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Winter Solstice
In my personal calendar, this is the first week of the Winter Season (tm). In my Bullet Journal I chop up the year into four 13-week sections and try to use these times as "sprints" to shift paradigms, begin/end big projects, take stock of what's working and what's not. Well, that's the idea anyway.
Nothing this year went the way I had been hoping to, but that doesn't say that nothing happened this year. There have been significant blows, both seen and surprise, that have really thrown me off my game. I made the decision to seek therapy earlier because the weight of everything had just been crushing me to the point I couldn't function as consistently as I wanted to -- and that turned out to be a good decision.
So, in that spirit, I want Winter 2025 to be a restorative one. There are a lot of things outside of my control that will make things harder, but I'm really hoping to sit with these difficulties and use them as opportunities to navigate difficult emotions. Fear and despair are the things I'm watching out for, but as I turn my attention toward my anger and start trying to work with it I anticipate there's going to be a lot of...choppy things to work through. I'm worried about that, because winters aren't easy for anyone and I really want to make them as cozy and comfortable for folks as possible.
The Big Project this Winter, of course, will be finding a job -- or booting up alternate revenue streams at the very least. Last time I was laid off, it took me a little over four months to find a job and even then it was only by the recommendation of a friend. This time, the economy is even worse and it looks like remote work has all but dried up. If I'm being completely honest, I don't like my chances of finding something quickly. It feels like the last hiring window of the year might be closing, and companies tend to button up quite a bit through the holidays so they can do more hiring possibly in January or February. It feels like if I don't find something that I can start by late-October, I'll have to settle in for a jobless season.
Thankfully, my therapist helped me prepare for that by imagining a 'best-case scenario' for Thanksgiving if I didn't have a job. It forced me to put my focus back on the things I *could* control to make the best of a bad situation and through that I realized I have a couple of moves.
First, there's the Patreon. I know I've had significant trouble with writing consistently but...after a lot of work I think I'm ready to give it another go. The plan is to spend this month writing as much as I can to build a buffer, take the old Patreon out of mothballs with a few updates here and there, then really think about the payment tiers. I think $2 would get you non-fiction essays and life updated; $5 would get you at least one story bit a week. I'm hoping that the story bits will be no longer than 1500 - 2000 words, and each story would be anywhere from 4 - 7 bits. Ultimately, I'd publish a 6000-word short story each month and folks would think that'd be worth $5.
I know that there's a crackdown on adult fiction just about everywhere these days, so I'd have to keep an eye out for that. I don't know if there's a good alternative to Patreon right now beyond Subscribestar, but hopefully I won't have to think about that very much. >.> The plan is to start charging folks again in November once I've built up the buffer and spent a month giving folks the chance to change their pledges, drop out, or whatever they wanted to do.
There's also work to be done with Sofawolf Academy and FurPlanet. Sofawolf is pivoting from a publisher to a writer's community, and I could definitely help out with community management there. I don't think I'd get paid for it up front, but it *would* be good practice to develop my skills there and add a project or two to my portfolio if I end up looking for that kind of work sometime later. The Community Management space is...very squishy right now; even when companies were hiring, there was a worry that executives couldn't directly connect what we did to their bottom line. I'm not sure if that's gotten any better, but at least it's a marketable skillset.
In addition to the Patreon and the furry-publishing work, I'm also planning to spend as much time as possible upskilling. This keeps my learning muscles limber and makes sure I'm not spending my unemployment sinking deeper into depression.
I know that this season will be a significant challenge for me. It's really hard to keep the worst thoughts out of your head when you're looking for employment; I realize that it's honestly a employer's market right now and will be for the foreseeable future. It's going to be so hard finding a livable wage and a stable position.
So I'm just going to have to get creative about making ends meet. Snep and Ratty have my back while I'm unemployed, but I want to lean on them as little as possible until I can stand on my own two feet.
The watchword this season is "resilience". I'm going to do my best to bloom inwards, even if conditions aren't right for me to flower yet.
Nothing this year went the way I had been hoping to, but that doesn't say that nothing happened this year. There have been significant blows, both seen and surprise, that have really thrown me off my game. I made the decision to seek therapy earlier because the weight of everything had just been crushing me to the point I couldn't function as consistently as I wanted to -- and that turned out to be a good decision.
So, in that spirit, I want Winter 2025 to be a restorative one. There are a lot of things outside of my control that will make things harder, but I'm really hoping to sit with these difficulties and use them as opportunities to navigate difficult emotions. Fear and despair are the things I'm watching out for, but as I turn my attention toward my anger and start trying to work with it I anticipate there's going to be a lot of...choppy things to work through. I'm worried about that, because winters aren't easy for anyone and I really want to make them as cozy and comfortable for folks as possible.
The Big Project this Winter, of course, will be finding a job -- or booting up alternate revenue streams at the very least. Last time I was laid off, it took me a little over four months to find a job and even then it was only by the recommendation of a friend. This time, the economy is even worse and it looks like remote work has all but dried up. If I'm being completely honest, I don't like my chances of finding something quickly. It feels like the last hiring window of the year might be closing, and companies tend to button up quite a bit through the holidays so they can do more hiring possibly in January or February. It feels like if I don't find something that I can start by late-October, I'll have to settle in for a jobless season.
Thankfully, my therapist helped me prepare for that by imagining a 'best-case scenario' for Thanksgiving if I didn't have a job. It forced me to put my focus back on the things I *could* control to make the best of a bad situation and through that I realized I have a couple of moves.
First, there's the Patreon. I know I've had significant trouble with writing consistently but...after a lot of work I think I'm ready to give it another go. The plan is to spend this month writing as much as I can to build a buffer, take the old Patreon out of mothballs with a few updates here and there, then really think about the payment tiers. I think $2 would get you non-fiction essays and life updated; $5 would get you at least one story bit a week. I'm hoping that the story bits will be no longer than 1500 - 2000 words, and each story would be anywhere from 4 - 7 bits. Ultimately, I'd publish a 6000-word short story each month and folks would think that'd be worth $5.
I know that there's a crackdown on adult fiction just about everywhere these days, so I'd have to keep an eye out for that. I don't know if there's a good alternative to Patreon right now beyond Subscribestar, but hopefully I won't have to think about that very much. >.> The plan is to start charging folks again in November once I've built up the buffer and spent a month giving folks the chance to change their pledges, drop out, or whatever they wanted to do.
There's also work to be done with Sofawolf Academy and FurPlanet. Sofawolf is pivoting from a publisher to a writer's community, and I could definitely help out with community management there. I don't think I'd get paid for it up front, but it *would* be good practice to develop my skills there and add a project or two to my portfolio if I end up looking for that kind of work sometime later. The Community Management space is...very squishy right now; even when companies were hiring, there was a worry that executives couldn't directly connect what we did to their bottom line. I'm not sure if that's gotten any better, but at least it's a marketable skillset.
In addition to the Patreon and the furry-publishing work, I'm also planning to spend as much time as possible upskilling. This keeps my learning muscles limber and makes sure I'm not spending my unemployment sinking deeper into depression.
I know that this season will be a significant challenge for me. It's really hard to keep the worst thoughts out of your head when you're looking for employment; I realize that it's honestly a employer's market right now and will be for the foreseeable future. It's going to be so hard finding a livable wage and a stable position.
So I'm just going to have to get creative about making ends meet. Snep and Ratty have my back while I'm unemployed, but I want to lean on them as little as possible until I can stand on my own two feet.
The watchword this season is "resilience". I'm going to do my best to bloom inwards, even if conditions aren't right for me to flower yet.