Tag: November

November 2022 Newsletter: When Chaos reigns

It’s been a crazy last couple months. There’s been a lot of good and a whole lot of crazy. Short Story month was a success. Adulting has been hard and the wheel of time never stops turning. This is the intro and now we’ll dive into the nitty gritty.

Short Story Month

The first “official” short story month was successful. I was able to publish two short stories and the second story I was especially happy with. While the stories did lean more towards horror this year, I’m glad I made the series open ended; the main goal is writing practice and to that end I achieved my goal. With it’s success, I’ll solidify it into the series rotation.

When Burnout Hits

So it has finally happened, I have reached a point of burnout with work. I’ve been working at a nonprofit for the last year now and it’s been an interesting experience to say the least. I have hit the maximum of part time hours I can work (about 30) and I have become well established in multiple departments. I work the front desk, teach rock climbing, and assist with events currently. Over the summer, I was a camp counselor and still assist with childcare from time to time. Teaching, Event Planning, and the right type of customer service. Here’s where it gets tricky; the pay. I did the math and I’m only bringing in $19000 a year (rounded-up). Short-term, this is ok. Long-term, not so much. Compared to previous years of income, this is the least I’ve made since entering the workforce. It is a rate that has not kept up with inflation and it is a rate that doesn’t sit well with me personally. Now that I have the experience, I can once again look at the factors that make for a satisfying life. While I have work that I find enjoyable I just cannot justify everything else I would be sacrificing.

This Month (and a little of last month)

I’ve been running around the last couple months. September I had a wedding to attend, my bike got a flat, and I was coasting along. Come October, I got my bike fixed, my student debt relief application sent in, and braced for another busy month. Now, my two main goals are health insurance (through the affordable care act) and my New Zealand application. I cannot believe how fast time has gone by. The health care application is nearly complete and I’m just waited to be fully approved for coverage. New Zealand is going to be a lot more work. Everything goes well, I’m still waiting four to six months for the application. Afterwards, I’ll need to renew my passport and get a RealID for domestic travel before the deadline. In the meantime, I will also be ramping up my job search as a backup. December might be the first month where I can truly relax this year. And yet, I’m still swinging a miss on one of my new year’s resolutions. And that is… Learning the piano. So, it is time to practice. If I can put 10 hours into deciding a vote, I can put time aside every week to learn the piano. I’ve been cooking, coding, walking, biking, and learning French. So it’d almost be criminal if I didn’t at least try again with piano.

The Drum Beats On

It’s a bit of a fever dream right now. I am in a weird limbo where things are going well but my heart craves more. I am pushing my personal goals forward but it all moves slowly, then quickly. The blog is exactly where I want it and no major changes will happen (unless I live in New Zealand, then you bet I’ll do another travel series). Poetry, Short Stories, Mental Health, and Sustainability all make writing incredibly fun for me. It took many years to get here, but we’re here. My posts get plenty of likes and there is not a whole lot of heavy lifting. I write what I want when I want and keep on schedule (mostly). With short story month behind us, November really could be anything in terms of content. A poem? A short story? An article? Hard to say.

Other Nonsense

As of right now, it’s just a lot of planning. Believe it or not, I’ve begun longing for the days of the call center. Full benefits and a work environment that in hindsight wasn’t all too bad with a large organization that gave me access to resources. That’s not to say what I’m doing now is bad, it just is very limited as far as what I can do career wise. Since I’ve achieved my work experience goals, it is a simple matter of moving on out. It’s been a year of personal growth and I’m proud of what I’ve done, I just hate how there always seems to be extra steps to get what I want out of life.

Voting

Quite recently, I voted. I have been voting since I turned 18 and this election I really dug in to understand my values and who would best represent those. For my entire life I have seen Oregon on the decline under the leadership of Kate Brown and I simply said enough was enough. Being a moderate my views run a spectrum so I sought to provide balance in our legislature. I watched a couple debates and found information on each candidate. Each ballot measure I looked over and thought about how it would affect me as well as the larger implications as a whole. I feel I struck a nice balance and all the choices I made I’m happy with. That said, long term I think I will end up relocating. Oregon is not as it was and I want a fun city in a fun state where I can live. The job prospects here have not been great and I’m wondering if I can use my alumni network to make a smooth transition elsewhere. So basically it’s a “we’ll see” sort of year.

Doing the Math

So I’ve done the math [my favorite phrase today, apparently]. Career wise, I cannot stay any longer than the end of the year. Early 2023 is fine but any more and I’d be doing a disservice to myself. I also cannot outright quit as it is still nice to have a source of revenue (and the work is enjoyable). The schedule and hours all work with my current plans so I can simply build on what I’m doing. The weekends are typically pretty quiet, so I simply work on my blog and get my coding goals done. It also affords me time to read books and just really sit back a take a breather after the last couple of years. However, if I were not doing these things, I’d be bored out of my mind. And that is not ideal for a workplace environment. Overall, I think it’s good to have this type of experience during my 20s. I’m jumping around and just figuring out this thing we call life.

