This is an excerpt sampled from my new ebook about making money through passive income (fueled by your own creativity) and it’s set to come out VERY SOON… So, what follows is a section of the book near the beginning that helps explain what I mean by combining the practices of ‘lifestyle design,’ with ‘culture jamming.’
And yes, the ‘3 Hour 59 Minute’ title is most likely NOT going to be the title, that part’s a joke… It’s a reference to a book by famed lifestyle designer (and hero of mine) Tim Ferriss.
StrangeFlow, You Wrote a Book?
Yes! In fact, this is actually my third! This book is geared towards creative productivity and nichification through the combined fields of lifestyle design and culture jamming.
It is geared, primarily, towards electronic music producers: folks who make bass music, folks who spin bass music, and folks who have barely made a penny with bass music – but folks who SHOULD be making a living with bass music (though many of the tools here can be applied to people outside the realm of rave/bass/electronic music, as a lot of it is really a blueprint for creative individuals.)
So, if using the word, ‘bass,’ five times in a single sentence doesn’t convince you of my incredible prose-writing capabilities, read on, and see if this is something you might enjoy!
Convention be damned, combine culture jamming with lifestyle design, and make yourself into a fucking champion!
Lifestyle Design + Culture Jamming
Lifestyle design, first proposed by Timothy Ferriss in ‘the Four-Hour Work Week,’ is, in a nutshell, the idea that you can design a fun and rewarding lifestyle without breaking the bank – one way to do that is to establish sources of passive income that generate money for you while you are lounging around in Goa, India – listening to trance music and smoking a finger-sized piece of hash while you watch the tide coming in; or while you’re hiking up the coast of Casa Del Sol in Spain, with authentic gyros and wonderful red wine waiting for you when you get back to your beautiful rented flat, right on the beach, where you’ll spend your next few days dreaming up and planning out new creative projects and hobbies with which to generate even more income to fund your exciting lifestyle.
To put it simply, lifestyle designers are talking about, ‘the dream.’
(NOTE: If need be, think up your own non-hash or non-gyro-related dreams, and make sure to write them down.)
Basically, It’s about using business and entrepreneurialism in a smart way to create a lifestyle of your choice.
Culture jamming is the art of dissecting, remixing, and re-appropriating culture in new and breathtakingly creative ways; taking what was once familiar, and challenging it, artistically. It has a myriad of both artistic as well as political applications. In other words, its about re-using culture as a means of self-expression.
Alright, now that we’re on the same page, I want to propose a hybrid philosophy of these two realms of thought and expression that I think can go together pretty fluidly. You might call it “Culture Jamming 2.0,” (although, adding a ‘2’ to something usually sounds fucking stupid) so, more simply, Championism.
I want to take the best of both worlds, fusing the ideas of re-contextualizing/borrowing/utilizing culture, as well as the idea of generating passive income to pay the rent (thereby not having to be an unhappy wageslave in the traditional sense) having the freedom to use your newly created abundance of time to focus on the fun or creative pursuits you never had the time to do when you were working at the gas station or McDonalds 40 hours per week.
So, basically, cultivating the artistic ideas behind culture jamming, and combining that with the longer (or “medium-er”…?) – term lifestyle goals of lifestyle design / location independence, you get into greyhacking. Finding and tappng a niche, but in the creative-minded world instead of setting up some bullshit ‘affiliate marketing’ website where you create nothing and act fake towards people to try to get sales…
(Note: I’m sure there’s some great career-affiliate marketers out there, I’ve just had some bad experiences with them)
Addressing Affluent Armchair Anarchists
Now, before anyone criticizes me for supposedly recommending that “everyone should sell out,” just think about this for a second – how is working at some office space or pizza place (that you don’t REALLY care about) any less of a sellout move than making the same amount of money doing what you love?? …AND, in this process, freeing yourself up to live as passionately as you want to, and to be able to do the things you’ve always dreamed of doing, in your creative and social life?
