been reading your blog for quite some years now. avid reader of your entries, avid admirer of your lifestyle and view on things.

thank you for posting this entry. i think i’ve been more than influenced by your blog (and other similar creative souls out there) and am now pondering a career change (from corporate to something more creative). i don’t know yet when i’m going to make the leap (or skip), but i know what’s really making me scared about the whole thing are the finances. this blog entry is another input to be aware of when following a more creative, unconventional path. so thank you for sharing this with me and your other readers :o)

That being said, I have had my own share of funny notions about money. When I was growing up, I had a very negative view of business and business people. I wanted nothing to do with “business money.”
My belief, the way it looked to me, was that business is all about stepping on others to get what you want - greed for money being the order of the day.

You see, at that time it never occurred to me that maybe my view was colored by seeing only a few particular examples. It certainly never, ever occurred to me that I would one day set out to have a business of my own, much less strive to be a social entrepreneur.

So… what’s changed since those days?

Inevitably, I found myself facing this quandary: how in the world was I going to accomplish goals about which I felt so much passion, which required funding… if I didn’t have any money?

Well, the issue was not that I did not understand the concept of “making” or “earning” an income. The issue was my relationship to money. How would I reconcile the very real, down to earth, need to make an income with my view that money was “bad”?

In time, I came to have this understanding of the role of money in my life: the purpose of money is that it provides freedom of time.

So, I have come to look at my income from the standpoint of how it will afford me the freedom of time to do what I want for myself, freedom of time to do for others, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.

‘Nuff said.

Tangent over.

It�s amazing how I imagined your lifestyle to be and the truth of it, which in fact is just so wonderful - you seem so happy.

I realise that it is the passion and happiness in doing my work that really makes me happy.

Emma.