STATUS: Wednesday, July 13th

The Daily Report

Well, my snap decision to push ahead with my publishing plans even though my Patreon wasn’t yet at the level I’d wanted is seeming more and more like a good decision. At the rate things have been going, I’ll be at the $400 mark (the first benchmark set for my publishing venture) before the end of the month, and it’s not so hard to believe I’ll be at $500 by the end of August. If so, I’ll be coming into September right on target for my initial modest plans.

When I started restructuring and refocusing my work back in May, I was inspired by the success of several more traditionally published authors who made the jump to Patreon, as well as by others who were making plans. At the time, my small cadre of dedicated detractors tried to stir the pot by suggesting I was or should be jealous of their out-of-the-gate success. I wasn’t. These are my peers and friends, and I can be happy for them. I’m also aware that they aren’t actually just out of the gate, that they are doing and have been doing the work.

I would <em>love</em> to just instantly have thousands of dollars a month of income coming in, believe me, I would. But I know that’s not likely, and that’s part of why I laid out a year-long plan for myself to begin with. June 2016 to June 2017, age 36 to 37. My year of awesome. The plan’s not going to end next June, and I’m not going to stop being awesome next June.

On the subject of plans and their evolution: while I’m sure I couldn’t sustain a rate of an original short story a week without dropping something, I’m kind of feeling unfulfilled by the one a month, and I also have the perpetual dilemma of “Do I keep this for my patrons and possible publication elsewhere, or make it public as advertising/performance?” So I’m going to start aiming for two, one that can be locked up on Patreon and one that can be flung to the winds.

Financial Status

Feeling pretty good about where things stand right now, how things look for the rest of the month, and where I’ll start the next month if things proceed more or less apace. The con funds are now all in place for August and while that’s earmarked money, it’s nice to have some digits in my bank account and know that if something unexpected came up in the next couple months, it wouldn’t put me negative. I could cover a number of small to medium family emergencies by borrowing from myself. It’s amazing how much background anxiety this relieves.

At the same time, I feel a little bit of a “walls closing in” sensation because during most of June I had stuff coming out like *snaps fingers repeatedly in rapid succession* and so I had all this miscellaneous money coming in from it that continued through last week. But here I just came back off a week’s vacation, I’m getting in the swing of things, that’s not happening. Not a complaint! Just a reminder to myself that nothing’s gone wrong, things are just normal and it’s time to get back to work.

The State of the Me

I’m very “swingy” lately. I figured out yesterday that after my vacation detox/reset, I made a fairly classic mistake of resuming my previous doses of everything without the accumulated tolerance. In layperson’s terms, I spent the past two afternoons high as particularly high balls. I was functional Monday, less so yesterday.

I’m also physically very tired. I’ve been getting moderately into Pokemon Go… while I’ve played and enjoyed the Stadium series and I love Pokken Tournament, I never got into the core series or watched the anime, but Jack’s very into it, particularly as it came out at a time when he’s consciously being more active and getting out more. I’m very heat-susceptible, though, and prone to exercise intolerance in the best conditions, and I think even my modest efforts to “catch all of them” (as I believe the saying goes) may have been too much.

Plans For Today

My plans for today have actually changed since I started writing this post, as an external thing was canceled for external reasons. So I think I’m actually going to spend the day just doing random writing, see how many of my goals for the month I can knock out.