with a debt free existence has made it possible now for me to go out and experience new and different things, and better yet, write about it too.

My health has also gotten much better as well. I thought I would be too tired, too sick to take on exhausting road trips and weekend getaways to God only knows where, but instead it’s become the exact opposite. The more I moved around, the better I felt and the more energy I had. In a way it broke my depression and lifted me out of this mental prison that I’ve built for myself for so long.

I’m thankful for finding a new hobby in geocaching too, to keep things interesting on my trips and find new places to explore that never would have occurred to me otherwise.

I’m thankful for my parents, who are all that I have left of a once huge family that had been lost through hate, estrangement and betrayal.

I am thankful for my beautiful and reliable SUV, which continues to guzzle gas and proudly leave it’s wide load of a carbon footprint for all to see.

I am thankful for Yankee Candles, pizza and cupcakes. And occasionally brownies too.

And of course, I am thankful to God my Father and my savior Jesus Christ, who has made all of the above things possible.

And I am thankful for the new year to come, the endless possibilities it might bright, and a hope that refuses to die, the hope that I will someday soon meet my dream girl.

Tags: christ, college loan, debt, depression, dream girl, energy, family, geocaching, God, health, income, Jesus, life, new year, parents, pizza, readers, road trip, thankful, thanks, Thanksgiving, travel, yankee candles
Categories: Gone Mobile
 
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Today marks the third year anniversary since my first ever post on this blog!

It’s certainly been a weird ride too.   Originally I started out thinking I would be using this blog to chronicle my journey through law school and into the law profession, but unfortunately life has a tendency to poop all over my best laid plans, so instead of writing about adventures in law school and beyond, I found myself rambling about topics of no particular interest to anyone but me.  My blog went for weeks without any updates, and my traffic was virtually nil.  Then I started wrapping myself around the idea that I could turn my blog into a money making machine, getting my hands on whatever material I could find out there that could help me figure out how to turn this site into a magical land of milk and honey, from whence I could quit my job, retire, and live it up as a self made man with a pizza on one hand and a babe on the other.

Then I went from there to wailing about all my health problems, which really put a damper on my blogging spirits for a while.  Then I went on a streak where I raged and ranted about dating sites and women and why they all sucked and disgusted me to no end, and not just them but people too, and they sucked and everybody sucks and the whole world sucks and why doesn’t everyone just explode and DIE????

Come to think of it I think I’m still on that streak. 

Under normal circumstances I probably would have closed this blog by now and moved on.

Only the thing is… this is the first time I’ve ever created a blog that provided a solid income stream for me.  I won’t be retiring or quitting anytime soon of course, but then again, I don’t just throw away something that’s earning me $200 a month, even if I have nothing worth writing about these days.   My feed count also surpassed 200 readers for the first time ever the other day, and it seems apparent that as I keep this site going and keep blogging, my audience and traffic will continue to expand, slowly, but surely.  $200 a month might some day become $300 a month, then $500, and from there, who knows how high it could go.  Love it or hate it, me and my blog, we’re stuck together for the long haul.  And who knows, just because I haven’t been able to earn a living NOW doesn’t mean I can’t earn one down the road, even if that road turns out to be a long, winding one that takes years to cover.  I know of one person who ran a math site since 1997, and it took her over ten years before she finally saw the fruits of her labor and was able to earning a living from her website alone.  From what I learned about search engines like Google, the older your domain gets, the more trusted it becomes, resulting in higher rankings and more traffic.  Some say the tipping point is 4 years, so by this time next year, I could end up seeing a dramatic difference that will boost my earnings potential even more.

In the meantime, this blog is still searching for an identity, a clear purpose, something to help focus my writing and truly make it blossom.  It’s sad that I find myself in my early thirties and even after all these years, I still don’t know who I am or who I was meant to be, if I was meant to be anything at all.  Am I destined to be a drifter, living a small life where I have no impact on anything, or am I meant for something bigger?  Can I overcome my inner demons and become the man God wants me to be, and the man that a future wife could be worthy of, or will I slowly fade away into obscurity and failure?

