Category: Hustle

This Space for Rent. Sort of.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

I recognize it’s odd that the first post in weeks (and only the fourth post of calendar year 2023) is about blog advertisements.

You may notice there are now adverts on this blog. You may even find this off-putting. I understand that. But with your indulgence, I’ll explain:

A few years ago, I dreamed of becoming a full-time blogger/writer. I was getting a little bit of income from some posts promoting products that I actually used/liked, and I thought perhaps I could parlay my writing into something more financially stable.

The problem was, I didn’t put any effort behind those idle dreams. Eventually, the Monk Manual money dried up, and I wasn’t getting approval from other businesses I reached out to with an offer to promote their products, so I lost interest and shifted focus to other things.

Before last fall, my content production had been…let’s say sporadic at best. So I wrote a TON from September through (most of) December. Maybe that was helpful/encouraging to you, or maybe it was annoying. (He wrote another post about coffee? What a waste of time!)

So far, in 2023, I’ve produced extremely little in terms of writing, both on and off this platform. My off-work time is shrinking. I have a literal stack of books next to me that I’d love to take the time to write reviews/reflections on, and for some reason I’m just not doing it. Makes me question if I ever could have made it as a full-time writer.

Right. Advertisements. Sorry.

Our household, like countless others around the country, is feeling the pinch for the current super-great, never-stronger economy (thanks, current administration!). Niceties need to get cut, belts tightened. So the $100 pricetag on a mostly-ignored website platform is on the chopping block. As I started looking at downgrading, I noticed that one of the ignored special features I was paying for all this time was monetization through advertisements.

Well, okay, WordPress, I’ll bite.

For the next almost-two-months, I’m turning ads on, because I’m curious what might happen. Please note that I can’t select the companies or the ad contents, so if you see something offensive, let me know and I’ll try to deal with it. (Or just shut the whole thing down if I can’t.) If I can collect a few ducats from advertising, hey, cool.

Of course, no one visits a dead website, so as part of this experiment, I’m also going to start posting consistently again. Daily micro-posts? Maybe. Book reviews, pieces of Bible study writing, sermon manuscripts a few times a week? Sure thing.

Let’s see what June/July do in terms of this here website’s numbers. Maybe something crazy happens and I can actually keep the (premium hosting) lights on. Who knows.

See you tomorrow. (No, really, I probably will.)

Oh, also: EAT AT GENERIC DINER X. IT’S REALLY GOOD.

Photo by David Guerrero on Pexels.com

An Ode to Skipper Dan.

I recently was reminded of this song by “Weird Al” Yankovic. Take a look.

This song was released in 2009 but I feel like it’s only taken on more meaning as I’ve moved into middle-age. There are definitely things I had hoped to accomplish before now, dreams I held onto in my 20’s and even 30’s that I haven’t really done the work to pursue because my goals changed or I just decided that my energy needed to be spent elsewhere.

But rather than reminisce and bemoan what might have been, I wanted to focus on a different aspect of the song: what Dan does and doesn’t do.

“Dusty, why don’t you just try acting?”

When I was in eighth grade, my class took an end-of-year trip to Universal Studios Florida. Back then (the early-mid 90’s), there were several themed rides that have long since been retired/replaced. The ones I remember most vividly were the Jaws boat ride and the King Kong cable-car/subway (?) ride.

When we got into the boat with our “captain” for the Jaws ride, she delivered her script with gusto, as if this were the first time she’d ever led a crew of people into the dangerous, shark-infested waters. When the great white surfaced, she yelled convincingly, “LOOK OUT, THERE HE IS!” and my little 13-year-old heart sank. At the climax of the ride, she pulled out a comically-large rocket-launcher style weapon and “fired” it at the deadly shark, who exploded in a splash of water and smoke and audio-visual flair. As we pulled safely back into harbor, our captain breathlessly congratulated us on surviving the ordeal, and everyone disembarked with smiles on their faces.

The King Kong ride could not have been a starker contrast. The “tour guide” for our New York adventure had all the gusto and excitement of a customer entering Hour 3 of waiting at the DMV. Her lines were so deadpanned that Aubrey Plaza would have seemed like Carrot Top by comparison. (How’s that for a wild mix of dated pop-culture references?) Even when the big ape seemed to be reaching out to grasp the car we were “riding” in, the tour guide could barely evoke vocal inflection. “Oh no. It looks like Kong is trying to grab us. Everyone hold on.”

Obviously, both rides held no real danger from the animatronic beasts and it was all in good fun, but when the Jaws captain really went for it, it made the suspension of belief that much easier.

