The Problem Of Being An Organ Grinder…

The problem with being an organ grinder is that the monkey will dance only while the music plays.  So to make the monkey dance you need to be there to turn the handle round and round, over and over again.  You turn, music plays, monkey dances.

As an organ grinder, everyday you get up early in the morning.  Feed the monkey a date, shine the organ, and head to the streets.  You drudge along and push the organ to your allotted spot on the corner – the monkey still tired, sleeps on your shoulder.

At 7:30 you start.  Put the monkey on the organ, place the jar in the curb and step behind your organ.  Seeing the first group of people come around the corner you place your hand on the handle, heavy breath, sign, and spin.  For the next 8 hours the monkey will dance and you will spin the handle.  All day you hear the same melody round and round interrupted only by the sound of quarters clinking as they fall into the jar.

The monkey needs you to be there.  Without you spinning the handle there is no music, without music the monkey does not dance, without a dancing monkey nobody puts money into the jar.

The Problem Of Being An Employee…

The problem with being an employees is that your boss needs to see you dance.  5 days a week 8 hours a day you need to dance in front of your boss.  Your boss only pays if he sees you at the office performing the employee dance.

7:30 you arrive at the office and the music starts.  “Good morning boss”, “Good morning employee”.  You hang your coat in the cloak room, say hi to employee2.  Turn on your computer, go to lunch room, get coffee mug with company logo, pour coffee in cup, say hello to employee3, walk back to desk, check your email, the phone rings, you click some keys on the keyboard, 8 hours to go.  Your boss needs to see you dance for 8 hours a day.

If your boss sees you dancing for a month then at the end of the month he will throw money into your jar.

The major drawback of being an employee is that you only get paid while you are at work.  You only get paid if your boss sees you in the office.  As soon as you leave the office the money stops – you are off the clock.

To get money, you need to be in front of your boss going through the motions of an employee.  It doesn’t matter if you are adding value or not, only that you are there.  As long as you are spinning the handle the monkey dances.

This is a huge waste of your time.  The work that you accomplish in a day could be done in a couple of hours.  You are smart, you know what you are doing, you know the most efficient way to do your job – you could have everything done before noon.  But that does not matter.  You have to be there all day.

Also being an employee means that throughout the working day, regardless of what you are doing, you get paid the same amount.  One hour you are designing a product that will make the company 1000’s of dollars in revenue – you get paid $15.25 for that hour.  The next hour you are painfully relieving yourself from last night’s spicy chili dogs – you get paid $15.25 for that hour.

As an employee there is no way to value your time.  Each hour has the same value to you, every hour you get paid the same amount.  So the obvious thing to do as an employee is to try to do the least amount possible – the amount just above the point of being fired.  And why not?  Why work hard, why try to get things done efficiently, properly and quickly?  Regardless of how it is done you get paid.  Why get it done early?  You have to do the office waltz till 5pm regardless if you are done or not.

Being an employee sucks all creativity, productivity and incentive out of you while while you are there – and when you are not there you do not get paid.

Websites Are the Perfect Dancing Monkeys

In one hour I have to be at work.  The next 9 hours will be a complete waste of time.  So, to cheer myself up I will remind myself of the benefits of having a website:

• Websites work all the time.  You do not need to be there.  You can be clipping your toes, tormenting the cat, or wondering the street aimlessly – does not matter what you do – the website will be working.  You do not have to be always spinning the organ’s handle to make the music play.
• Working on your website you become a productive and optimized superhuman.  You do not look like you are working – You are working.  It is not a dance.  You are actually trying to get the most done in the least amount of time.  And there is a direct relationship between the quality of work and the amount you get paid.  The better your product the more you earn.
• As an employee you only get paid one time for your effort.  If you write a great report you will get paid the hours that where spent writing the report.  Even if that report is used by the company for years after you leave – you still just get paid one time.  But for a website the webpage you write keeps paying over and over again – potentially forever.  You only need to write it once.  Online it will be generating revenue for you 24 hours a days, every day, for years.

Websites are dancing monkeys that never stop and you do not need to always be there turning a handle round and round for it to dance.

These words are written in hesitation, almost agony.  For more then a month I have not had to think about this website.  It was a month of total bliss.  My mind was clean.  I ignored my traffic stats, I did not read other blogs, I did not add new content.  It was back to the good old days – before I had this website.  My mind was free to roam about anything and everything.

Time was my own.  Reading,  I was able to concentrate on what the donkey was saying to the turtle.  When I had a shower I was able to sing.  I ate slow and chewed all my food.  No rush and nothing pressing me.  No pressure to be at the computer doing something to the website.

I did not care about this website or about the online world.  It was great; but like the courting phase of a relationship, it must come to a end.  The fun stops and work begins – kisses and hugs become obligations and commitments.

So here I am, back at it.  Writing about the website.  Oh God, the agony.  With these words come all the attachments:  HTML, visitors, traffic, Adsense, comments, backups and that is just the technical aspect.  There is also the physiological damage – mental strain, sense of failure,  syphilis pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back again,  a slave to the website.  Back at it, back to having the website as a constant companion while I walk the streets, take a shower and sip my coffee.

Why do this?  Why put one self through it?  What is it all for?  The same reason destitute and repressed people left their homes, traveled the stormy seas, and landed on the beaches of the unknown called America.   A dream.  I do it in pursuit of a dream.  Pilgrims came to America to avoid suppression and start a new life on their own terms.  This website is in pursuit of a dream of living on my own terms.  To be free from the terms of my employee contract.  To be free from my 1 hour lunch break.  To be free from my boss’s mood swings.  Free to call time my own.  I have a dream.

Lots of people died on the journey to America.  And a lot more when they got there.  In their case failure turned the dream chaser to fertilizer.  Fortunately for me the worst that can happen is I spend a lot of time and money and end up with 20 megabytes of useless HTML.

I have spent a year on this website.  In terms of making money it was a complete waste.  I could of made a lot more with a lemonade stand setup beside a water fountain.  During the year I spent a lot of time thinking about the website – mental time that I will never get back.  Was it worth it?  Maybe if I spent that time thinking about something else, like building a perpetual motion machine, I would be a lot better off now.

But that was last year.  Who knows if it was for the best.  But I am not a crazed nut that pursues an impossible dream of turning dung into gold.  One more year is all that I will allow this website to suck out of me.  If nothing drastic happens within a year I will release myself from its grasp and be free to sing in the shower again.