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My Challenge

My name is Jason Williams. This is my real life story in the making about my need to earn enough cash online to replace the income of my current engineering job that will terminate at the end of this August 2010. I have set up a count down timer ( displayed immediately to the right  ) to remind me of this fact on the days I don’t feel so motivated to get things done.

This is a true story without an ending. However, it will end in one of two ways by the end of August; either my family and I will be enjoying our new life supported by the income we earn online from blogging or you will find us at the local soup line and shelter. This is an all or nothing type of deal! This is my mountain to climb and I will reach the top or you will find my body laid to rest somewhere on the mountain side. Needless to say, I am more than motivated to achieve this challenge as described below…..

My Story

I remembered this quote (by character Zuko) from our favorite family cartoon, “Avatar, The Last Airbender” who apparently has struggled most of his life too. In this quote, Zuko has finally captured his enemy the Avatar but due to a raging blizzard he can’t take him back to his village as a prisoner and restore his honor with his Father.

I finally have you. But I can’t get you home because of this blizzard. There’s always something. Not that you would understand. You’re like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She’s a firebending prodigy and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don’t need luck though. I don’t want it. I’ve always had to struggle and fight and that’s made me strong. It’s made me who I am.-Prince Zuko, Avatar the Last Airbender

The last two lines definitely sums up my life.

I am faced with some unpleasant financial disruptions and circumstances that I must deal with by end of August 2010. At that time, my current work contract will be up with no chance for renewal. I currently work as an engineer in silicon valley. Due to the all the layoffs, finding a new job here will be tough and something I am not looking forward to.

Looking for a job is a pain in the… well, you know what I mean. The countless hours of critiquing your resume and cover letter, submitting tons of resumes online just to only get smacked in the face with the great hand of deafening silence as you wait, wait, and wait for the phone to ring or an email to show up in your in box.

Then if you are lucky, you go through the circus act of jumping through hoop after hoop with numerous rounds of phone interviews with the faint possibility of making it into the next round: face to face interviews. Here is the part where they ask you a bunch of impossible questions that they can’t even answer without their cheat sheet. Just a bunch of hypocritical non-sense. And all for what? The opportunity to be told what to do for 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week, roughly  260 weeks/year!

I rather save myself all that drama/time and focus my efforts on making a successful online blogging career. I realize that this path has inherent risk and uncertainty. Well guess what? So does looking for a job! There’s certainly no such thing called job security any more….I think he officially changed his name to “Job Insecurity” some time ago. I like the idea of working for myself and I love to write. Besides there is no time like the present to go for your dreams.

I have a beautiful wife and 3 wonderful boys, with the youngest being 3 years old and oldest being 13. I am really fortunate to have such a wonderful family. They love me unconditionally and are very supportive. My boys are smart, love sports, and make me laugh all the time. My wife is drop dead gorgeous, very loving, and very smart. Her family was very opposed to her being with me and put up a fight like you wouldn’t believe to stop us from being together. Lot’s of painful memories there I would love to forget but the emotional scars run very deep. If we fell on hard times, we could never go back to them for support. I am sure her father would love to put his boot on my neck.

I can’t turn to my family either. They got enough troubles of their own. I come from a very poor family where some nights the only thing we had to eat was a pot of water boiling on the stove. I remember as a young boy hearing my Mom crying behind closed doors in her room because of tough times like that. A few times she even cried openly. I would hold her hand and try to let her know that everything would be alright. My mother always worked about 2-3 jobs just to pay the rent, put clothes on our back, and food in our mouths. She had to work like a maniac because My Dad….I mean my biological father, ran out on us around the time I was born.

Being the only male in the house and the youngest of three, I tried to fill his shoes as soon as I could. The most important lesson I learned from my father was to NEVER run out on your family or cheat on your wife. Either of which can leave behind a hole the size of Jupiter in the hearts and  lives of those you leave behind. For the next 22 years I would focus all my anger and frustration on him, for not being there for us and putting my Mom and us through a living hell.

