Why did I desire to become self-employed and to ‘become my own boss’?

Well, from a very young age, I knew I didn’t want to “work for the man”.

As a consequence, my goal in life was to become self-employed to gain total freedom over my life, and to determine my own future.

I honestly didn’t think it was possible

Rewind a bit to high school. I loved hanging out with my homies, playing Texas holdem Poker, playing sports, riding around, freestyle rapping to beats, blogging, and just hanging around. I still have this recollection at the parking lot of my high school [Castro Valley High School]:

If I ever make $100 an hour … I would just do the minimum amount of work NOT having to work.

The basic idea:

Only ‘work’ for 1 hour a day.

Why did I not really care for money?

My upbringing was this:

I grew up poor, which meant every month (because my dad liked to gamble away our rent money), we might be homeless at the end of every month.

As a consequence from an early age I realized I had to become self reliant. I actually recall it my personal pride to NOT ask my mom for any money (I knew both she didn’t have it, and I had pride in the notion of becoming entrepreneurial and figuring out ways I could make money on my own). This lead me to some fun ventures like building custom PC’s and selling them for a profit (‘Paradise Computers’ was my first attempt, selling computers on eBay, with my own custom-made graphics and design on a pirated version of Photoshop on my PC). Funny enough, even the computers I sold had pirated versions of Windows XP on it.

My goal:

Make enough money to pay rent and just buy the stuff I wanted.

I also ended up tutoring, earning a few bucks here and there ($200 a month stipend for working at a local Korean-American community center, KCCEB — Korean Community Center of the East Bay).

Now what was my end game? Not sure as a high schooler. I think it was to have fun, fixupmy car (1991 Sentra SE-R), go on fun adventures, have enough money to afford my $5 buy-in to play Texas Holdem with my friends, and to pay for my gas money to hang out.

What do I like to do now?

Workout, chat with strangers, walk around, go to the park, write and blog on this site, buildup new innovative projects (arsbeta.com) and trying to philosophize more on photography, art, aesthetics, and entrepreneurship.

Blogging is my archimedes lever

I’ve become so successful because I am a great blogger.