Unfortunately the world is a cruel place, and this guy wants freedom from it. I know, I took the 3-4 months off after quitting a job to do my own thing. I did earn a few dollars but nothing like what a business was willing to pay for my skills.
We'd all like to be free to do what we want to do, but in all honesty only a fraction of 1% ever get to. And even those people serve a master. Did I ever find the answer, no. I think what its going to take is a huge leap in what we call work.
People want some social proof that your community is worth joining. In other words, people like to follow the herd. The fact that you haven't launched tells me there really isn't a substantial community yet. Focus on a private launch of your closest friends or people you know are passionate about your topic. Then, allow those members to invite the next group through an invite system before opening it up to the public. This is how I built fotoblur.com to 60K members.
A few questions this raises for me. If the government does something illegal who is held accountable? Also, where does this leave Snowden? He essentially blew the whistle on a program finally deemed illegal.
What if you decided to wear noise canceling headphones to keep you in the flow of work? Which I actually think listening to music does. Your boss sounds like a dick-tator or you're working in some government office in communist China. Leave now.
I see a number of posts saying that you're probably not experienced or qualified enough to hold these other positions. However, I don't think the VP of Eng, Dev Mgr, or OPS Mgr could do what you do...essentially help start and build a company from day one.
Those skills you've developed don't have much value at your current company any longer. They are most likely keeping you around for historical value and once the systems you built get replaced its over pretty quick. Take those skills elsewhere and brand yourself as someone who takes a company from 2 to n employees.
Not everyone has your skill set so learn how to market them. I'm on my second company where I was an early hire. I learned that you're way more valuable in the beginning then you are at the end. Eventually I got pushed out by management types because I held on to the notion that I helped build this company and deserved something for it. Don't wait too long to realize it.
I skip breakfast everyday for the last 6 months and these were my results. Combined with weight training, I got down to 12% bf and lost 15 lbs while still gaining additional muscle mass. Skipping breakfast, keeping my eating window within an 8 hour period each day, while maintaining a 2000-3000 calorie/day consumption seemed to do the trick for me.
http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html
First I'm the founder of Fotoblur.com, a creative photo community. I just went to check out the site. What I'm concerned with is when I search for fotoblur (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fotoblur), and go to images, it looks like you've slurped the image source and not the source page the image comes from. You're also providing a link to download the image. Don't you have any thoughts for user's copyrights or even content providers of which you've swiped content from? Boooo.
Notice how the questioner seems to have someone else's actions to blame for the problems. This is often a narrow way of thinking and can be a deception in ones own view of the world. What I like most about Mike's responses are that he doesn't blame anyone, per se, but understands that these problems are best described by analyzing the current environment in which they become evident.
Who could blame colleges for raising tuition when the current funding environment begged them too? Who could blame people for not wanting to work shit jobs in the heat but instead go to college and work at jobs that require instead a skilled intellect, pay more, and are more comfortable? And why shouldn't Mike talk about people who work hard, dirty jobs when a show about them made him famous?