Time to Monetize My Writing

I spent an incredibly frustrating day yesterday working and dealing with the mistakes of others. It is possible to be good at your job and hate your life because you are forced to work with other people who don't feel the need to put in your level of effort. This, in turn, makes your job unnecessarily unbearable.

During that frustration, I realized how much I hate having to do work that is boring and annoying just to make money. My ADHD actually rebels within me and begs me for any other form of stimulation. It was bordering on dangerous to deny it further.

It was in that moment that I decided I need to start getting paid to do what I love. The best part of my day is being here on Vocal: writing, publishing, reading, and talking with fellow writers about our craft.

So it’s time to try monetizing what pleases my neurodivergent brain, if at all possible. I did some research on how to best accomplish that goal and came up with a plan. It will be a series of very small, quick, baby steps that I can take everyday. I will be taking them one at a time, day-by-day, in the pattern set out in Atomic Habits, the best selling book by James Clear.

Published in 2018, Atomic Habits is a definitive guide on how to build good habits and break bad ones using small, incremental changes.

I’m going to embark on a daily, step-by-step journey toward monetizing my writing. I’d like to take you all along with me, and maybe it will help you discover ideas for how to capitalize on your own artistic talents.

It is my hope that, as a community, we stop being starving artists.

Step one was starting a Substack account. Unlike social media, where you’re at the mercy of algorithms, Substack allows writers to build a direct audience through email subscriptions and develop a community around their work. I will be utilizing social networks as well but that is for another day. Baby steps into the elevator (a reference from the movie: "What About Bob" for those of you under the age of 40 😏).

So I quickly set up a new account and published my welcome article.

If you’re familiar with Substack, I’d appreciate your support. Please consider subscribing, and feel free to share your advice and experiences in the comments. Please, please, please, please, please 🙏.

The Society for Advanced Overthinking:

A Preview of my Welcome Article:

Welcome to The Society for Advanced Overthinking

Jim Morison said it best: “People are strange.”

We build civilizations, split atoms, land machines on other planets, and then spend twenty minutes arguing with customer service because a coupon clearly expired yesterday.

For years I have been collecting stories, observations, historical oddities, personal misadventures, and questions that nobody seems interested in answering properly.

Questions such as:

* Why did governments try to ban coffee but currently allow opiates?

* Was Thomas Jefferson simply the most introverted man in American history or did he want to be black?

* Why do Altoids taste like generational trauma?

* Will POGs ever make a comeback?

* How can a person survive divorce, bad decisions, bureaucracy, and modern life with at least a fragment of their sanity intact?

* Are single mother’s raising their sons to be “good girls”?

Strung together, the evidence reveals patterns in our nature.

This newsletter is where I will publish humorous essays, unhinged historical investigations, satire, personal stories, poetry, and observations about the absurd condition of being human.

Some articles will make you laugh.

Some may make you think.

A few may accomplish both at the same time.

If you’ve ever looked at the world and thought, “This makes absolutely no sense. There has to be a better way,” then you’ve found your people.

Thank you for reading.

Let’s investigate the nonsense together.

- Jesse Lee