The story continues…

Tags: anniversary, blog, blogging, dating sites, failure, God, income, income stream, job, journey, land of milk and honey, law school, life, purpose, search engines, traffic, website, writing
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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Right on the heels of getting out of debt for the first time in 13 years, I’m now hearing that my old supervisor will be returning to my section this week for the first time in 9 years. When I started working this job he was my first “boss,” and it wasn’t too long before I promptly got written up because I had dared to call an outside agency to ask them for advice on how we could make our section more productive and efficient. Back then I didn’t know then that doing such a thing was a no-no, even if my only intention was to help.

I had only been on the job for 3 months, and I was pretty green in the gills and naively thinking I could change the world then, only to get quickly smacked down by reality and a stupid dweeb of a supervisor. The whole experience had left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since.

In all fairness, I don’t think he intended to be malicious, he just wanted to cover his wide trailer, but I didn’t appreciate how he had talked down to me in his droning, Ben Stein voice when it happened. There were probably a dozen ways he could have handled it better and instead he chose the worst way, leaving me with a “friendly” reprimand on my record not even 3 stupid, fricking months into my job. He was unfriendly, uncomfortable to be around with, and micromanaged the most mundane things that had absolutely no relevance to the work we did. To top it off, the dude had no personality at all, I mean seriously NONE, almost as if he had been born without a soul. Ben Stein has nothing on this guy.

That’s why I was glad when he transferred out to what he must have thought were greener pastures. We went through a cocktail variety of supervisors since then, until the last one retired in a hurry and officially left us without a manager again. I ended up taking the supervisor’s desk, since there was no other place to sit, and carved out a little corner for myself in our section that kept me comfortable and boss-free for 2 years.

Recently however, they phased out Mr. No Personality’s position, forcing him to come back to our department once again, although not our specific area (yet). He had clearly done everything he could to avoid getting transferred back to our section, but it looks like the clock finally runs out this week. Judging from the look on his face every time I see him, I can see his untriumphant return as our manager is going to be a real pleasure.

When he does come back, one of two things may happen. He may play it smart and have maintenance carve out some office space for himself, or he may pull rank and evict me out of the desk I’m using now. The reason this is a big issue is because I work with 4 other coworkers, and they all have desks and computers to use. I would have to go back to standing around and waiting for someone to either take a meal break or go home before I finally had a desk that I could access and work on, this despite the fact that I’ve been here 9 YEARS. I swear it’d be like high school all over again, just floating around, never finding a group or a spot where I could finally feel at home.

Yep, this is gonna be fun. Of course, after several years on the job I’m not so green in the gills anymore, and Mr. No Personality will find I’m not the pushover I used to be when I rip his soul-less dweeb monkey’s face off the minute he starts in on me. There’s a reason why nobody wants to oversee our section ya know.

Ironically enough, while there’s no place for him to go, a wave of early retirements that began last week have opened up over 20 new positions for me to potentially choose from, depending on how my seniority compares to others vying for the same job. I know absolutely nothing about these openings though, the hours I’d work, what the people I’d work with are like or what the job entails, only that they’re now looking for people. This is the first time in several years that new openings in my department finally presented themselves, so it’s not something I can just blow off either.

Honestly, the thing that has always held me back from vigorously pursuing opportunities like this was my night pay. My night pay accounts for $300 of my monthly salary, and because a contract concession forces me to work two days a month without pay for 6 months, just the simple act of transferring to another assignment would incur a loss of over $500 a month in income, at least until December.

I hate the thought of losing that much money a month, but if it there was ever a time I could stand to lose it, that time would be now. I no longer need to worry about any debts cramping my finances, and the loss of night pay would just mean I’d have to wait a little bit longer before getting enough cash together to put down for a new apartment and move out. What’s a few months and a few dollars really if it means finally getting out of a job I have loathed for 9 years?

Assuming of course the new job I get doesn’t turn out to be even worse than the old one.

Tomorrow I’ll try to find out more info about these openings and see what’s what. I have to admit the timing of these recent events is pretty curious, and I wonder whether it might be a sign that I finally need to go? After 9 years, as much as I’ve whined and complained about my work, I’ve still gotten pretty comfortable in my job and resistant to change. Facing the great unknown thrills me in a way, but it also frightens me too. I’ve been conditioned to believe that nothing good can ever happen to me when it comes to life changing events like this, and if I do wind up working a job someplace else, I fear it will be ten times worse than what I’m doing now. I wonder if it’s better to deal with the devil I know than charge into the great unknown, even if the devil I DO know ends up forcing me to give up my desk.

