Last week I announced declared stated said in a post that I needed to start doing things my way again.
I was speaking generally in terms of decision making, but more specifically about how to generate income.
At the time of the post, I had no plan, no formula, on how to take control, but I have been thinking about things. This post will probably read like me thinking out loud as I walk through a sort of process to try to get somewhere with this.
It's one thing to have the determination, obviously, it's quite another to get there. But I do need to do something, even if it doesn't end up being exactly what I want. It still needs to check off some of the boxes, preferably all the ones that allows my wife to quit her job.
Here's some issues I believe I'm facing.
You see, while I believe I have improved quite a bit as an employee since my last full-time job (the one that lasted for more than three months ended back in June, 1997), I just don't make that great an employee.
Oh, I can follow orders, and I do have some skills, but ultimately something happens—I'd say the majority of the time it was because of something I did or didn't do. A typical scenario would be, I eventually got bored, got careless, made a big enough mistake and got fired.
I like to be the master of my own destiny. I like to work the hours I want to work, when I want to work them, and have the main say over how much I will earn. That doesn't generally go over too well with most employers, unless you have a track record of success somewhere (or you run into the odd employer who likes mavericks and out of the box thinking).
While I feel there are different things I can do, I am at a point in my life now where there's fewer things I want to do. And even those I don't like doing all the time. I need some structure, and having some kind of deadline keeps me on task, but too much framework and deadlines that come too often lead to boredom and burnout.
The adage of Find Your Passion has never really worked for me. I'm just not that passionate about anything, because, for the most part, most things don't matter when it comes to the kind of work I've done. Even when I was in the kind of job where I was supposed to be helping people, I never felt like I was helping them. Not with what they truly needed. The system wasn't designed to do that.
For 15 years I mainly published on my own two smalltown weekly newspapers (for about two years I published one, for about a year, there were three, and for about one and a half years, I had a partner).
I loved being able to determine my own schedule, for the most part, and being able to afford hiring others to do the bulk of the work, and I also enjoyed determining what I would pay myself. In contrast, though, I generally agonized over how much to compensate others (it never seemed to be enough), and when it came to laying off the two people I had as full-time staff after a change on the state government level ruined our main revenue streams, it was one of the worst experiences of my life.
I've been reminded frequently why I don't like working for someone else, especially during the layoff, since my latest round of employment began. I don't like futility, or busy work, or wasting time, or being left in the dark. I'm a big picture kind of guy, and it's tough to see it when you don't even know what your part of the puzzle is until you're essentially doing it.
At the same time, the idea of setting up some kind of business, only to either never get off the ground, see it fail after an extended period of hard work, and go through the process of laying off people again—I can't think of anything I really want to do that would make it worth risking going through that again.
I don't want to depend on an employer so I can provide for my family, and I don't want others dependent on me to do the same. It was hard enough when I was younger and thought I knew what I was doing. Getting older, and little more circumspect doesn't help that situation at all.
Barring that odd employer I mentioned, where I end up being more or less my own boss, the field narrows even more when I consider things I can do on my own, or through contracting with others.
I hear businesses call in consultants all the time to take a look at their business practices and advise them on changes they should make to realize greater profits, efficiency, better morale or cost/debt reduction.
I've never officially consulted any business of any size, and so I'd be starting from scratch. I don't know how every business works, and without building some clout somehow, I don't know how I would actually end up with large enough clients that could actually afford to pay me.
I do feel, however, one of my greatest talents is taking something that exists and finding a way to make it better. I did it all the time with the newspapers, and I've done it off and on throughout my life for various personal or school projects. Solving issues or improving things is actually something I do enjoy.
I've got two Kindle books languishing on Amazon, and two others in different stages of development, plus at least four others of the same series that haven't made it out of my head yet.
Being self-published, you tend to do more promoting than you do writing, and fiction can be a tough sell. I believe I spent somewhere between $6,000-$7,000 on editing services for both books, and I don't feel like I can put that kind of money into such services at this time. I don't think editing on my own would give it the polish and fresh perspective books require.
