Request for Help

[samijiben]

I have reached a critical junction in my life and call upon the graceful wisdom of the Actualized.org community to help guide me. 

 

For background,  I am 21 years old. I spent the last four years living abroad. Israel, India, Nepal. Sitting back home in California, It's almost like I never went. The memory is just dust. But, I swear, when I was there, it was the time of my life. 

 

Anyways, fast forward to present day and I, Ben, will be going to university. The problem is, well... the problem is that university is not in alignment with my vision. But I'll get to that later. Need more background.  

 

I left to Israel when I was sixteen, spent a year "studying" in university, got kicked out of the school because of a romantic escapade, returned home for a few months, found work, and off I was to Nepal, and I stayed there and also in India for a year, after which I had gotten accepted into university but declined, so returned home again, worked again, and returned right back to South Asia.  

 

So, all my life, I kinda knew that I wouldn't end up working for a bloke, nor would I settle for a senior position in an established company. Fuck all that nonsense. I won't live my life having to wake up for another person.  

 

The video "Should You go to University" beautifully illustrates the poiint that university can impede on certain goals. 

 

My goal, my objective, my vision, is kind of like this: I want to be financially free as soon as possible so that I can actualize my plan to spend the next ten years around the globe, learning languages. I love to learn languages and travel, so I want to do that. I like doing that very much. It makes me feel alive.  

 

This idea of travelling around the world and learning languages — that is, on my own accord, as opposed to that of some group or program — is great but hard to make a career. I don't want to vlog or be some reporter journalist fucking skunk. I want to travel on my own terms, doing what I do best — learning languages and making field-analyses and on-the-spot investigations into human nature.  

 

The thing is, I'm quite lazy. For years, I had an idea of creating an online business that sells hemp and wool clothes out of Nepal and makes 10x profit, but I never even tried. I had all the resources, connections, and time, too. I'm just fuck all lazy, especially in the cloud of this fucking hash.  

 

I recognize that to do what I want, I'll need some remote income. That has to be my main source of income. Not just for the purpose of enabling my plan to have financial mobility and travel around the world, but for the even bigger picture goal of not wanting to be tied down by an individual company or corporation. Therefore, I decided that the answer is freelancing some remote skill. Not some virtual assistant entry level bullshit. A real career, offering a solid service. Something that requires real skill and has a high ceiling.  

 

I had gotten accepted into a great uni back when I was 18 but declined to go. I decided to keep fucking around in Asia. Time well spent! 
 
This time, I am sure I am going. The biggest reason is my parents. They are paying for the whole thing. They have no qualms doing that, even after I explained to them over the course of years that I do not think university is for me and that it'd be a waste of money.    

 

My hacker friend told me that if I want to do what he does, which, to my eyes, looks like click-clacking away at the computer and making money, enabling him to travel around the world, I have to learn computers. He told me to get a computer, install linux, and start learning how a computer works. 

 

So this is what I have started to do. I got this big, fat old book about the linux programming line, and I'm taking this free python course also. The learning curve is pretty intense. It's nothing like learning a language. It's more like learning 30 languages at once, and there's always questions and unfilled spaces where I just don't know what's going on. It seems like you kinda got assume some magic sorcery going on to use a computer.  

 

Anyways, that's not the point. The point is, I've decided to go full-in on this programming-computer stuff with the goal of becoming financially independent, by which I mean making at least 3 grand a month, in the next two years. I plan to self-study most of my time, my major is linguistics which should be easy. I'll just pour most of my resources and time into studying this computer shit. Hopefully I'll be able to jump ship a year or two into university. 

 

I told my parents that I imagine myself dropping out of university, and they still want to send me. They say, "Ben, just go for one semester, see what it’s like!" You see, my parents are hell-bent on their son going to university no matter the price. They seem to think that university means my ticket to success. 

 

I am going, therefore, both to appease my parents and because going there offers me some kind of launching pad, a place where I can do my work and live for free. My parents said that if I really don't want to go to university, I have to fuck right off now. So, yeah, it makes sense to go, if only to use my time to try to get out of there ASAP. 

 

So, yeah, that's about it, I wanted to hear what anyone has to think about my plan. One problem that has already arisen is that laziness I was talking about. At first, like the first few days, I felt pretty good, learned how to make directories and move files around and can even send an encrypted message. But I've been lagging and know I need to put wayyy more time into this if I am to achieve the goal of making money remotely in two years or less.  

 

The whole computer world seems fascinating, but it's not a field that I am particularly passionate about. Nevertheless, I concluded that this is the only reasonable plan considering my goals. Again, I want maximum location mobility and freedom. I want to travel around the next few years and learn different languages. And I need remote income for that. What better plan is there? 

 

Now I have university as a fail-safe so my plan B can be to graduate university with a fucking degree if this doesn't workout. But that would be the worst possible scenario.  

 

My parents say, you'll still be young, only 24, after you get out of college, that's more than enough time to travel the world. But they don't understand. I've experienced the joy of travelling solo around the jungles and slums of India at 18 years old. There's nothing like it. I wanna get back out there now. And, even if I did pursue university, that would only help me get a job, and I do not want a job. That would tie me down to some location and further delay my goal to jump town and go to Kyrgyzstan or China or something. 