I guess I’ll know more by this week’s end what will happen. Heck, I’ve already experienced one life altering event by finally becoming debt-free, so why stop there?

Tags: boss, coworker, coworkers, debts, desk, income, job, opportunities, reprimand, supervisor, transfer
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I have finally arrived at the magic number of 500 posts!  

It’s hard to believe that I managed to stick it out even when there were so many times I was tempted to hang it up and stop blogging for good.  But writing is in my blood evidently, and blogging has always been a good outlet for me to express myself in a linguistic sense.  With 2009 also on the horizon and a new plan possibly in the works to really get some traffic going, who knows, I might finally be able to realize my dream of actually making some serious money off this blog.

Yet what if that were to really happen though?  What if… I were able to honestly blog for a living?  Should I give up my job for good and blog full time, and do what I’ve always been pining to do, which was to travel across America and write about my experiences?

Doing so would mean giving up a dull job that otherwise offers a lot of benefits, from being able to work only 33 hours, 4 days a week, to enjoying excellent medical and dental plans, including additional perks like longevity pay, education stipends, ample vacation/sick time, being vested in a retirement and additional medical plan, not to mention the fact that it is laid back enough that I can surf the Internet for most of the day while still getting my work done.  Heck, I don’t even have a supervisor either (at least not for a long while, since I scared them all away.)      And since it’s a government job, it offers the kind of job security that could easily survive the recession as well (as long as crime doesn’t go out of business.)

There’s also the fact that if I succeed in monetizing my blog, I would effectively have two incomes as long as I keep my current job.  In a few years I could buy a condo or even a home in another state without even taking out a mortgage.  Such a possibility had never even occurred to me until I considered what I’d be able to do if I pretended my second income didn’t exist at all, and just let it pile up in my savings account for a few years.  I could afford a home for my parents.  A real home.  I could fund their accounts so they’d no longer have to work full time and can enjoy some kind of semi-retirement lifestyle.  I could really help people, good people who are just going through a hard time and could use a little financial charity.  I’d be able to provide for a family too if I had one.

And the only sacrifice I had to make was to simply put up with my ultra-boring, soul sucking job, and God help me, the stupidest bloody coworkers that could have ever graced creation.  And of course, continue living in the worst, most disgusting leftist-riddled state in the entire union. 

You know, as much security as  my job would offer me now, there’s something to be said for being completely self-sufficient and self-employed, with an online income that doesn’t require you to be tied down to any one location.  It offers the kind of freedom most people can only dream of, and for it to even be a distinct possibility for me is a miracle unto itself.  Maybe I can somehow find a way to live the best of both worlds though.    Ultimately, it all hangs on what happens in the next year or so.

In the meantime, here’s to another 500 posts, and promises of a better future that sees this blog not only enrichening my life, but the lives of many others as well. 

Tags: blog, blogging, coworker, dream, family, financial, freedom, income, job, job security, life, living, monetizing, money, online, parents, travel, work
Categories: Blog Fog, In The Coal Mine
 
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For the first time ever, my blog has made over $100 in one month! 

Fitting that I should announce this on Labor Day too.    A few mild traffic spikes and a $10 commission from Clicky helped put me over the top, giving me a total profit of $114.63 for the month of August.

Breaking the $100 ceiling was a significant accomplishment for me, as I read a long time ago that this was the benchmark amount for determining whether your blog has the capacity to bring in a respectable income.  I have a relatively good setup going here to help me achieve that now, so the only thing I need is the traffic to help scale those profits until my goal of making $1,000 a month is finally realized.  If that day ever comes, who knows, from there I might eventually arrive at a time when I can make an actual living just from blogging/writing.  Do I dare to dream?

In the end, I have to believe that with God on my side and a little imagination, all things are possible:

Tags: accomplishment, blog, blogging, clicky, dream, God, imagination, income, living, profits, traffic, writing
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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