Every day brings a unique set of problems. Today I find out how unhappy my boyfriend is at his job and once again I am reminded that I need to greatly increase my income so as to be less of a burden to him especially if he suddenly loses his job. And I need to have this income in place before something drastic happens because like most people, I don't function well when I am desperate. One thing I'm considering is writing articles for http://www.Triond.com.  Have any of you had any success with that? The other thing I should do is put all my crafts in storage so I can start teaching belly dancing in my living room again. It's inconvenient to teach out of my home, but teaching at studios has been way too expensive. Plus I'm at the mercy of their scheduling as they put all their money making classes first and I won't be successful getting students for a 10 AM or 2:30 AM class.

I feel like I keep trying to earn money in ways that used to work for me but don't any more. Yet I'm not really coming up with new and better options.

Working at Michael's was an absolute disaster on every level. So retail is out. The scheduling had me jumping through hoops every day with a one day notice as to when they expected me to show up again.

I do have some gigs lined up at company picnics, but I need to get ten times that many to really make this viable.

I kind of laugh at the A.A.R.P. idea of retirement at 50.  I'm almost 50 and I can't see ever being able to retire. How do you retire from self-employment anyway?