This will be a month of doing. Ramping up my coding, finishing a few books, and getting the foundation laid for next year. It’ll be a time to learn piano and make sure all personal milestones have been achieved. I’ll be looking towards the future in what will be another busy month. As always, thanks for reading!

November Wind: A poem by Mike Cole

He felt a chill as the air grew cold

The leaves blew gently

He closed his eyes

This November was colder than usual.

He chopped wood and carried the bundle back to the fireplace

The wood crackled as it burned.

He thought back to Novembers long before, and was left, wanting.

A time where the warmth of the fire was felt throughout.

Where his jaded smile was once whole.

Yet only the cold remained. Waiting for Winter, silently and alone.

November 2020 update: Winter Cometh

What a time to be alive. Rain has come and the months grow darker. November is the passageway from Autumn to Winter.

October

As part of my effort to expand the blog, October was dedicated to quite the treat. For the last month I wrote a short story a week, each around a different horror theme. Week one was “Hades” which focused on my limited knowledge of Greek Mythology. Week two was “The Church” which focused on an old, long forgotten church in the English countryside. Week three took us to “The Manor“. Set in Ireland and loosely inspired by Bly Manor (which I was watching at the time) I experimented with emphasizing room locations to add character. And for Week four we had “The Mirror” where I mixed mental health with horror. All were fun to write and “The Mirror” ended up being quite popular and one of my favorite short stories I’ve written thus far.

The future of October

As part of my general overhaul of this blog, I plan on making October an official spooky series month and in particular, dedicated to writing short stories. I already have a couple ideas for improvements for next year, such as making the short stories two-parters with cliffhangers and more engagement events focused around Twitter and Facebook.

Engagement

The last six months you may have seen quite a few changes from creating a Facebook page to an updated bio and contact page. Of the changes I’ve made thus far, the status updates have been my favorite. As far as major updates this month, I am pouring effort into Twitter. The goal ultimately being to draw in readers from platforms other than the WordPress reader. Ideally I would have liked to hire help for engagement but as it stands, it’s a job I can do and just means I’ll be extra tired.

On the blog itself, I’m trying to figure out the formula for encouraging people to comment and have fun with the blog outside of simply reading it. So far, I’ve simply been liking and commenting as best I can; I enjoy engagement and am hopeful that the blog will one day reach a level where readers will engage with one another.

Patreon and Ko-Fi

Slowly but surely I am getting better at navigating Patreon. I’ve received some feedback and made changes accordingly. The biggest change is updating the Patreon page itself with the newest posts. This, I have to do manually but it creates a better overall experience for both those who follow through the blog and those who are searching through Patreon. As of now the rewards are basic but the plan is to eventually have Patreon exclusive rewards that make each tier feel meaningful. This might be a free copy of a book (if I ever finish one), early access to a podcast (should I ever create one) and prints of artwork (yes, I want to eventually learn to paint and draw). I might fiddle around with Patreon exclusive writing down the road but since I am only one man, it would be nigh impossible to justify the time commitment at the moment. If you’re curious to see what the page looks like, you can check it out here. I’m proud of the changes and if you have any feedback, don’t forget my contact page is fully operational! Every message sent should get seen by me.

Artwork

With writing, blogging was started as a way to get practice communicating. Eight years later and I think I’ve gotten the hang of this whole “communication” thing. As I’ve begun beefing up my media presence and focused on marketing my content, I’ve begun to wonder if now would be a good time to expand once more. It’s hard for people to read articles from beginning to end. A painting or drawing is instant. You see color or the pencil lines, notice detail or minimalism, and make a judgement within seconds. I want to do it as I’ve heard it’s beneficial for mental but I’m also curious if that might be the missing ingredient for getting more people interested in my work.

The future of Series on the blog

Series are here to stay! Previously, I was going to designate April as Sustainability month on the blog but after this last month have decided to focus on poetry. I was also thinking of doing a hybrid poetry/sustainability month but have ultimately scrapped the idea. The reasoning behind this is simply my greatest strength is poetry. A lot of people follow the blog for poetry and I realized that I can write the occasional sustainability article to raise attention to the cause. Plan on Earth Day and my short stories to cover most of my thoughts on sustainability. The big cause and the month that will be article heavy is May, where I will once more be covering mental health.

The blog originally started with a lot of self-help articles as I shared my advice that evolved from my application of business concepts in the real world. In 2018 I took that a step further and dedicated an entire month to the topic of mental health, a series that was meant to be a one off where I built up the courage to talk about my Father’s alcoholism and how it affected me. Last year, I wrote a couple articles in a mad scramble to express the importance of mental health. Over the last 6 months (or however long it’s been) I’ve focused the content I produce so there will be no more mad scrambles (yay). Since I’ve already talked about my deepest troubles, that frees up quite a bit to simply have fun with the series, much along the strand of what you saw in 2019. I already have a couple ideas drafted so we’ll see what comes.

And that’s a wrap. November will be a relatively quite month as I take a breather and organize my social media. As always, thanks for reading and expect a post most likely last week of November! If you have suggestions, always feel free to reach out!

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