Here’s my point: there is power in doing the mundane things well. However, in the song, Skipper Dan has realized that the theme-park job wasn’t the easy stepping stone to a dream career that he apparently expected it to be, and eventually he lets it grind him down so that he becomes resentful rather than trying to do something about it. He loses hope because he thinks that what matters most is what he’s doing rather than how and why he’s doing it.

Cal Newport, in his excellent book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, talks about how the path to career fulfillment isn’t in seeking the perfect job or the dream job. It’s in seeking out a job you can do well and becoming masterful at it, so that you can parlay that career capital into an adjacent line of work that’s closer to your “dream” or that provides you with quality-of-life benefits that you couldn’t achieve otherwise.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last few years, wrestling with it in my mind. In those times of career frustration and boredom, it’s often that I’ve lost sight of the power of daily excellence.

More than that, I’ve lost sight of my ultimate goal.

“Do it for her.”

There’s a famous moment in an early episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer (who, you will recall, works at a control panel in a nuclear plant) notices a poster on the office wall that says, “Don’t Forget, You’re Here Forever.” He strategically covers the wall (as well as certain parts of this poster) with a collage of pictures of his daughter Maggie, so that the visible letters now spell out “Do It For Her.”

I recently took the template from this moment in the show, and recreated it with pictures of my wife and daughters. Using Microsoft Paint and a little editing magic, my work computer wallpaper now says “Do It For Them.”

I’ll be honest, y’all: I’m not often super-jazzed about my job. I know that it matters, and I know the good that it accomplishes. There are just days or weeks (or even longer) where it feels like an endless field of thistles and thorns: the constant emptying of an inbox or work queue that gets refilled instantly, or non-stop email threads involving a parade of outside company reps who all inexplicably “just started recently” and don’t understand how my organization operates in regard to theirs. It adds up to a frequent feeling of pointlessness to the proceedings because I can’t see the fruit of my labor. (It’s not nearly as satisfying as mowing the yard, that’s for sure.)

I have to remember on those difficult days that I’m doing work that matters not only so that I can serve our clients, but so I can take care of my family. I have a wife and three little girls that count on me to get it done and provide.

And if that wasn’t motivation enough, there’s a greater reason that’s even easier to lose sight of: I’m working for the Lord.

It’s a reality that I can pay lip-service to but not really take to heart. When I work, I not only work in submission to and with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I work on His behalf, representing Him (whether explicitly or implicitly) to the people I come in contact with, whether it’s the supervisor who knows if I hit or miss my daily deadlines, or the outside contractor rep who gets the sharp edge of my frustrated email exchanges. In all of these things, I work for the Lord. And in all these moments, I have the opportunity to use my work ethic and skill and compassion to honor and bless others, as a gift to them and an offering of thanksgiving to God for the privilege of being able to work (since it’s only by His grace that I have the strength to produce a harvest).

Which brings us back to Skipper Dan, and to you and me. Whether you’re a tour guide on a jungle cruise ride, or a customer service rep for an auto parts company, or a park ranger keeping fire watch, or a keyboard cowboy working from home–whatever you do to earn a paycheck, do it well. Do it with intention and excellence. Become masterful at it. Look for ways to make the experience better for your customers or clients.

Not because it will always pay off with a dream job or a big break, but because people count on you to do your best, and because the One whose opinion matters most is always watching.

Friday Feed (05/01/2020)

Hey readers!

Here are some interesting things I’ve collected from around the World Wide Webiverse over the last 6 months. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

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That’s all I got this week. Have a good weekend, stay safe and healthy, and we’ll see you down the road!

In praise of simple solutions.

white flush door
Photo by Rodrigo Santos on Pexels.com

Sometimes, simplicity beats sophistication.

Part of my day job involves creating, revising, and maintaining documents across different platforms, using a variety of templates. These templates often include a series of broken lines for signatures and dates.

One of my colleagues spent some time creating a specialized two-column template feature with specialized margins, lines as embedded objects, the whole nine–and plopped that into our template. It works great–as long as you don’t touch anything.

My preferred approach? Typing a line of underscores, tabbing over a couple times, and then typing a smaller line of underscores.

Sophisticated? Obviously not. But the simplified approach works for me because it’s easy to create, easy to explain, and easy to fix if you accidentally “break” it with some errant copying and pasting. I’ve lost quite a bit of time trying to un-break sophisticated template formatting over the years.

Obviously, if you have more sophisticated needs or complex procedures, you should use the tools and techniques that are appropriate. But too often, I think we assume that the most sophisticated and complex tool or approach is always the best choice for the task.

A question we should consider instead is: How complicated does this solution really need to be? And how simple could it be and still do the job I need it to do?

#FridayFive: 08/31/2018

Here are 5 posts to inspire and challenge you over this long holiday weekend!

