One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

To Substack or Not

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Remember this? 🙂

Hi. Yeah, I’m on Substack and apparently every Substacker’s favorite topic is Substack itself. Is it really? It’s not really my favorite topic, but I’ll take a look at this article and think about that. There are a lot of names mentioned here. A lot of people are on Substack. A lot of people seem to be making money there. I’m not one of them. I mean, I make a little bit of money, but it’s very, very small.

Now, raise your hand if like me, your email is inundated with more newsletters than you have time in the day to read. Since you’re reading this newsletter, I’m guessing many of these missives are coming courtesy of Substack, the 8-year-old publishing platform that’s seen explosive growth since the presidential election last year.

Most interesting.

Well, I have to tell you, I’m not inundated with newsletters that I have no time to read because when I don’t read them, I unsubscribe. Or these days I avoid subscribing entirely because I have no time to read them. I do have time to talk about it though. I think what we’re heading toward is a situation in which there’s going to be too much of everything and not enough behind it to merit the payment. And I am just a little bit worried about that myself. So these are things that bother me quite a bit in reading stuff like this. I mean, we have big names coming onto this platform and people feel threatened or something because they’re not making the leaderboard.

 


Making the leaderboard sometimes is not as awesome as you think it is. Sometimes it just does not last. I know in my case with Amazon, it did not last. So all of this obsession over numbers and where you end up on a leaderboard, I don’t know how much we really benefit by obsessing over these things. I’m thinking we don’t benefit much at all, that we’re better off trying to find a way to reach people without obsessing about these numbers. So I don’t know, but I, I’m trying to get at that a little bit with what I’m saying here. Maybe we need to just kind of relax and not worry so much about this stuff. That’s just my thought, thought for the day.

At some point I reached a point where I was burnt out and I just had to just relax and just not worry so much. So that’s what I have to say about that. And I hope that you’re having a good day, wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing, I’ll go back to exercising. I should have been exercising this whole time and I haven’t been. There, you see. Helps with the dystonia.

Okay? So I’ll be seeing you! Take care and yes, I’m in my Colonel Kurtz mode here, or whatever his name was who went after Colonel Kurtz. Half in shadow. The horror, the horror of the internet. Take care, be seeing you.

PS: It was Captain Willard played by the amazing Martin Sheen! 🙂

Want to subscribe to my Substack? 🙂 For free?

PPS: Takes a while to get geared up, doesn’t it? 

 

Books Recommended for Writers

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Hi! It’s me. 🙂

Hi. Yeah, I’m just going to quickly talk about a few books I have with me that I highly recommend. I’ve just started this book and I can already tell you I highly recommend it. I mean, I can already tell that this is going to be an awesome book. See that book? See? See? Okay. I Could Have Written a Better Movie Than That! How to Make Six Figures as a Script Consultant, Even if You’re Not a Screenwriter. Interesting. Very interesting sort of tagline there. Derek Rydall, Rydall? Anyway, don’t you love this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff out there about screenwriting, am I right? And about writing in general. Let’s see. Oh, but the table of contents, I thumbed through this thing and I’m like, okay. Yeah, yeah. Good. Excellent. Whoa! I can tell this is going to be awesome. Okay. Now the other thing I wanted to mention was this book.

 

 

This is absolutely essential reading. Digital Property: Currency of the 21st Century. Yes, yes, yes. And I’m telling you, this is a real education.

Oh, by the way, it was published in 1997, and it’s every bit as relevant today, every bit.

Travel Writing 2.0. This is an excellent book. Whether you intend to become a travel writer or not, just reading about how much work is involved in becoming a paid blogger is an education in itself. I mean, there’s a bit of, I don’t know when this was published, but it was before all this social media started taking over, and everybody had to be a social media star. You don’t have to be a social media star. You don’t, I’m not sure that a person who does that is necessarily happier because of it. I think there’s a lot that people don’t question about this stuff. Anyway, this is a really good book, and it’s got some great points about how much work is involved in blogging, what it means to give value as a blogger, and I would love, so love to do some more traveling and do this kind of stuff.

Anyway, having said all that, I took a look at this and no, I cannot in good conscience recommend it. In fact, it’s just advice on how to hop from one platform to another. No, no. The last thing I need is to get on more social media. The best thing to do is to get away from social media. I mean, not to get away from it entirely, but to use it properly. There. I said it. Use social media properly.

If you have all these followers on TikTok, is that going to last forever? I sold thousands of downloads and look at me now, it’s like, what does it all mean? Well, I’d like to think that the work was meaningful enough. People liked it, and that helped. But to see your fortunes come crashing down, simply because you don’t go along with somebody’s strong arm technique or the mob mentality that I had to become exclusive to Amazon, it’s devastating to your self-esteem on top of everything else that was hurting me.

So anyway, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Don’t rely on social media for happiness, period. Okay, that’s all. I’m done, I guess for now. And just be real. Be kind to yourself. You don’t have to hustle all the time. You shouldn’t. It’ll just wear you out. So having said that, I’m glad to have had the time to be able to say that and just articulate that point. And thanks for listening and be good to yourself. Be seeing you.

Readings from ‘Tribes’

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Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

Hi. It’s Sunday morning. I have not been reading the Post because I no longer get the Post. Yeah, we don’t have our usual Sunday paper this morning, so instead I’m reading from Tribes. Tribes is really good. Here are a few really good parts of it.

The timing of leadership.

It’s rare that it’s obvious when to lead. Sure, there are times when you know you need to stand up, take a position, spread an idea, clear out an obstacle, and be brave. But more often than not, great leadership happens when the tribe at least expects it. The non-obvious moments are the ones that count. Like now perhaps.

Then an interesting one about Wikipedia in here. I thought that was interesting. A possibility of risk.

Click here to read more and hear the reading!