How a random $112.62 in my bank account has guaranteed my NYT Best Seller

My current jam is Passive Income.

Aka making money while you sleep.

Best thing ever to wake up to: “Someone’s bought your Life of Yes℠ Poster!”

By jam, I don’t mean that I’m successful at it.

I mean I’m fascinated by and want to be successful at it.

Today I woke up to $112.62 from “Amazon Com Misc” in my bank account —

I had no idea who “Amazon Com Misc” was, but I was happy to accept his/her money.

A quick shuffling through the mental filing cabinet, I remembered that I’m an Amazon Associate (you buy something on Amazon via one of my links, I get a percentage).

The fact that I forgot I’m an Associate shows you how paltry the numbers usually are.

So paltry in fact that most of my notes from Amazon are “You didn’t make enough this month so we’re rolling your $.05 over to next month and sending you nothing now” (in more business’y verbiage).

I don’t share links THAT often nor have a network THAT big to make a real step towards being an Affiliate Bazillionaire.

I signed up with a shrug and a “Why not?”

Today’s $112 bounty was what I amassed from May through today.

Ok, you can get up off the floor and stop laughing Oprah, Tim Ferriss, and Kim Kardashian.

I know you make that every five seconds.

I can’t imagine being websites like Lifehacker and bloggers/people like (anyone famous) who consistently share these links to oodles of people and wake up to sacks of cash for simply sharing links (I mean, they do that whole work hard, be skilled, and/or be beautiful thing too).

But you get what I mean.

All the more incentive to write my New York Times Best Seller.

Because if I feel this good selling one book that’s not mine, imagine how I’ll feel when I wake up to: “Three bazillion people bought (epic name of my epic book)!”

I need to remember this when I’m writing and thinking, “This isn’t paying the bills! I don’t have time for this! No one’s reading this! The payoff — if there is a payoff — is so far down the road! I’m stupid! What am I doing with my life?! Give me a donut!”

Working on a passion project is hard.

Finishing a passion project, oy vey.

CAN IT BE DONE?!?

It’s easily pushed aside for things that matter, for things that are necessary now, for things that keep the lights on and the fridge stocked.

I’m trying to retrain my brain to think that YES, my book matters, it’s necessary, it pay the bills (indirectly).

Cause writing it makes me happy.

Which makes me better able to do the things that actually keep the bank from repossessing my home.

Plus happiness is good.

I love Gordon Whitson’s — the head cheese at Lifehacker — framework for productivity as it speaks directly to this struggle to make time for passion projects:

With more thought, I take back that I’m not successful at Passive Income.

Though it amassed with the quickness of an overweight, elderly tortoise with a bum knee, stuck in tar, I have $112.62 today that I didn’t have yesterday.

Because I shared things I love with people I love.

That’s all sorts of the best and “success.”

Note to self: stop comparing Self to Oprah.

Note to Oprah: wanna give me a book advance? The book is gonna be EPIC.

With more thought, I take back New York Times Best Seller.

I mean my book may be — Life of Yes, y’all! — and how lovely that’d be.

In reality, I’ll be happy if one non-family member buys it and one non-Chicagoan buys it.

But no one can buy something that doesn’t exist.

PS – need a fun new board game, a book to help you get your life in order through non painful methods, or a scanner that scans all sizes of paper, both sides at a time, and sends scans directly to Evernote?!