Amidst the current market doom and gloom people (including friends of mine) are losing their jobs and getting stressed out pretty badly. The company I work for is no exception. I work in the oil & gas industry engineering piping systems for refineries that make gasoline.

Have you noticed the gas prices lately? Here in Canada, over $1.45/liter in the summer and now around $0.72/liter. Some people jump up and down for that change and I can understand it to some degree. For those not directly employed by the industry, they are saving money but check this out…

My city is FULL of refineries. A huge number of families here are employed directly or indirectly by one of the major oil companies and when the price of gas falls sharply the plants do not have as much money in their budgets to do maintenance and improvements to their refineries and as a result, firms like the one I work for do not get new contracts and people get laid off.

I’m not usually one to worry about stuff like that because I go to work every day and do the best I can for the $$ they pay me and I usually turn out above average work or at least strive to. That said, I was discussing “what if’s” with a buddy and when we got off the phone I asked my wife what she thought we’d do if I walked into the office Monday and was told “sorry man, we won’t be paying you anymore”.

Little scary to think about huh?

That got us talking about something that I’ve become really passionate about in the past few months but before I go into that, I must also say it made me think about internet marketing (what doesn’t?). With that came two questions that I want to ask you, dear reader, right now….

1) If you suddenly lost your job and someone stood there with a gun to your head and said “learn to make money online RIGHT NOW” how quickly could you take action, get your ass out of the forums and go learn, apply, earn, rinse, repeat?

2) Why aren’t you doing that ALL the time instead of waiting for things to get really serious?

p.s. as a side note, I just read this headline “Suncor approves C$20.6B oil sands expansion plans” which explains why I don’t buy into the negativity…..it ain’t over ’till it’s over!