You Must Diversify In This Economy

One friend I had who was my mentor until he passed away told me, that each person should have multiple income streams or they won't be able to make a living.  I know what I am good at and what I can monetize. 

In my youth, I did guitar, and mastered karate, shootfighting, and wrestling.  Martial arts training is important as self defense, physical education, and moral pedagogy. But most people stop after college age and move on with their lives.  After college age, I mastered nutrition and art.  So between music, martial arts, nutrition, and art, I can figure out how to create my own online business.  I already have several income streams coming in, it's just they are small and I need to scale up.

Music is the most fun thing, but it is the least profitable.  Everybody these days is a musician, and there are fewer people making money from it.  Taylor Swift and John Mayer are rare people with a lot of people behind them. 

Art is growing, and graphic design is a field with a thousand niches, of varying levels of profitability.  Painting is fun but low reward, and desktop publishing is boring but profitable.  And there's a lot in between.  Visuality and color is mental health therapy in a mentally ill, technological world.

And as always, nutrition is big business.  The one thing that unites all humans is that they eat, and they must eat several times a day or they die.  Both saints and sinners eat.  The restaurant business has a 500% markup and some cuisines have even bigger profit margins (like sushi) because they give you smaller quantity for more money.  I like Thai cuisine and Dominican cuisine the best. 

So straddling the line between what is fun to do and what will get me the paycheck is the issue.  Right now, I am working on getting another degree in communications so I can sell more articles as a copywriter and expand my skills as an artist.  But if I had it my way, I would just play the boogie and train matwork.  But we don't live in an ideal world.

Glorious Return

I haven't written in this blog in a long time.  I have decided that art is not my main vocation.  My graphic diploma helps me design art for books and albums, but it is not my main thing.  I am not a graphic designer.  But my education was not a waste.

As time goes on, I will spend more time doing what I've been doing all my life.  I have been playing music for 25 years and grappling for over 20 years.  I could be teaching music and Aikido, and the art just supplements what I already know.

The reality is, you only learn by doing.  Stuff you learn didacticly in a University is not real knowledge.  You are regurtitating what others have said to you.  Anything in life, including judo, is theory and practice. First learn the theory, then get involved in doing, and then put the theory into practice.  It is only after you are tested that you value what the instructors have taught you.

In my experiences, I have mastered music, judo, and home cooking.  I possess a lot of skill with English and computers.  I could use my knowledge in a more advantageous way to create an income and gain popularity.  Knowing this, I will write more ebooks, publish more albums, and get involved in martial arts again.  My scholastic education in acupuncture and graphic design didn't help me.  Book learnin' doesn't work.

So knowing this, I will draw less and do what I am good at more.  I have made money in the past two years in copywriting, design,and music, and this trend will continue.  But I know my art is limited and I've only been doing it a short time.  If I want to be succesful, I need to do what I am good at and get paid for it.  So I am returning to this blog to inform whoever is out there in internet land that I am not focusing on the design or even the acupuncture but using what I actually know and not what I think I know.