I spent my whole career building passive income. Here’s what I got wrong.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted passive income. Money that came in without being tied to my time or energy. Income I didn’t have to show up for. The kind of financial life where you don’t have to worry. I think this is a universal desire for anyone who didn’t grow up rich. You see what financial stress does to a family and you make a silent promise to yourself: I’m never going to live like that. So I built toward it for my entire adult life. Here’s what I didn’t expect when I got there. I still worry. The dream doesn’t deliver what you think it will Here’s the truth. No matter how much money you make, life will never be easy. The anxiety doesn’t disappear just because money is coming in. The only thing that happens is that your worry shifts. It finds new things to attach to. Gordon Livingston, a psychiatrist, wrote a book called And Never Stop Dancing in which he put this concept into words better than I could. He wrote: “We all wish that life were simpler. Practically every…