 

Anyways, done rambling, what do you all think of my plan? Any advice? Is this realistic?  

[Asayake]

My guess is you’re not interested enough in programming to do the hacker path you’re zoned in on. It seems too much like you’re doing the programming/hacking for the outcome of freedom & travel. While you can do that I wouldn’t recommend it because you’re going to be competing with people who’s as drawn to and fascinated by programming as you are by languages & travel, and AI getting increasingly powerful at programming means that unless you get really good people who know nothing at programming will also be your competitors. 

Either you should give programming a chance in a sense of seeing if it’s something you can develop a deep fascination & passion for by spending time with it regularly to get more used to it where it stops seeming like computer magic and you start getting a deeper understanding. But if you never find a way to deep satisfaction from programming & problem solving in solitude regardless of what outcome it brings then maybe you should consider other alternatives. Your hacker friend does programming, but what would he look at you and think “damn that seems difficult/uncomfortable/how does he do that so naturally”.

It’s difficult to give you a concrete answer like “you should try X” because I dont know enough about you and most likely no one does yet. Youre young and perhaps whats more important than what choice you actually make is what you learn from it. Learning programming will teach you a lot so Id still recommend it. But keep your mind open, dont commit on a programming career to reach your goals quite yet. Knowing some programming, such as understanding automation and utilizing it in your life can be very useful regardless of what your work ends up becoming. Perhaps you could monetize your hobby, making money then spending it on travels and creating some type of content from travels that way you share what you love with other people and you never know what comes from that, you might meet likeminded or learn video editing as a skill or something unexpected. These are kinda generic ideas but Im just trying to point out that your current interests can also be used to create something of value. 

 

With that said dont give up on programming just yet, Id recommend CS50X(its free, i did it and enjoyed it) if you want to better understand how computers work but doing a python course like youre currently doing and maybe doing a couple simple game clones like pong and snake with some game engine/framework or doing some other simple program clone first might be good. But keep your mind open! Lifes a journey.

[Hojo]

Learning coding and computer is way harder than you are thinking it will be, if you are not interested it will crush your soul.

Its like a 15 year thing or more the coders are constantly changing and evolving and if you dip our you might fall behind as well.

If you are not interested in computing I would suggest you do not do it.

Edited 8 hours ago by Hojo

[LordFall]

I fear you're gonna get quited bored of programming if you're not particularly into it, it's a very high competition niche now with AI automating a lot of it.

If I were you I would probably keep in mind a travel business if that's really your passion. Start it right where you are in California, make videos of the surrounding areas around you and use AI to figure out the highest value travel packages you can sell, I just did one search quickly and it gave me this Napa Valley Wine Tour 

A lot of times you can call these places and make a deal with them where you become an affiliate for their services and they give you a 20% promo that becomes your margin and then you resell it on their behalf. Or you charge extra for putting a particularly cool tour together.

You can also do the opposite and find for a cool tour at the place you want to visit and then make call those places and get the same deal.

Now to sell the tours you learn how to take organic b-roll and turn it into engaging organic content. As well as running ads. If it's local you have the adantage of being able to film stuff yourself instead of having to repurpose content that you find online for your own brand. You can also become a tour guide and start a company around that, do like Hollywood tours if you're LA or ideally something more niche and high ticket. Better be high ticket than mass market but doing a lot at the start to learn the industry is fine as well. 

Buy Alex Hormozi's books and learn what a high quality offer is and how to do lead generation effective. You make money by saving people time or giving them access to something they didn't have before. It's usually done by having an unfair advantage, secret knowledge or just pure willingless to labor so it's easier to do it in something you enjoy doing and thinking about.

You can start the pages and the content strategy pretty much this week though a lot of this stuff you can learn how to do on Youtube and it'll be up to you to find a profitabe niche and offer and keep on throwing stuff at the wall until it works and you have something worth repeating. 

Good luck, you're thinking along the right path. Just study people that have achieved your lifestyle before you and reverse engineer it. 

Edited 6 hours ago by LordFall

[aurum]

5 hours ago, samijiben said:

I recognize that to do what I want, I'll need some remote income. That has to be my main source of income. Not just for the purpose of enabling my plan to have financial mobility and travel around the world, but for the even bigger picture goal of not wanting to be tied down by an individual company or corporation. Therefore, I decided that the answer is freelancing some remote skill. Not some virtual assistant entry level bullshit. A real career, offering a solid service. Something that requires real skill and has a high ceiling.  

But if you want that and to make good money, you'll probably have to spend a lot of your time abroad still working.

It's not just going to be an infinite vacation where you can do whatever.

You'll be in India, but just glued to your laptop. 

[Ziran]

9 hours ago, samijiben said:

Anyways, done rambling, what do you all think of my plan? Any advice? Is this realistic?  

My advice?  The fastest way to make remote income, in your situation, is through rental income.  See if you can convince your parents to finance a real-estate venture.  Offer them 50%.