Exactly. So as I see it, its not selling out; in fact, its actually closer to the opposite. LIf you want to use culture jamming to express your political ideas (which I would not for one second even try to talk you out of) consider how much more passionate you can be about it if you have TWICE as much time (or, probably more than twice the time) with which to do it in.
Also, before anyone says, “ok, what’s the fucking catch? StrangeFlow, what’s this carrot on a string? Are you going to tickle us with fanciful get-rich-quick schemes just so you can sell your new book?”
No! First of all, it’s not a get-rich-quick plan; it can take weeks or months to develop the kind of income I’m talking about! Secondly, it should be something that you care about, and are willing to put time into BECAUSE YOU ENJOY IT – and thirdly, no, I’m not telling you that you can get rich overnight. Some have, most won’t. If you work at it, though, and are smart about it and open-minded about it (i.e. not stubborn and close-minded about things that are new to you) then you can potentially make a decent livable amount of money with passive or semi-passive income. In some cases, you can make way more than just a ‘decent’ income, but I’m not claiming that’s what the goal should be. Obviously there are people who make millions online, but what I’m proposing is merely a respectable and livable monthly allowance that will potentially free you (or at least partially free you) from your fast food job.
I mean, unless you enjoy fast food.. Nothing wrong with that :)
So, if you can’t get passed this page, I recommend you put this book down now, because after this point, I’m no longer going to waste time defending the notion of WHY it should be important for you to free up your time that you were spending on things you hated, because it should be insanely obvious. And, just to reiterate, even if you think culture jamming should be left in the realm of free culture, and shouldn’t be mixed with money, I’m here to point out that unless you’re very privileged so as to not have to think about money (See: Armchair Anarchist) or live in a commune in the desert, you probably have to work to pay the rent – and, since you already have to pay bills, why not have them automatically paid on auto-pilot (funded by your own guerilla creativity) allowing you to do whatever interesting creative projects you’d be doing if you didn’t have a job to begin with. That’s really the point of this book.
Besides, anyone who thinks you’re a sellout UNLESS you get your paycheck at Taco Bell… is stupid.
So, fuck that.
So What’s the Main Meat of This Whole Thang?
Basically, one of the main points I want to get across in the book is to talk about how to make money by merging: # 1.) your creative talents, with: # 2.) a niche to be filled in the economy (preferably the online economy) to generate: # 3.) money.
(Note: I have long been a fan of Tim Ferriss, author of ‘the Four-Hour Workweek,’ and thought about calling my ebook, ‘the Three-Hour-Fifty-Nine-Minute Workweek,’ but… I don’t know… I’d REALLY be setting myself up for lawsuits.. Although, he seems like a pretty cool guy, and hopefully he’d have a sense of humor about it.. I’m sure he would… But, I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t put myself out there THAT much, eh?)
So, as far as CHAMPIONISM is concerned, what is the methodology? (or, what are they?)
I’ve come up with different methods, including Grey-Hacking (…or, finding the penny in between two nickels… It’s my favorite chapter of all, and I give lots and lots of actual examples that you I encourage you to steal and use for your own benefit!) as well as cultivating your own OCP (Obsessive Compulsive Productivity), learning to develop more motivation that anyone you know – and there’s also an expanded chapter about cracking the bullshit myth about patience vs. impatience (we’ve been defining it inaccurately for a long time)…
You’ll also learn why it can be very beneficial to develop a fear of mediocrity, and why, “Fuck Settling!” should be your mantra. I also wrote a meaty chapter (which I’m thinking of changing the name of..?) but right now it’s called, “One Big Fuckpile of Creative Income Solutions,” which is, basically, a comprehensive list of capital-generating creative avenues.
There are also several chapters about getting your mind in the right direction, as far as thinking BIG, becoming as motivated as possible, and learning to distance yourself from negative energy-stealers.
So, stay tuned for an awesome new ebook. It’s almost finished, and I’m very excited about it! Stay tuned!
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