Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
Let’s start with the negative so we can finish with the good stuff. Teaching on the side I gave up teaching on DMM Eikaiwa. It was okay, but when so many people around me told me I could do better, I began to resent working for such a low wage. I decided to try Cafetalk, where I could set my own rates and… hardly any students have booked my classes. […]
I long believed that happiness was a long term goal, something to strive for, something you achieve after studying hard, landing a good job, starting a family and settling down in your own home. The American Dream, if you will. But that’s all nonsense! What it really boils down to is brain chemistry. There are a bunch of neurotransmitters in the brain that trigger feelings of happiness, such as serotonin, […]
Ramsay Ramblings is back after a 10 year absence – woohoo! This is where I clear my head of all the things I want to say, smashed together in a single blog post. Let’s get started: The Covid Olympics Like 80% of Japan, I was opposed to hosting the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic. The Coronavirus outbreak, days after the closing ceremony, is currently the worst it has […]
When I first started taking an interest in Bitcoin, I thought, “Hmm… maybe I could just buy one Bitcoin.†Little did I know that a single Bitcoin costs a year’s salary! A few days, and a little research later, I was gung ho about earning my first satoshi instead. A “satoshi†is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, worth one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin, or 0.00000001 BTC. Apparently, it was […]
During my first few years in Japan, I was fairly proactive in figuring things out for myself. That changed after I got married, though. Time and time again, I deferred anything that required Japanese to my wife. That included booking doctor and dental appointments, hiring handymen for home maintenance, planning family trips, running the administrative side of our English school, and most significantly, managing our finances. Not surprisingly, she reached […]
Since I started teaching online for $5 a lesson, I’ve found myself weighing up purchases based on how many lessons I have to teach. Take, for example, a single cup of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. That would cost me half a lesson (15 minutes), which is certainly worth it! Some real examples Looking through my orders on Amazon this year, here’s how much time I’ve spent working for each item: A […]
It was way back in 2008 when I wrote about My Dot Com Lifestyle in Japan. In which I egotistically described how I’d quit my teaching job and was living off internet earnings while sitting on my ass. So how did that turn out? Not quite as well as it started. You see, I had seven websites in the childhood education niche – the ones making money, yet I spent […]
It’s been a couple of months since I unsubscribed from Netflix and Apple Music. Losing Netflix I’d watched Netflix for four years and it had become part of my evening routine, so to give it up was hard to do. I was prompted to quit by the price increase in May this year. Maybe Netflix will come through on their promise to add more, high quality content, but I was […]