Plus, I've been feeling the need to do some kind of wholesale rewrites on the books I do have listed simply because they don't have a set audience. They tend to appeal to adults, even though the main protagonist is an older teenage girl. In other words, it should be young adult, but its themes aren't really what the modern teenager (especially girls) care about.
Along with the novel sized stories, I do have others I feel are better suited for some form of sequential art, either a long but limited series of comic books, or maybe five to seven years worth of annual graphic novels.
Eventually, I think they could even translate to full-length animated movies.
I've created a few comic books before, and did all the script writing, pencil art and lettering. They were all done before I was 20, though, and while the art got progressively better (along with the stories), I can't call myself an artist, and writing comic book scripts is different than writing novels or blogs.
Just as I don't really have the money for an editor for my novels, I don't have money to pay an artist, a colorist, and potentially others to get the comic books/graphic novels completed.
I don't expect anyone to do any work pro bono, nor do I expect anyone to have the same passion for my ideas as I do where they would form some kind of partnership, essentially working for free again until some income could be made off the finished products, or even throughout the creative process, be it here through update posts on HIVE, or somewhere else like Patreon.
I'd have to think about something like that, anyway. I don't know how much license or artistic vision I want to give up in a collaboration. I don't really want a partner, anyway.
That would be great, but I'm still living in a fiat world, as I'm sure most of you are, too. It wouldn't be enough to earn HIVE, I'd have to be able to spend it, too, on the products and services I need to sustain life, first, and on other things I want after that. HIVE just isn't there, yet. Most of crypto isn't there yet. Even the mighty Bitcoin, while making inroads some years ago, has seen quite a bit of retraction.
Aside from whatever hoops and fees I would have to jump through just converting HIVE to US dollars, there's also the taxes I don't want to be paying. Each move from HIVE to something else takes something away.
As I said, from the outset, this is me, thinking out loud. I don't have any idea where any of this is going, other than mainly nowhere.
I am trying to be realistic, though. I have attempted to start something numerous times and not been able to get very far with it. There's always knowledge, skill, resources or desire that I find myself lacking when it comes to generating income.
Back when I was younger, more energetic, more convinced of my abilities, more idealistic, thinking I could change the world, or my corner of it, this all seemed so much easier. Now that I know what it takes, know that there's probably more I don't know, know that nothing's guaranteed, know that my opportunities are getting fewer and farther between—well, there's a tendency for over analyzation and paralyzation.
I don't mind some risk. What I feel like I'm running out of is time to fail too many more times. And if I do fail, I need to somehow fail up, not down.
I don't know if you've ever done this exercise before when it comes to determining what you like to do versus what skills or aptitudes you have that might make you money, but I have looked at what I like to do versus my abilities a time or two over the years. It's similar to the surveys they used to give High School students (maybe they still do) to basically determine that they weren't capable of doing much of anything.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.
At any rate, I still feel like I have some drilling down to do, so I'll conclude with the abilities I have that are worth noting, even if I'm not really wanting to use them, or feel they can make money.
I've done quite a bit of it over the years, with quite an array of genres and subject matter. Since I have quite a varied taste in reading topics, my writing also reflects that.
I've done more of this than virtually anything else, from logistics to IT and some degree of project management. I have my preferences of where to start with a solution, obviously, but I'm not beholden to ones that don't actually work, and I don't really care who has the idea. I've learned a lot through trial and error.
I've worked in Quickbooks and on Excel sheets. I do like crunching numbers, if they are my own, or I stand to profit by it somehow. Otherwise, it can get kind of monotonous or even depressing.
I still don't understand shutter speeds, lighting, apertures, or other settings, but I feel like I have an eye for composition and what makes a compelling image. I've taken hundreds if not thousands of action, still, travel, food, wedding, and portrait images over the years. None of it professionally, except for when I was also the boss.
