> I built myself a job I didn't want. So the question isn't "how can I make money?" but "how can I create the job I want?". An important part of this is "what

> I built myself a job I didn't want. So the question isn't "how can I make money?" but "how can I create the job I want?". An important part of this is "what the heck kind of job do I want?" The response "I want to be independently wealthy" seems to circumvent this, but it turns out that you will want a job after all. (If you don't believe me, you may need to find this out the hard way, as I did.) A good example is the viaweb crew, who got rich, then turned around and started another business (YC). So why not create the job you want in the first place? Though it's true that for some jobs (like being a VC), it helps to have a lot of cash, and a lot of hard-won experience - so creating the job you want might involve doing a lot of stuff you don't want to do. Actually, the nature of "work" is there is always some stuff you don't like. (Yet oddly, we seem to need that to be happy - like the failed Matrix's.) On top of all this, there are so many unknown unknowns in the world, that it's not realistic to even be able to conceive of your ideal job. (nature's imagination is greater than your imagination; There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy). This is the very idea of lean, that you can't know what will work, so you can't plan it. Instead, you try experiments to get that knowledge, where an "experiment" is a low-cost way to get information. If it costs too much, it is no longer an experiment, but something else. So... you can see yourself as on a journey to find out what sort of job you'd like. You might as well begin with what you think you'd like (e.g. where your passion is)... but it's overwhelmingly likely that your ideal job will come as a complete surprise to you. So it doesn't really matter where you start, as long as you start. "What color is your parachute" has some exercises about discovering what kind of regular job you'd like, which can guide you in creating that job for yourself - but I think it's flawed in that you don't know enough about the world or yourself to be accurate. Still, it's a starting point. The same goes for finding your passion. You can't know what it is, so start doing stuff. You'll discover more about the world, and more about what you like. On this reasoning, it might have given you interesting information to have built that billing system, to see if you liked the PR business. It might have lead to something else along those lines; or caused you to definitively go in the opposite direction. You could still close it down - or sell it (or give it away). But if it really is in demand, a competitor would emerge! (this happened to me). So you aren't stuck with it, if you don't want to be. In a wider sense, the feeling of having to support the project forever transformed an experiment into a life-choice. BTW: I don't mean this to be targeted at you; I think your one idea per month for a year is really impressive, requiring a lot of guts and gumption. Maybe you were just a bit burned out at the end (I would be - I see "gumption" as my most critical resource). It's just that your story helped crystallise my present concern on "creating a job I want".