The Journey

Come along on my journey from 0 to 100% passive income. I'm starting the journey here and writing about every step of the way. Learn about the steps I'm taking, the tools I'm using, and the products I'm building to take my time back from employers and fire work! I'll write posts about the life of a full time developer, professional growth, life and work balance, and how to live your dreams outside of work. There will be posts on personal finance, startups and small business. Finally we'll cover games and game development.

Photo by Andrew Neel

Welcome fellow travellers. Call me riskpeep. I'm starting a journey and I'd like you to come along. I intend to transition from 0% to 100% passive income and to share the ups and downs, the hows and the whys with you!

What are we doing here?

This is a blog about a journey. A journey from full time paid work for someone else, to fully independent, working when, where and most importantly, on what interests me. Today, as I write this, I'm employed at a company that builds and sells software products to governments and large business. I love the job and our space, but the time commitment...not so much. More importantly, there are problem spaces I'd like to pursue professionally that my current job does not enable. It is time to fire work and live a balanced life with my family.

My goal here is to share the journey with you and to provide you with ALL of the knowledge to follow along if you desire. We'll dive deep to cover the thinking, decisions, and details with step-by-step instructions to follow along.

Along the way, I'll also cover other things I'm passionate enough to write about. I'm a software engineer, so there will be posts about the life of a full time developer, professional growth, life and work balance, and how to live your dreams outside of work. There will be posts on personal finance, startups and small business. Finally we'll cover games and game development.

I'll also be sharing trip reports that show how much we've spent and earned on the journey and how close we are to my goal of firing work.

Who am I and why should you care?

I'm a software engineer who has been doing this long enough to know that I'm most happy when I'm able to pursue value in life where I see it, not where my employer directs me. I've seen just about every part of the business of selling software from pure developer to engineering manager, chief technology officer and founder. I've worked for small businesses, and fortune 500 companies. I've founded (with friends) and sold a startup while keeping all those same friends. I still work for a living, but I can see my way to not having to do so. This blog is about taking the step away from selling my time to offering the world value on my own terms and of my own vision and creation.

How am I going to do it?

I'm going to break the problem down and solve each of the parts incrementally. This is not FIRE. This process won't be working 'both sides of the problem' to get to the middle. I'm not aiming for 'no work,' but rather 'no work on a schedule,' or 'work on my own schedule.' I intend to build multiple revenue streams that collectively bring in enough revenue to achieve my goal. Examples include an online journal of sorts (because we're going to need content and I've promised to share the process), a blog (you're looking at it) that uses ad revenue, and/or affiliate marketing, software product(s) that solve interesting business problems, and games that are just fun. Each one of these projects will build on the last (or source content from them). Each one will help me to develop the tools, skills, and relationships to move to the next one. In the next posts we'll dive into these topics in more detail and go over the plan, how we'll build the blog, and the kinds of software I'm thinking about.

Lets get going!