Jaded Consolidation

I miss this cat. His name was Sammy. He was the genesis for the story I wrote called It’s All About Happiness.

Here’s the cover of the book, if you click here you can get the whole short story as a file. I tried to figure out how to set a download up here on WordPress, but I can’t seem to get it right (keeps looping to nowhere). The link is to a mailing list I got it right on a while back, so by all means, sign up, grab the version of the story you’d like and then unsubscribe, or don’t. I don’t send much out yet anyhow, no production and product. I’ll cover that in a minute.

Now, back to topic, I miss Sammie. He was the first cat I actually liked, and while we’ve had cats since then, he was the last one I’d actually say I truly liked. Sammie had a ‘too bad, I’m a cat and this is my decision’ attitude. He knew how to get what he wanted to do done.

I can’t do that. I have five kids living at home, a beautiful and rather amazing wife (she doesn’t believe this when I tell her but she really is), and a full time career, not to mention the volunteer positions I try to do justice to, my life is best described as being nibbled to death by ducks. Thanks to the talented Sarah Hoyt for that imagery.

Anyhow, to consolidate the message because I’m rambling, I decided to become a writer, a real writer, and write books in addition to what I do for a day job.

This lead me to the blogs of Jeff Goins and so many others; titles like-

“Your first 1,000 subscribers”

“Grow your e-mail list by 10,000 in a year.”

“How to write a best seller in a month.”

– and so on ……..

This was the start, and I get sidetracked into spaces involving Gear Bubble, Convert Kit, and Wealthy Affiliate… all to make money online, move away from the J.O.B. and break free of the corporate grind.

I was chasing phantoms. Now, don’t get me wrong. People make money doing these things. But let me ask you a question first. How many hours are in a day?

Now, if you had five kids and a wife whom you just needed to spend time with, how many hours do you have left in a day? Ok, now subtract work and sleep time… Are you in the negative hours yet? I sure as hell would be. So how to spend time building and making for all these different sites when I can’t even finish what I need to do as a dad and husband?

I have in the last four days, unsubscribed from just about everything that looks ‘too good to be true’ and realized that a dream is a plan without actionable steps. Now, there are a great many things I learned over this time,

*nods to Shaunta Grimes, Jeff Goins, and so many others,

*tips hat in the diretion of Convert Kit, Mail Chimp, Upscribe and Medium

, but for all that, and the skills and knowing of things that can help, nothing was happening. To be a writer, one has to start by writing.

So time to build some steps.

End Goals:

I want to be a writer.

I want to tell my stories (I have sooo many). I want to self-publish them to the Net and maybe meatspace through on-demand services.

I want to get paid for my stories.

How to get there?

Umm.. Let’s come back to that. We’ll call it tomorrow’s post. I’ll try to write it up tonight.

Thanks for bearing with me and I’ll go figure out mailchimp and online repositories in a little while. I like Sarah’s webpresence, and I love the sleekness of Jason Cordova’s wordpress site, so there’s a pair of good starting points.

Cheers, and I guess I am still Jaded from a year wasted in getting nowhere while chasing the dream of success without a path.

Consolidating my goals into a single place, and exorcising all the phantoms that have sucked my life away for the last twelve months is important.

So. Up tomorrow or the next day at the latest, a series of steps to tackle the impossible before breakfast.

Remember, as long as you keep waking up Chaos is winning and Entropy hasn’t won yet.

DFTBA

Duke of Chaos.