For a few months now, there have been no articles posted on this blog, so I decided to write a post that explains what I’ve been doing and what you might expect to find here in the future. This article also serves as my way of looking back at the last few months and figuring out if they were really as bad as I thought they were, while they happened. Without further ado, let’s begin.
What happened to me over the last few months?
Home office
I started the monthly book recommendations as an idea to recommend books that changed my look on life. Sadly, my life got so busy over the last few months that I lost time to read. With the Covid situation, I’ve been one of the few lucky people that got a chance to have a home office.
At first, this sounded like a great idea, but later this got out of hand as it broke my routines. It was suddenly extremely hard to stop working once I was having a task and even when I did, it was hard to reprogram my brain to start a different one.
This was usually much easier by the change of the surrounding, but since now there was no commuting from office to home, the entire home became my office, physically and mentally. It became harder to separate work from my personal projects and thus I became less effective.
Not only I couldn’t change the surroundings, but the lack of commuting meant I also lost my time during the day when I listened to audiobooks in my car. I tried to listen to them at home, but since my work requires mental focus, the books were just not registering. They went in through one ear and came out through the other.
And thus I lost not only focus but also a way to get new information that propelled my reasons to write the monthly book club. It will return later, but probably not in a monthly format.
Lack of motivation
This started around October, as you can see by the number of the articles published around that time going down until they stopped. The things were not going the best and I couldn’t switch my brain to the work mode, as I mentioned above. By November, some of my personal things did not work out. Actually, a lot of them didn’t, so my motivation was out of the window.
To be able to do side hustles and work on your future, you need motivation. You need a drive. This can be a negative drive, like a wish to leave your 9-5, or a positive one, like the vision of a bright future. In my case, it was usually a mix of both, but during this month and the one that followed, I lacked both. My mind felt numb from work and the only bright days were the weekends, which I slowly learned to use to get back to my normal.
Mental Reset
And so I went ahead, forcing myself to do at least some things and getting back on track. I knew I wanted to do at least one side thing a month, no matter how profitable, as long as it would be good mentally, as I was falling into the cycle of: sleep, eat, work, repeat.
My first attempt was to exercise regularly. This lasted a little over a month and even though it wasn’t something profitable and I didn’t keep up with it, it gave me some mental power to do other things.
Another big thing that helped me was actually taking days off. It was one thing to have a home office, where theoretically you can do anything since no one watches you, but on the other hand, you can also do nothing, because everyone expects way more of you. Days off helped me quite a bit.
I picked up gaming and as weird as this might sound, spending a lot of time on games made me more productive in the long run. Finishing a game or even playing with friends made me more relaxed and more ready to tackle bigger things.
By the mid to late November, I was ready to be productive again. But how? That was the question I had to find an answer for next.
What have I been working on?
Most of this blog is based on my personal experience. I like to write about things I tried and researched. When I recommend something, I either use it or know someone who uses it. Here are some things I started in November.
Writing a book
During my “relaxation stage”, I figured I really, really missed writing. This is a project that never worked out for me, even though I always loved it. During this period, I found several articles about erotica writers earning living by writing shorts (around 4 – 10 thousand words per book) and selling them on Amazon for about 1 – 5 dollars.
This intrigued me. I’ve never been against NSFW stuff of any kind and I believe it’s a really good and legitimate way to make money. I thought I can give it a try, as writing a short like this would take me 2 days… I was wrong. Soon, this erotic short evolved into a novella and now it is becoming a novel with around 70 thousand words. As you can tell from these articles, I seem to have trouble writing short things.
During my writing of this book, I’ve researched and met many people that have been very helpful in sharing their information about these things. This article from November about how to sell your books better wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for them. I plan to document and post way more articles about the book writing process and how to market your books as soon as I get to that stage. This stuff, of course, won’t apply to only erotica genre, but also self-publishing in general. A lot of stuff is in the works for this project, so stay tuned.
Selling my art
As many of you might’ve known, one of my side hustles is selling my paintings on Displate. Check out my profile if you wish to see the examples. Note: If you buy any Displates through these links, I get a small commission as well. During the last few months, my sales tripled due to Christmas. Displates turned out to be pretty good presents. I’ve earned about 240$ over the last 90 days. Most of it came from 3 paintings that I wouldn’t even expect to sell. This one has been my most sold painting for the past 3 months. This might sound like not that much money, but I didn’t have to move my finger since the last October when I made most of my Displate paintings for the Inktober event.
This motivated me to work more on my art and make more paintings. I will make an article in the future about what sells well on Displate and how to get passive income from there.
Here are some examples of my new works:
The art is pretty simplistic, but I enjoy making it very much.
Crypto trading
And finally, we are getting to the last thing I experimented with over the past three months and that is trading with cryptocurrency. This is something I’ve avoided for the longest time in fear of losing my money and would you guessed it, I lost 60% of what I put in. So about 2000 dollars. Thanks to Covid, this was money I could spare as my expenses are low and I am not a very social person, so saving up this amount is a question of a few months. I still have the remaining 40% invested and it keeps growing, so I might possibly get back what I invested one day.
In either way, crypto is a shocking rollercoaster. It can make you money really quick and it can also take all of your money in 20 seconds (this happened to my friend just yesterday, even though warnings and begging for him to not do it.)
With crypto, you can make money like nowhere else, but you can also lose it rapidly. It’s something you absolutely need to go into with a mindset of “the money I’m putting in, is the money I might never see again.” and truly mean it. It’s a thing that won’t let you sleep, that will make you stare at the candle charts every ten minutes and a thing that will test your greed. And trust me, even when you think you are not greedy, you will find out how wrong you were when you see that graph go up.
In total, I put into this side hustle around 3000-3500 dollars. Pretty much the most I’ve ever put into anything. There were moments when I held 6000 dollars and still wanted more, only to lose it the next day and drop to 2000. These were incredibly expensive lessons not everyone can offer to go through. I’ve decided I will make a few articles about my journey, tell you about my struggles and how to avoid most of these. This research has been very painful and cost me a lot of stress, so we’ll see if it’s been worth it.
Summary
And that’s it. I honestly thought that by the end of 2020, I would be doing nothing, only burdened by my failures and my 9-5. It’s been hard to get over the feeling of “what’s the point of doing anything anyway” and get back on track. Even if for a little bit. But in the end, I am proud that I’ve managed to stay productive, even though, in my very core, I wanted to not to be. Stay productive. It feels good to look back and realize you were able to do things you for yourself.
Now, thank you for reading this article. It’s been mostly for my own sake, but I am glad I could let you know what to expect in the upcoming months. What were your struggles? Did you overcome them? Please let me know in the comments below, I always read them. (They don’t get approved right away, but if you are a real person they will.) Now, have a wonderful day, you beautiful person!