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The Secret to Networking? Stop Trying to network. — This piece by Brad Stulberg reminds us not to treat “building a network” like its a competition or game. Those contacts aren’t points on a scoreboard but people we have the opportunity to serve and bless.

The Answer is This: Give It Away for Free. — Tim Denning puts his finger on a powerful principle that I’ve seen play out in my own life: in a world of salesman, being a giver makes you unique and influential. As Seth Godin says, giving your work away produces loyalty with your audience. This is an idea I’m really trying to take to heart and implement in the coming years.

How to Use Your Tools so They Don’t Own You — Bryan Collins reminds us that getting a shiny new “tool” or gadget doesn’t mean much if we aren’t able to put the work in. Sometimes, going simple is the best way to do our best work.

The Top 4 Mistakes Every Writer Makes (And How To Avoid Them) — It feels like I can’t make one of these lists without including a Jeff Goins piece. Here, he points out four simple but powerful concepts that can help anyone write more compelling and meaningful work.

I Want to Quit. Right Now. — Jon Westenberg’s writing is visceral, searing, and insightful. This piece is a prime example, and every single word of it resonates with me. He gives us a peek into his inner battle over whether to persevere or give up on his passions, and in so doing, reminds us that all of us face that same battle. (Content warning: some strong language.)

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There you go, friends. Five posts to fuel your creative efforts on this Labor Day weekend.

May your labor be satisfying and your rest be refreshing, and we’ll see you back here next week!

Freelancer Diaries: Week 4

Closing in on one month in this side-hustle experiment. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve been learning lately:

Out of Order

When I get really excited about something new, I often dive right in, full steam ahead. Freelancing was no different. For the first 3 weeks, I was reading books, watching webinars, taking notes, and sending out bids to dozens of potential clients on a couple of websites. I was ready to grab the bull by the horns and make stuff happen!

And after 3 weeks of HUSTLE™, I was left with just one client…whom I had agreed to help for free. What began as a request to correct his document’s formatting turned into almost 7 hours over the next 2 weeks spent learning the basics of e-book publishing.

The gentleman was nice enough about it; he even gave me a 5-star review on Thumbtack and $30 for my efforts.

On the other hand, I had invested about $60 paying for client “contacts” on a freelancing site called Thumbtack, with little to show for it: my one paying client, and a few folks who promised to contact me later this year. That’s it.

Three weeks into my new part-time business, I was $30 in the hole. 

My internal pendulum suddenly swung the other way.  I just sat on my couch one night, sulking, frustrated that I wasn’t immediately successful, second-guessing the whole enterprise. I considered chucking the whole thing and forgetting it ever happened, but I had told a few people about it (along with the entire INTERNET) and felt too embarrassed to give up entirely. So I just moped about it for a few days.

[Some of you more seasoned freelancers are trying hard not to scoff openly at my newbie pity-party. I appreciate your restraint.]

I spent the weekend feeling defeated, deflated, listless. My wife kept asking if I was okay. I would just shrug in reply. I could feel that heavy-blanket funk start to press down on me.

I’ve learned over the years that my little depressive bouts are often a “check engine” light of sorts. When these moods hit, I need to pause and consider what’s out of balance in my life.

I finally realized that part of the reason I was so downcast was that I wasn’t taking care of myself (sleep, hydration, exercise), I wasn’t creating anything for myself (blog posts, short stories, poetry), and I wasn’t keeping freelance work in its proper place (this is a side-project and not my life).

A specific example of how things were getting out of hand: In my eagerness (desperation?) to drum up work, I was even sending out bids between services at church, rather than interacting with my church family. I was late walking into the corporate worship time last weekend because I was busy tapping away at my phone, firing off just a few more bids so I didn’t miss out on work. My wise and patient wife had to call me out on it later that day. She rightly reminded me that I was at church to (duh) worship God, not hustle for work.

If nothing else, this incident demonstrated that I needed to build firmer boundaries so that work (the “anxious toil” the Psalmist warns about) doesn’t drift into my worship time.

This past week has taught me that I can’t keep going full-tilt like this. When these different spheres of life are out of balance, I feel miserable and become ineffective. What this means practically is that I’m going to pull back on the hustling, spending less time on trying to drum up work and more time on what is most important: my relationship with God, with my family, and with my circle of friends and fellow Christians.

Is It Worth It? Should I Work It? Put My Bid Down, Flip It, and Reverse It?

It’s amusing how much people value their own time and how little they value the time and efforts of others. I shouldn’t be shocked by this; it’s no mystery that people are naturally selfish. However, I didn’t expect to see it demonstrated so clearly in fee negotiation.

