It's a lawnmowing guy - classic 'gray market.'

There are a couple of amusing things about this situation.

On my ad, I made it clear that I was totally clueless and that I wanted to gain experience. I said the only experience I had was doing the exercises in the book and doing my own bookkeeping at home for practice, but no experience in a business environment. I wanted people to know that I am NOT going to be able to do high-level scary stuff. I can just do low-level simple things.

So, I actually am not only willing to work FOR FREE, but also, I would PAY HIM for the service of ALLOWING me to practice real-world bookkeeping in a business environment. It's like paying for piano lessons. I'm paying someone to give me a chance to learn something. I would also pay him for the very valuable service of taking me seriously as a competent, intelligent human being. 'Taking me seriously' is a very valuable, therapeutic service for someone to perform.

The other funny thing about this is, actually, it's a lawnmowing service. That is the CLASSIC 'gray market' scenario. When I first learned the phrase 'gray market' while reading FSK, he was talking about lawnmowing as a typical gray market activity. It's funny because I don't really believe in lawnmowing. I think lawnmowing is a pointless waste of time and energy and I think we should all have our own cows grazing in our yards and we should milk the cows every day and have fresh raw milk, instead of mowing the lawn. (Rick doesn't like cows. Somewhere on his pages he said he and his wife were attacked by wild cows. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be, if you were miles and miles from anywhere and couldn't get help if you were injured. I'm serious when I said I clicked all the way through facebook. He said the only good cow is a dead cow or a cow surrounded by natural predators.)

I can still believe that lawnmowing is pointless, even though I don't believe in peak oil, and I'm not opposed to the wasting of gasoline as such. It's still wasteful. Those yards are HUGE and they put space between all the people and they're all bare and empty, no trees, and nobody ever goes out and PLAYS in the yard - you don't see the lawn covered with children running around doing stuff. The lawns just SIT THERE. And it takes so much time to mow them. Nobody is even USING all that grass! And they put PESTICIDES and HERBICIDES and FERTILIZERS on it to make it perfect and weedless. (mental note: I might possibly be exposed to herbicides while going and doing the books at this place wherever it is.)

So I had to sort of 'dis' or 'neg' the idea of lawnmowing... but guess what, I really, really NEED to gain experience and be respected and be taken seriously as a competent person. My real feeling is that I don't care AT ALL that it's a lawnmowing job. My actual emotions aren't even worried about that at all. I don't care who it is. I don't care what it is. I don't care what they're doing as long as they're not killing people. It's a human out there, an entrepreneur, someone who decided to make money by doing something that large numbers of people want, and he wants a helper, someone really cheap, and he's willing to give me 'bookkeeping lessons.'

I have wondered many times about starting my own business, and always, I have ethical concerns. No matter what business I imagined starting, I was always asking whether it was ethical to do that. No matter what I thought of, there was always SOMETHING I disapproved of, SOMETHING I objected to. For instance, I believe in eating meat. But I DO NOT believe in treating the animals the way they are treated at the factory farms. I am working for McDonald's. They are the king of the factory farm phenomenon. And that is my employer.

Sometimes my ethical questions were more of a feeling that it's a 'waste of time' or 'pointless' to do something. It's not really bad or evil, it's just that you could be doing far more important and worthwhile things instead. Lawnmowing is kind of in that category.

There were always infinity questions that I would ask when I imagined starting my own business.

It was a couple years ago when I started to look into bookkeeping that I felt like it was *my* thing to do. Money is universal. Money is everywhere. No matter where you go, someone is trying to make a profit on something, and they might need help keeping track of their money. I like it that this service is universally needed. And I can do something so simple as helping Grandma balance her checkbook and reconcile her bank statements. I don't mind.

So, I'll call this guy later today and see what it's about.