And by honest, I mean HONEST. I have been looking at how people, especially creative people, make a living. Call it a personal research project. I am interested in what people do to make money, because I think that this is the one area where people tend to have the greatest cognitive dissonance. As in, What I do is not Who I Am.

What would you do if money were no object? Most people will decribe a dream vacation – lying on the beach, reading novels, doing nothing for days at a time. It’s a nice idea, but the fact is a totally passive lifestyle gets really boring really fast. It’s hard to imagine, since most of us (especially Americans) don’t take enough vacation time to ever get tired of vacation.

Why are we so anxious to escape anyway? Anyone doing what they want and LOVE to do will not be in a hurry to go lie on the beach. Lying on the beach will just take her away from what is even better than relaxing: being creatively productive. I believe it’s our most natural state – the one some have referred to as “flow.” When a person is engaged in a creative activity he or she will not feel unhappy. And by engaged I mean ENgaged, not merely doing.

But we are here in this world where we must values profit as a measure of success in order to merely have a decent quality of life. Mind you, Quality of Life would be much improved if we all had the option to be creative instead of making money, but we are where we are, so…

How can I make money without supporting: marketing, greed, capitalism, oppression, ecological disaster, and worst of all advertising? I look at ads on the internet and feel sick. People are out there trying to trick others out of money. Life has become an ineffectual get-rich scheme based on lies and greed.

So how can we change this? Can entrepreneurs succeed without basically finagling money out of people? Is it possible to make work of value besides monetary value? Can one get paid well for doing good or making something good?