I used to look down on people I knew who were chasing after parnassa instead of spending more time learning. However I recently started trying trying to do my own small business and there is tremendous pressure to do hishtadlus. I’m roughly keeping my basic learning sedarim I had before but the extra learning I would do in my free time is down a bit – much more down however is my yearning to learn even when I don’t have the actual opportunity to do so. Before when I wasn’t learning I was wishing I could be, now when I have some free time I feel an overbearing need to focus it on studying different aspects of my potential parnassa. Even when I actually am learning I’m often thinking about business.
Hashem has really humbled me as previously I was a snob not understanding how somebody could have this yetzer hara. I truly believe on an intelectual level that Hashem dictates how much money I’ll make no matter how much or little hishtadlus I put in and that learning more Torah should only help my parnassa, however emotionally it’s quite hard not to feel the opposite.