Author: The Magpie at Midnight

The secret to passive income? It’s not that passive

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For a while now I’ve been looking at alternative ways to earn money. I have a good ‘day job’, in which I think the work I do is worthwhile and important. But it’s stressful and I’ve been having anxiety that is increasingly difficult to deal with. I wanted to find a way to ‘buy back’ a day a week for my self so I could go a bit part time. I was intrigued by this idea of ‘passive income’ as the name suggests that you can earn money by not doing much. That sounded pretty great, but I wasn’t convinced it was a real thing. So I started doing some research and discovered a whole industry composed of people doing inspirational things. Who’d knew? You are just one Google search away from a world of blog posts, kindle books and YouTube videos describing all the ways in which you can earn passive income. And there are loads, but there are catches to all of them;

Owning things that make you money – so owning stock or shares in companies that pay you a dividend on a regular basis, or property that you can rent out. So technically you don’t do a huge amount for that money. But here’s the thing, unless you happen to have already been born into wealth, have recently inherited money, or have been lucky enough to win a substantial sum of money you need to work pretty hard up front to get accumulate the kind of capital to make this work. You need to invest quite a bit for the dividends to significantly contribute to your income stream. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, but it’s not that passive, it’s a big investment of time and money.

Lending other people money – so making loans to people through peer to peer lending and earning interest on the loans. Again you don’t do much but ditto the above regarding the money you need to invest up front.

Advertising revenue – so if you write a blog or own a website (that people like visiting) you can then earn money by selling adverting space there. So while you don’t create the adverts or advertised products, you probably need to work quite hard to create a popular enough site to create an environment that would be attractive to online advertisers.

Writing e-books, creating online videos, online courses – lots of work here. Creating quality content takes time and effort, if you already have a day job this could be tricky.

Licences for creative content – so if you take good photos or create art of some kind you can sell this to people through online channels. It may be enjoyable, but creative works can involve, well a lot of work

Running an online business, selling things through online platforms – you may do it from your bed in you pyjamas. It’s still work.

So there seem to be lots of ‘passive’ ways of earning money, but to me most of them look more like freelancing or working for yourself. I think all of these things are great, and worth doing. With the advent of crowdfunding approaches to investing (e.g Zopa, property partner) it’s possible to start really small and build up over time. But the big secret? It’s not that passive. Folks, you just don’t get money for nothing.

Mona Hatoum at Tate Modern

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I’m on leave at the moment and have just been to see the Mona Hatoum exhibition at the Tate Modern. I’m not really into doing review pieces, but I do like to comment where I have found things to be thought provoking, or to inspire an emotional reaction. I would say that this existing has done both for me today.

I have two main impressions of the exhibition;

First is her use of materials – nothing is off limits here. She uses metals in the forms of cages and barbed wire, electrical cables and sheet metal. She uses cloth, weaving, embroidery and stick work. Photography, film and video. Documentation of performance pieces. Glass.


Second, for me the dominant emotion provoked by this exhibition was one of disorientation. The way that she combines materials is active in creating this feeling. Loud sound scapes accompany cages and electric lights, or the crackle of electricity feeding a neon globe. A closer look at a piece of very delicate stitching will reveal the thread to be made of human hair. Bulbous glossy red glass presses against the black cast iron bars of yet more cages. Beautiful coloured glass moulded into the shape of a hand grenade. The scale of pieces ranges from the tiny and the delicate through to the grand and the solid.

I was particularly affected by an installation early in the exhibition in which a lightbulb is suspended in a room full of what look like a three sided wall of battery cages. The light slips up and down the height of the room and the viewer, who stands on the outside of the cages, watches the shadows move across the gallery walls. Stand for a few moments and the walls themselves seem to move.

Before seeing this exhibition I had not really seen any of Mona Hatoum’s work. Mona Hatoum’s was a visitor to Britain in 1975 when was broke out in her Lebanon, her home country. She settled in Britain and many of her works relate to conflict. Seeing decades of the work together in one place gave me a strong sense of both dislocation and defiance. I was slightly frustrated in some parts of the gallery, where guide ropes were drawn at a distance from the works that made it difficult to see the details. This was particularly the case for some of the delicate textile pieces. However in combination the works, are powerful and emotionally affecting. Definitely worth a look.

The Magpie at Midnight

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Over the last few months I’ve been doing a lot more creative ‘stuff’ and have at the same time been pondering what it is I actually do. What would I describe my stuff as? What would I describe my self, as a creative type, as? My life has taken a pretty academic path up until now, so these questions caused me more difficulties that I would have expected. I come from a family full of creative people so in suddenly cranking up my own creative output in the context of all these people who have worked so hard at it for so long, I felt I may be in for a visit from the fraud police.

I finally came to rest on the idea of collage. I think that’s pretty much what I do – I bring together shiny things and ideas, bits of paper, both specially sourced from art suppliers and recycled, bits of wool and cloth, old jewellery and copper wire to create things. I’ve been dabbling with numerous ways of doing things without ever feeling I could say I have mastery over any of them, to create things that I really end up liking. Knitting, crochet, Decopage, drawing, animation, writing and storytelling have all been eye openers for me, and greatly enriched my practice from the place at which I started, which was cutting. In the headers for this blog there is a photo of a blanket I made for my sister. It took my almost 7 years, on and off, to finish, with very limited knitting and crochet skills, but it was pretty satisfying to hand over the final product, with all its imperfections.

I started this blog with the idea of creating a kind of online collage, a place for late night ramblings, ideas and new adventures in making all collected together. I hope that anyone reading will find something to enjoy.