The Path To Financial Independence: An Odyssey Pt. 1 (read.cash)

The little yellow truck

Dream big or go home.

This is one of those motivational sayings we have all heard at least once, if not many times in our lives. And it is one that has created many tales of riches and success for a great many people as well. You start with the dream, and then you have to do something with it. And if you do, sometimes you can actually realize it.

When I was thirteen years old I remember riding on my bike around the neighborhood where I lived when I came upon a truck for sale. I am not exactly sure why it caught my eye at the time. But it just did.

It was a yellow Chevy Stepside, and the sign on the window said, "$3995."

Of course, I did not have that kind of money. Heck, even if I did, I was not old enough to even drive it away. It would have to sit in the driveway for at least two more years before I could even get behind the wheel.

But I wanted that truck. And badly. And unfortunately, while in my fantasy world I was a business tycoon with piles of newspaper money lying around, it wasn't going to be able to be converted into genuine money anytime soon.

I needed a plan. I needed to find a way to get that $3995 into my pocket so I could hand it over to the seller and drive that truck away.

Well, to have my mom drive it away. But you understand.

Backing up a little bit

I have always had a passion for writing, at least since I was eight years old. In fact, of all of the dreams I ever had this was the one dream that consumed me the most. It was the one thing, beyond even masses of money, that I wanted more than anything.

I wanted to be an author.

Of course, I did understand that if I could not just be an author, but a good one, that there would probably be a lot of money to be made in any event. But it was not the primary source of my passion to write.

I remember spending quite a lot of time working my craft. I carried around spiral notebooks, and penned by hand every written word. These were novels, and my chosen genre was horror stories. I am not sure why, even at eight, these kinds of stories were the ones I chose to write. It was, for me, just what I naturally gravitated toward.

And so I penned tales like The Chrome Coffin, The Yarner's Society, Seagull's Habitues, and The Petrie House.

None of them were worth publishing, of course. But many of those first writings never are. Like anything in life, it takes practice to hone your craft into something worthwhile.

Back then I wrote under my own name. But somewhere along the line I decided that my own name was kind of boring for an author, especially one who writes tales of terror and paranormal activity, monsters and ghouls and demons.

Eventually I wrote as R.P. Kane, and Leonard Knath. Don't ask me where or how I came up with these pseudonyms. Like the stories we write and the characters who live in them, they just sort of appear.

One name became a favorite for whatever reason, and it became my name. The one I picked to be the one. But the devil in me won't let me share it. Forgive me. I have my reasons.

Back to the little yellow truck

So, how was I going to get that little yellow truck I wanted so badly? Why, I could just write a book, or a couple short stories and cash in and presto. That little yellow truck could be mine.

But even at thirteen, having published nothing, and having up to that time never written anything anyone would want to bother publishing, this was not going to be a solution.

I needed something else. And unfortunately, at the same time that I was not old enough to drive that truck, I was also not old enough to get a job.

Or could I?

I am not sure how I came up with the idea. This was a long time ago. But not that far from my house was an old farmer named Homer who had some cows, pigs, and chickens. And I thought perhaps I could go to him and see if he needed some help around the farm.

So, I went there and knocked on his door, and the old man answered.

"How can I help you?" Homer asked.

"I was curious to know if you may need some help on your farm. I have no experience, but I can learn," I told him with an eager smile.

I am sure that I did not have such a polished pitch at the time. But it did go something like that.

We went back and forth a bit. He told me a few things about the hard work involved, and said he might be interested. He told me he was not as able as he once was, and it sure would be nice to have a little bit of help tending to the farm.

But there was a big caveat.

"Unfortunately I am a small farm, and I do not have any money to pay you," Homer informed me. My eager smile furled into a bit of a frown, but I tried not to make it too obvious. I am not sure if I succeeded or not. Perhaps he saw it, and perhaps he didn't. I have no way of knowing for sure.

"I can offer something to you, though," Homer said. "I have a pumpkin patch, and I always get more pumpkins than I can use or sell. I can pay you in pumpkins."

This was a criminy cripes moment, even though I had never used that phrase before in my life.

Pumpkins? What in the world am I going to do with pumpkins? And I can no more pay for that little yellow truck with pumpkins any more than I can pay for it with my newspaper fortune!

The conclusion to this part of the story

Needless to say, I turned down the offer. Perhaps I could have dreamed big even then and worked out a plan for those pumpkins and found a way to turn them into cold hard cash.

But it seemed more of a daunting task than it would be worth in the end.

So, that was it. I could not work. I was not going to be able to pump out a quick bestselling novel. I was kaput. Out of the game. Done for. Sans a yellow truck. Finished.

I eventually moved on, and while I never completely forgot about that little yellow truck, it was yet another small lesson in life that in hindsight was very valuable.

Making money is hard. And sometimes even if you want things badly in life, sometimes you just have to accept that today is not the day to have them. But it does not end the dream. It simply becomes a reason to try harder, to work out the details better, and find your path to making them come true.

...to be continued

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