Note to self

I need to make a decision about what I really want to do with my spare time.

Wait, wasn't I extremely busy with my work and studies?

Well, fortunately, my work's still there. In fact, for the most part, the past year has been all about work. So much that I, without the knowledge of my family, have decided to place my studies on "pause" for a while.

Side note: I hereby officially announce that I am once again in hiatus from college life.

I'm not exactly sure when I'd be going back to my scholastic pursuits, as there are still several factors to consider before I go back. Either way, my appetite for school is currently at an all-time low, and I need to recharge myself for a bit. And by recharge, I mean distract myself with a ton of free time.

Which is a bit of a problem, by the way, as I don't know if I have actually freed a lot of my time so far, because right now, my daily schedule is a mess. I'm supposed to sleep at 10pm every night, wake up at 5:45, start working by 6am, finish up at 1:30, and everything after that should all be free time for myself. But for several reasons, (mostly internet-based ones), I can't help but stay up late, which then leads to me waking up late and sleep-deprived the next morning. And because I lack the proper amount of sleep, I tend to take long naps in the middle of the day, usually before I'm supposed to log out of work. So at the end of the day, I've worked less efficiently and I've spent more time sleeping than I should have, which really doesn't translate into more free time.

But I digress. This is actually an easy problem to solve, especially now that I've lessened my life burdens somewhat. Once I get myself back into the proper sleep rhythm, everything should be back to normal, and then I get my free time.

Which now takes me back to my original question: Now that I am at the verge of having a lot of free time, what should I do with it?

Well, actually I already have some ideas brewing inside my head for the past couple of weeks now:

1) Start a new blog that's focused on my professional experience - I've always wanted to do some creative non-fictional writing about the things I've learned over the course of my time as a young professional. Maybe even make some money out of it through ads (and possibly youtube videos), assuming that I market my blog well through social media, and that there's an actual niche for it.

2) Start an online magazine - Since I'm already on the subject of monetizing content on the internet, might as well talk about my idea of having my own e-zine website. I'm still not sure what the main focus of the website's going to be, but I'm pretty sure it would revolve around subjects that I'm very familiar with and/or very passionate about. The site could end up as an extension or an expansion of my "professional" blog, where I could talk about tech, home-based work, and other stuff that I come across in my everyday work. Probably add in a small section for viral stuff as well.

I've also thought about opening an online men's magazine, now that FHM's shying away from "mature" stuff. My next-door neighbor's a budding photographer; we could probably team up and make our own content. Definitely not sure about this one, but I did think about it, so I'm putting it up here. Might not fit into my idea of something that can be done during my free time, though.

3) Learn day-trading - I ordered a book about day-trading in the stock market yesterday so that I can start learning about turning the stock market into a day job. I want to add day trading to my repertoire of skills as a possible contingency plan just in case everything goes wrong with my current job. I still don't have the necessary capital to begin with (I've heard I may need amounts of up to 200k to start trading), but at least I've put in the necessary intellectual capital before I start diving into it.

4) Practice driving, and possibly branch out into the transport business? - My recent experience with Uber has piqued my interest about the transportation industry, and I might end up running a transport business. I don't have any background on it, but from what I've learned, it doesn't seem too complicated.

5) Others. Will edit them in as soon as I remember them.

So there, I have a handful of plans that I have been dreaming of for some time now. Notice that most of them are inclined towards opening up additional streams of income for myself. That's because I'm 30 now, and I need to start earning money if I want to travel and see the world before my bones start creaking.

When am I going to act on them, though?

No. Freaking. Clue. Maybe once I'm done whipping my schedule back into shape?

Well, I guess for now I'll just have to leave my ideas as they are: ideas. Though, I'm writing them down in the hopes that I get to doing at least one or two of them in the very near future. I'd write this post down on a post-it and stick it on my monitor. But I'm not that kind of guy, and it would ruin the aesthetic of my current setup. So this blog post will have to do.

Note to self: read this post every day, then hit yourself with something hard. It might help.