Long overdue post - Why do I invest?

If any of you have grown weary of my rather terse/cryptic posts as of late, (and rather infrequent) then I must apologize.  The demands/stress of being a mostly under-employed sole-provider for my small family leaves me drained.  Not from my volume of work mind you, but the stress of having to produce monthly income when there is none to be had.

Good things to come! - photo credit : ME!!!

The crux of it is thus: why do I invest?  Because I have no other options.  The markets in which my skills are best are saturated with talent for few jobs.  One of my formerly very profitable jobs has now been nearly eliminated thanks to the evolution of technology.  Where once I had 50-75 gigs a year, I now have 3-4.  The music side of things is also subject to economic factors.  Corporate sponsorship are down, so the ensembles I perform with cut positions to reduce expenses and thus I'm out in the cold.  My photography, the last and most recent addition to my skill-set (started 12 years ago now) is finally starting to pick up a bit.  But the jobs are still too few and far between.

Unfortunately for my stress level, my capitalization (the amount of money I can push around) is too small to just sit back and live my life.  I have to watch, watch, watch, research, hunt, dig, gather, sweat, worry, fume, scream, angrily shake my fist, yell, and a variety of other unpleasantries that I won't mention here.

The results?  After months and months of negative cash flow vs. expenses my net worth is still climbing, and my leverage (amount of money I borrow to invest) is declining.  There were a couple bumps in the road due to a combination of market forces and 3 months in a row with $0.00 income.

So where do I stand now?  I'm at one of those bumps, but things are loosely holding even in light of my disastrous working income.

Stay hungry my friends!