A hypothetical but not-at-all unrealistic example: I’ve seen more than a few job postings that say something to the effect of, “Developmental editing and proofreading needed for a novel. 80-100K words. Only professional editors wanted. Total project budget: $150.”

Considering that a book of that size would take even the most seasoned editor about 30-40 hours to complete, not counting post-edit follow-up with the author, we’re talking about a paltry $4-5 an hour. (Fun fact: Industry standard for freelance developmental editing is around 10 times that, according to the Editorial Freelancers Association.)

In Side Hustle, Chris Gillebeau writes that people who perform service-based side-work should make sure that they’re making about as much as they would in their day job. After all, our evening hours are just as valuable to us as our morning hours, aren’t they?

When I thought about it that way, it only made sense that expert editors should get paid like…um, experts. When a client sets such a low-ball budget for a project, it means either they haven’t done their homework to find out how much things cost, or they just don’t think your services are worth much. In both cases, that may not be a great client to have.

Considering my newbie status as a freelancer, I’ve been dialing my rates down below the industry average, but there is definitely a “floor” rate I won’t go below, because I value my time. No matter how slowly the jobs come in right now, I need to take my own time seriously. If I don’t, no one else will.

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Your Turn: Have you ever gotten so excited about a new project that it suddenly takes over you life? What do you do to maintain balance?

Let me know in the comments below!

 

Freelancer Diaries: Week 1

[This may or may not become a recurring segment on the blog, but hey, it could be fun, right? Meanwhile, the #FridayFive will return next week!]

 

I’m So Excited, I’m So Excited, I’m So–Scared!

I’ve never been very entrepreneurial. I’ve always been the dedicated worker bee, doing the “smart” thing, the “safe” thing.

However, I’m on the verge of starting a side-hustle (to supplement my income, not replace it), doing work as a freelance writer/editor/proofreader. I feel both a growing eagerness to get after it and a nagging worry as I realize how much I don’t know about all this. I want to dive right in, but I don’t want to be a buffoon and do damage to someone’s else’s work.

All this nervous energy has me a bit scattered. I signed up for Lynda’s online education resources, and immediately bookmarked 37 courses to check out before the 30-day free trail expires. I’ve checked out 10-12 books from the library on side hustle basics, resume writing, grant writing, freelance writing, editing technique, and plot structure and development for fiction writers. I want to watch and read all of it NOW, RIGHT NOW, so I can work right now.

This is not counting the usual “boring” stuff, like my day job. And my family. And sleep.

It feels like I’m caught in a riptide of my own making, dragging me further to sea, into deeper and deeper waters. If I don’t recognize the tide’s pull, I’ll very soon be in over my head. No one wants that.

Not Even For A Klondike Bar

A few nights ago, I suddenly stopped negotiations with a potential client, turning down a project that I had been pursuing for a couple of days. Why? Because I found out that the proposed manuscript would be full of pseudo-Christian theology, and it just didn’t feel right to say yes to that.

Don’t get me wrong–saying “no” was hard, too. This would have been my first paying gig! Nevertheless, I would have been miserable working on it. Even if only 10 people ever read it (a definite possibility), I would have felt partly responsible for confusing or even leading astray those 10 souls.

Maybe I’m over-reacting a bit. But I don’t think I am.

I believe every freelancer has to answer this question for themselves: What are my limits–not just morally, but professionally? What kinds of projects am I willing to turn down?

I can name a few things right off the bat that get a hard-pass from me:

  • Other people’s homework. It became immediately clear that several people seeking work are looking for “substantial editing” on their unfinished school assignments. Uh, no. I don’t do that.
  • False religion or lousy theology. I just don’t feel comfortable working on things that contradict my core values. That’s not to say I would limit my work to the precise theological/worldview positions I hold. But when something is blatantly outside the bounds of what I believe to be true, it’s hard for me to work on that. For example, yesterday at my day job, I had to edit instructions for a meditative yoga program, chanting, namaste, the whole nine–and it felt…gross. If I have the ability to choose my clients (and I do), I want to avoid things like that.
  • Sexual content. Exactly zero shades of grey for me, on this question. Just…no.
  • Ghostwriting. There is a market for it, to be sure. But helping someone take credit for my words as if they were alone responsible is lying, plain and simple. If I haven’t been able to write a book for myself, I certainly won’t write a book for someone else.

My goal is to help people sharpen their ideas and express their perspectives, even ones I disagree with, as clearly and effectively as possible. But I have to feel good about the work I’m doing, or it’s not worth it to me. I’d rather deliver pizzas with a clear conscience than bank huge fees and feel ashamed of the results.

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Question of the Week: Do you have any advice for me as a rookie freelancer? Do you know of any pitfalls I should avoid? Please let me know in the comments below!