I feel the need to ramble and to say whatever the heck I want to say online and unfortunately, I really have no place to do that. It is an unfortunate side effect of being so present online… you have nowhere to hide. As soon as I type these words and hit publish they will be public. Eventually google will get around to indexing them and they will be permanent. They may or may not ever be found. They may or may not be something someone find by typing a crazy search term like “ugly christmas stockings” or “dolphin nosed animals on land.” Who knows if anyone will ever read what I’m writing or not. It is public, but at the same time it is almost impossible to get people to read what you write online. I think I still have 7 subscribers on this blog… which I’m sorry if this shows up in your feed. Please unsubscribe immediately. I really don’t want any subscribers here, I just want someplace to ramble.
So ramble I will. There are very few things associating this domain name with who I am. Apparently every other domain name has some form of my name in it, which at the moment is too much. Even though I used this blog as my main one at one point, I’m done using it and haven’t considered any use for it in a long time. I guess because it was my blog I used while I was in Memphis it is one I want to write in now while I’m back in Memphis.
The problem with all my other blogs (oh, they keep multiplying!) is that I am writing for other people. On my weight loss blog I am writing for the people who come to read about me losing weight or not losing weight. I love that blog, I do, and I appreciate all the opportunities it has afforded me, but I can’t fully be myself. In some ways I’m more open and vulnerable there than I ever thought I would be online. I’ve stripped off my clothes and I’ve bared my soul in multiple ways. But it’s still limited to a certain topic, one that I hope is not the only thing my life is about. Losing weight and being healthier is important but it’s not the only thing in my life. So I can’t fully be myself there.
And I can’t be myself on my other blog, even though it is a personal blog. For some reason even though I can write about whatever I want, I’ve mentally limited myself. I’ve gotten obsessed with the travel and lifestyle design crowd, so that’s all I want to write about there. I want to write about that and move up in that niche because for some reason I want to be one of those people who travels all the time and works when and how they want. So I feel like I have to write for those people and write those kinds of things for that blog. I do think having a travel blog will be very cool. The travel industry is huge online and will eventually end up earning me a bit of money for that blog.
Speaking of earning money online… I think that is where all my angst is coming from. (All the sudden this feels like a teenage emo session… I probably should just go write on a completely anonymous blog, eh?) I’ve latched onto the idea of making money online through blogging and I can’t quite let it go. I think I’ve focused more on it because I can’t get a real job for the next two months. Without a car I am very limited to the types of jobs I can get. Further, I’m only staying in Memphis for a month. A month! I know its seasonal work time, but I’ve missed out on the hiring phase and I wouldn’t work really for more than two weeks. So I just abandoned that idea. If I had a car I would have gone to the temp agencies but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Because I don’t have the option of getting a job I started thinking of other ways to make money, mostly because I need it. I have a bit saved up but not having income feels like a dangerous place to be. Not having money coming in when you are sending out a lot each month seems like the fast track to a very bad place. I don’t want to end up buried alive in debt. I’m trying to dig my way back out of debt. I thought about babysitting, but don’t have a car and don’t know anyone close enough to give me a job. And there is the fact that I don’t know anyone with small children. I would love to babysit, or be a nanny, or whatever, but that isn’t meant to be either. Neither is dogwalking or pizza delivery or anything else I would have done as a teenager. How exactly does an unemployed adult get money?
I have no freaking idea.
So I figured I would try to make the online worker thing my job for the month that I’m home. Yeah, that has worked out real well, as in a month I’ve already made myself slightly crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I do make money online. I started trying to make money about 6 months ago and I have some cool site that generate a couple hundred dollars. But a couple hundred dollars is not a full time income. And that’s more of what I need. So I’ve been reading and trying to learn as much as possible about all of this. And all I’m learning is that I hate the crowd that makes money online. They are all either crazy, have no morals, or are trying to sell you useless crap that you don’t want.
I don’t want to sell anyone anything. I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to do anything against my morals.
Which basically means it is going to be a million times harder for me to actually make any money online. Especially if I’m trying to make money with a travel blog and a healthy living blog. I mean, I have a good niche where I could sell to people. I could sell my soul and hawk weight loss products to them. I kind of already do with the ads on my site, but they know that is not stuff I promote or recommend. So it’s hard for me to figure out the right way to make money online. Blogging just for the sake of blogging doesn’t get you anywhere fast. It’s funny how the A-list bloggers act like if you just make a blog like theirs and get lucky you can make 100k a year too. Yeah, funny.
So the fact that much of the success the make money online bloggers have can’t be replicated has made me quite a bit tired of the idea that they promote you can. Give them your money and you can be famous and rich via the internet too!! Awesome possum! I guess it is time for me to stop reading that crap and move on to doing productive things, even if they don’t make me money. In the end I think just time will be the thing that helps me the most. But when you are broke and two levels up from starving, time doesn’t sound really good. But I know in a few years I will be making a lot more money than I am now, if I keep up what I am doing now. So I will just keep it up and hope for the best, which I know will happen soon. This will continue to be my part-time job and after I get back from New Zealand I will be able to get a proper job that brings in a steady paycheck. And that will be really nice and I can work on the web stuff part time again instead of letting it be annoyingly too important as it is right now.
The funny thing is that I really am excited about all the projects I’m working on. Dude, I’m making a site for Memphis photographers! I love that idea and I can continue to work on my own personal project on that site as well as create something useful for people looking for photographers in Memphis. And I love my other blogs. They are all about things I like and are important in my life.
Since I just managed to write about 1500 words about blogging and making money online maybe I should consider blogging about that too. Or rather, not making money online. I could write about being a college graduate without a job. But that would just be mean to the people who are actually trying to get jobs and can’t get them. I don’t want to be mean, so I’ll just keep blogging about trying to make money online as my stupid, stupid, stupid hobby (really I just like writing online and money seems like a good idea) and tell all of you subscribers to go away.
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