I Might Just Quit

Posted on by theycallmetater

Everything seemed to be going OK. I was settled into a writing routine. I’m inching toward 1000 followers here on WordPress. People are regularly reading my posts. It doesn’t translate into income here. On my best days, I can make maybe 25 cents from Word Ads. I don’t see that ever changing.

To maybe make some money doing this I joined the Medium Partner Program. I imported the posts I thought people would want to read over there. I found out recently that you now need 100 followers to stay in the program. I’ve spent the last two weeks being more active on Medium to get to where I need to be. I’ve gone from 4 followers to 93 in two weeks. I went from earnings of 12 cents last month to over $7 in the past two weeks. Not a lot, but a pretty decent increase.

I was feeling pretty good about where I was. I was considering applying to a couple of places to write book reviews. Again, not a ton of money, but getting paid to do something I’m already doing. My confidence was at a place where this seemed doable.

Then last night happened. Last night should have been another good night. The Braves won the first game of the World Series. I’m starting to actually believe they might win it all. Before the game, though, all of my confidence and thoughts that I was headed in a good direction came crashing down.

I won’t go into detail. but I realized that none of the above matters. At all. It’s just a stupid hobby. A waste of time. An avoidance of living an actual productive life. I’m wasting my time. I’m wasting my life being lazy and pretending like I’m a writer.

I don’t know where I go from here. I guess I need to consider reentering the library world.

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26 thoughts on “I Might Just Quit”

  1. I’ve had a crappy week…short answer good friend of ours suffered a massive cardiac episode last week and has been in medically induced coma since. All sorts of setbacks and crap and one if our “friends” said something about the situation that flabbergasted me. So I see as I’ve written my anger and sadness and hope all tied in together. Sometimes life makes us go places, physically and mentally and emotionally where we never wanted to go. Just keep moving forward and don’t dwell

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      1. Try not to. We were supposed to see these friends before vaccinations, and my husband chickened out because he didn’t want to ride train. He only saw this guy once since pandemic started and we hadn’t been out as couples since February 2020. My husband is now kicking himself for not seeing P more. Don’t dwell…or try not to

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  2. One can waste a lot of time writing blog post, and reading others. I enjoy most of what I read, and follow, but there are cases when you wonder why these folks even post their thoughts. Keep on writing, I enjoy your post and thoughts on television, daily life and such. Writing about anything is good practice for writing that one novel that may happen one day.

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  3. I don’t understand the connection to the Braves winning and you thinking about giving up blogging. I’m in my third year of blogging, have about 450 followers – many of which aren’t real followers, and I haven’t made a penny. I enjoy writing. It’s good for my brain. I enjoy the feedback and the dialog with other bloggers. I read several blogs, but I have learned to me more discriminating. For example, I do read your daily posts, but I have no interest in TV, so I skip those posts. I am not sure where my blogging will take me – if anywhere, but I am enjoying the journey. Even though I don’t make money, I sure don’t want to give up writing. I hope you have a good day.

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  7. I enjoy reading your posts. I hope you continue on. I think there are other types of payment besides money we receive from blogging. I’ve been writing for decades and only made decent money writing magazine articles for trade magazines in 2019 and 2020. At first I felt rewarded getting nice checks in the mail. But the writing was a formula and I felt like I was selling out. I didn’t have any satisfaction or pride in the work. I’m trying to say that money isn’t everything.

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  8. The thing with the arts Alan you have to.put a hell of a lot in to get anything out. In 30 years I made probably in the vicinity of $3000. That’s really pathetic. I suck at marketing and basically gave up making it my source of income. It’s takes a certain amount of drive to go into business for yourself and be successful. I’m sure you could probably find the means to freelance, or send queries to sites that pay for reviews. But the business end at least in my opinion is the hardest part. I sometimes wish I knew someone that could manage me. But. Don’t settle bro. Don’t go back to something you hated.

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      6. Sucks when you don’t have people supporting your dreams. I once took an improv comedy class and froze during the graduation production, my dad came to that and flat out said Don’t quit your day job..not even a good try thrown in.

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  9. Hey.. I’ll be your 1000th follower! And I look forward to more of your writing but please keep going. This too shall pass.. To be honest I’ve had some ups and downs this week too (and was hospitalized a couple of weeks back) and I know the feeling but find your reason for writing

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