I can do it. I actually like it to some extent, but I'm not really schooled or experienced in any of it, and I do like to take some artistic license when I do. I could probably end up rewriting the entire thing in some cases. That probably wouldn't sit very well with anyone who has any investment in their works. I know it's painful when I'm on the receiving end of it, though I mainly reworded things myself.
I can really throw myself into all facets of video production, but I mainly enjoy editing. It can get pretty tedious and detailed oriented, and often under appreciated, because no one knows the hours you spent synching this or special effecting that, but you. So no one cares how tough it was. All they see is the finished product, which they can take or leave on a whim.
I don't want to do this, but I feel it's something I know how to do. I have a pretty hands off style, though, that might not work for most employers, and frankly, most employees. I pretty much don't care how or when work gets done, just that it gets done, and done well (whatever the standard might be). I tend to believe in hiring people who might not know everything, but can figure things out, self-motivate, ask for direction when necessary, but then have the ability to run with it after that.
I just don't want to babysit, do their work for them, or look over their shoulder to see what they're doing at any given point. I'm not into office politics, gossip, or mind games. I don't need the stress.
This was the one production job I enjoyed with the newspapers, so I actually did it for the better part of the 15 years. It was a creative outlet for me, a puzzle that needed to be solved every week, and I believe I got good at it.
I've created my own web sites for my books, one from scratch. It's been a while, but I think I could get back into it. Clients don't seem to know what they want, though, but know what they don't want, once they've seen it.
I've got an Associates of Applied Science degree in Social Media Marketing. I can do it. Some of it I enjoy. The rest, not so much.
I've dabbled in some of this, taken a couple of online courses, tried to build my own mobile apps, but without much of any success. I'm not really a graphic designer, which apps generally need. I also found it frustrating until things actually worked the way they were supposed to. Then, it was exhilarating.
It's mostly trial and error, or going through possible fixes rather than being able to diagnose the problem from the start. I like to blame it on the ghosts in the machine, but I guess someone might think there's a logical explanation for why something that isn't working can't be fixed with the same fix that has previously fixed the problem nine out of ten times.
Since I'm not very technical driven, I don't know how a lot of things actually work. However, that can be an advantage when it comes to innovation or solving a problem that is more than technical. I feel that bringing a different perspective or approach to a problem can actually spur those with the knowledge to try things that they might not have attempted otherwise because they were only trying to solve it from a technical point of view.
I'm also not married to convention, the status quo, or popular wisdom. Just because something is impossible now, doesn't mean it's impossible forever.
I've done a lot of it over the years, be it for articles, school or personal projects, consumer buying, family trips, etc. I've even done a little bit for someone else, just for fun. I do enjoy learning something new and discovering things others don't know. I'm not interested in all topics, and there would have to be something pretty compelling to make me want to keep doing it, day in and day out.
If I could get paid for playing video games, maybe as a tester for UI or gamification or storylines, rather than competitively, I would do it. I also wouldn't mind creating storylines and developing game concepts.
I can't play any instruments, but I can sing and I can also write lyrics. I've been known to create melodies with Apple Loops from time to time.
I've only played around with this on my own projects, mostly through voice alterations, but I think it would be really fun to try.
Like video editing, I could get lost in creating sounds, sound effects, music, etc. I would have loved to live in the golden age of radio, just so I could work on some of the shows they used to produce. I guess podcasting has taken over some of that.
While creating that list, I realized that if I could rotate through that list on a regular basis, doing more of what I like and less of what I don't, I'd could avoid being bored, and still be productive.
The question would be, what kind of work would allow me to do that, and make money at it? I can't really stop making money to create something, so anything that isn't paying from the start would have to be in addition to a job that does.
I've already determined that I need to continue working at my current job for at least another year and a half. That's not a lot of time, but it's not a fairly realistic period of time to get something mostly underway, that could be adjusted a few months if necessary. Deadlines are meant to keep the work from stagnating, but if there's sufficient progress, or an underestimation of time required, than pushing back dates on deliverables is warranted.
Images source—Pixabay