My Mom never spoke bad of him though….She never said much of anything about him. For me, she did not have too. I could tell that something must have went awful wrong by her silence and just looking through our family photo book. Our photo album has lots of pictures of my Mom, Father, and older sisters taken before I was born. I mean, there were lots of them. My father must have kept some sort of camera in his pocket or something.

Then comes the year when I was born. And there is nothing…. nothing at all. Not even one baby picture of me! Til this date, I have never seen a picture of me as a baby. I was the first grandson, the only boy in our house, and there is not one picture of me? That’s because around that time, there were much bigger stories taking place than my humble little birth. That’s okay though…l think we ought to close the book on this chapter and move along before I start to lose my cool.

I have been trying to help my Mom out since the age of 11, which is when I got my first job cutting grass. A friend of mind traded his radio in for a broken down lawn mower that had a pretty good oil leak ( which we discovered when it was all too late ). He asked me to partner with him and we would split the profit 50/50. It worked out well for a little while until the motor popped because it ran out of oil. After turning 16 I worked any type of honest job I could find from washing windows, pulling weeds, flipping burgers, to washing dishes all night long.

Much has changed since my childhood. I became the first to graduate from college in my family with my B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and eventually went on to earn my Masters in Computer Science. I have made a nice living for a period of years only now to come full circle and be faced with the real prospect of living in poverty yet again.

It would break my heart to see my wife and 3 boys homeless or begging for bread. Avoiding this scenario is the real source of my motivation for working 20 hour days for the next 3 months in order to get it all done….and believe you me…for them…. I will get it ALL DONE!

My Blog Quest

I have started the blog quest to mostly document my experiences with trying to replace my earned income from my job with making money online. I will share all the information I learn along the way for anyone else out there on a similar quest. I have less than 3.5 2.5 months to get it done! Some people say this quest is impossible. And I say, it’s impossible for me to see my wife and boys standing in bread line and living in one of the tent cities now becoming popular in California. This would break my heart into about 10 million pieces and would be more than I could bare to watch.

So this is my blog quest to make money online which I will do by blogging for dollars, a.k.a, blogging for cash to feed myself and family. The next few months, will be some of the most intense days of my life, as I will be virtually blogging for the fate and survival of myself and young family. I would be kidding you and myself I were to claim that I am not worried about our future, because I am. I would be equally not truthful if I said that I wasn’t afraid, because I am. But what can I do? Let my fear restrict and paralyze me?

No, I have to work through it and accomplish my quest. I can not waste another day, hour, second, or moment. Each moment I must be focused and on purpose. As this quest will take all I got to get it done. It will be an exciting journey of ups and downs….progress and set backs. I have to be prepared mentally to endure whatever comes my way over the next few months. I am excited by the possibilities and the type of life we will have once I complete my quest. I will have the freedom to do what I want and when I want. Which is mostly to provide a quality life style for my family and be there for them.

My Journal

I have set up a category called, “My Journal” to talk about the story behind the blog quest. In my journal entries, I will write about how I am doing, what I am feeling, etc. I will try to make an entry everyday as much as I can and leave comments open for those who want to ask me questions or interact with me. Each journal entry will be titled by the number of the entry, instead of by dates or arbitrary title names. That way if I make multiple entries on the same day it will be easy to keep track of the order of the entries.

How To Be A Part Of My Blog Quest?

1) If you would like to join me on my quest, then please subscribe to my RSS Feed or email notifications to stay current on all the latest and greatest happenings with my blog quest. For my super blogging tips, jump onto my FREE Newsletter ( upper righthand corner of every page ).

2) Please share any post you like on theBlogQuest.com with any of the popular networking sites like FaceBook, Digg, Google Buzz, Twitter, etc. That would certainly help out a lot.

3) Leave me a comment. I read every comment and message sent to me. I look forward to corresponding with you too. If I can ever give you a hand……just let me know.

4) Link to theBlogQuest.com to help get the word out.

Welcome aboard. Let the quest begin!