There is nothing quite so calming as watching Jackie and Shadow, Sunny and Gizmo hanging out in their nest above Big Bear Lake. Mom and Dad, baby and baby bald eagles, quietly living life and doing their thing while thousands of us watch them on a secret camera.
I’m sure the aliens are doing the same to us.
As you know, I’m one for Fred Flintstone, get-rich-quick schemes.
But they can’t be those be-your-own-boss-with-my-proven-system, make-a-million-in-your-spare-time kind of plans. The people that make money off of those plans are the people that sell them.
I did that for a while – trained to be a financial planner. I was broke and unemployed and grasping at straws. Just the guy you want to show you how to manage your finances.
No, it’s gotta be fresh, and it’s gotta be mine, and it’s gotta be foolproof, for I am surely the fool that will louse it up.
There was the sure-fire paper-house-kits-for-model-railroaders business that promised to make a bazillion bucks. It turns out the market for such a product is very, very, very small. Apparently just me.
Way back when, a friend and I branded ourselves The Babble Brothers and sold answering-machine message tapes. They were witty little audio pieces on cassette, skits and songs mostly, for you to record onto your answering machine to charm your callers. We sold about 15 of those. Maybe less. I haven’t seen a cassette player in a long, long time.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I have a website devoted to describing the outer reaches of our solar system (QueenOfTheKuiperBelt.Wordpress.Com), a DIY website (SkippityWhistles.com), and an aviation museum website (MarvelousAirMuseums.com). Each of these is designed to bring in tons of advertising revenue, the much ballyhooed passive income.
And there’s the secret plan to make 3d videos of little cars driving about for that company that makes little cars. Turns out, to make good 3d models in Blender, you have to be GOOD at Blender. Who knew?
My newest, latest, and perhaps best plan is to make industrial safety videos. There are, like, ten thousand safety managers scouring the Interweb for content for their next safety meetings. Who wouldn’t like a schmaltzy, well written, exquisitely produced video for free? Come on. If that doesn’t build traffic, right? I can make videos like that. Schmaltzy. In Blender.
Oh yeah, Blender.
According to my very smart daughter – the one in the master’s program at a prestigious university – Fred Flintstone is no longer the caveman with the big ideas.
She says it’s Grug Crood.
Grug came up with putting a flat little rock over your eyes – “I call ‘em shades,” and smashing your mud-covered face with a flat rock to make a snapshot. But he was trying to hold his family together, not make a million clams.
Of his moss wig, his son asks “what do you call that?” His mother-in-law answers “I call it desperation.”
No getting rich quick there.
I have so many schemes running, I’m starting to lose track. They’re all supposed to be passive income makers, so I could be a bazillionaire right this very moment and not even know it.
Chances for that seem extremely small. It’s more likely I’ll sell a paper house.
Guess I’ll go back to watching the baby eagles.
Sorry, Grug.
John D Reinhart 