Hustle freewrite!

It’s another freewrite! I can do these now and then. I think I’ve earned that right. This was such a great day. Usually, Friday’s are disasters. @guthrie has an appointment on one side of town, the a commitment on the other side of two two hours later. It’s always a series of 30 minute to two hour windows to get somewhere, leaving it almost impossible or me to do something. Today, because of the holiday, no appointment for him. I got to sleep in. We both met @lovejoy for lunch at our favorite restaurant, the headed straight to @caffetto.

During lunch, @lovejoy and I parsed subjects regarding our stories/novels, philosophy of the world and of humans, creative endeavors, and above all, the hustle we’re both facing in this turbulent time of our lives. I’m just happy the turbulence I’m experiencing right now, isn’t in a plane. As I sat there eating, @guthrie trying to interject, asking us both to guess a number he’s thinking of between 1 - 100, I vented about how I was going to come up with $1400 for my mortgage in two days.

From there, I made my way to @caffetto. I managed to meet up with @tarotbyfergus and grind out a few Commander games of Magic: The Gathering. My new Vial Smasher deck is still dominant, and that makes me happy. @tarotbyfergus hit Mythic level on Arena, which means nothing to almost all of you, I’m sure, but it’s a pretty big deal. @guthrie and I came home, met a sleepy @vermillionfox after a long day of work, and we spent some family time at home.

I started cooking up an ad for Instagram. I’d planned on doing this a day earlier and being prepared to capitalize on Black Friday. I didn’t, of course. I was on a hard deadline for some artwork for @eos.detroit, and stayed up way to late. By the evening, though, I cobbled together the graphic you see above and posted it on my account. Now, the downside is, $250 off each shoot is a big cut considering I have to travel to these cities. On the upside, though, in four hours I cleared $2,000.

More troubling, maybe, is that now I’m committed to all of these cities for the shoots themselves, which keeps me further from pursuing writing and comics as my main job. I can justify it, though, because I already have to be in New York, LA and Vegas by May and the Black Friday thing is stated for “shoots in 2020”. It also dug me out of a dire situation less than two days before defaulting on my house payment. This lifestyle is not for the faint of heart. It doesn’t feel that much different than cryptocurrency.

So what’s the point? Once I could breath a sigh of relief for another month, I continued scrolling through Instagram. I see knick-knacks, original art, lots of lady friends of mine doing OnlyFans and Premium SnapChats, Patreons, etc. It’s just a hustle. That’s the point. One one hand, so many of us are able to grind out our livings off the steady left hand path, not working for “the man”. On the other; fuck! The erosion of the middle class has resulted in many of us having to do one or two side-hustles.

I’ll tell you, I’ve been vacillating a lot lately on my current state of existence. I’m scared, but excited. Some days I’m feeling hopeless. I launched Copper Coins on IndieGoGo; yet another side hustle, but a project near and dear to the hearts of both me and @ghostfish. Initially, it didn’t seem to get traction. As of today, though, we just cleared $500 and 15% of our funding goal. It bolsters my confidence and belief that we can do this! It’s a survival skill, but I’m constantly thinking about what I can do and create that’ll serve my art and my soul, and still make money.

There wasn’t a particular point to this late night stream of consciousness. I mentioned to @lovejoy this afternoon, Steemit is just a journal for me. It’s all pages to the story of my life and I hope it’s around long enough that one day I’ll reread these events, knowing that the struggle was worth the result. Huge thanks to @bonni, @bryan-imhoff, @passerine and @swarddraws for supporting @coppercoins on our campaign. www.coppercoinszine.com if you’d like to support us. Thanks for reading and following me here on Steemit!