{"id":243530,"date":"2020-06-11T03:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T10:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=243530"},"modified":"2020-06-11T04:04:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T11:04:05","slug":"why-i-became-self-employed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/11\/why-i-became-self-employed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Became Self-Employed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why did I desire to become self-employed and to ‘become my own boss’?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, from a very young age, I knew I didn’t want to “work for the man”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I honestly didn’t think it was possible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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]:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I ever make $100 an hour … I would just do the minimum amount of work NOT<\/em> having to work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The basic idea:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only ‘work’ for 1 hour a day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Why did I not really care for money?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"money<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My upbringing was this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As a consequence from an early age I realized I had to become self reliant. I actually recall it my personal pride to NOT<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"machine<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My goal:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make enough money to pay rent and just buy the stuff I wanted. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"flower\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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