The other day I was reading a blog about blogging from my blogger friend that inspired me to blog. This is the story of how and why I decided to start writing. If you are not into reading you can listen to the video podcast below. Or if you want to read about it, keep on scrolling then watch the podcast for the extras if you like.
Dracula childhood. And I hate reading
I can trace my writing origins to the year 1994. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was in pop culture. I was only twelve and not allowed to watch the full movie on account of sex stuff. We watched it on VHS and my parents would pause the movie. Then would make me leave the room whenever a naughty part happened. I pretty much was exposed to the entire plot. I was absolutely fascinated by Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation.
My mother said it was the closest to the book out of any other Dracula movie made. She noticed the opportunity to get me to read. I hated reading with every fiber of my twelve year old being. But, the story was compelling enough to break that barrier. I did the unthinkable and I read a book. It was unlike any book I had ever seen. Most of the books in English class were difficult for me to comprehend. Lysdexia did not help matters much either. Dracula was written in a journal format. Kind of like a bloggity blog. The twelve year old me had no idea you could do that. After I read the book, I wanted to write my own Dracula story. In our house we actually have an old school typewriter. This was one of my fondest memories and foundation of my literary interest. But around high school I lost interest in writing and reading on account of sex stuff.
Army Reading
Later in life I answered the “Call of Duty” at eighteen. But most of the time it felt like “Call of Dookie”. My years in the Army were filled with a lot of down time. And we didn’t have no fandangled cellular phones playing them moving pictures and what not. Needless to say, I started picking up my old childhood hobbies again. Drawing, writing and occasionally reading. I still loathed reading at the time.
The Dragonlance series was tolleriable until i figured that they were tricking the reader. Every time someone died they would get necromancered a couple chapters later. Irritated by being intellectually suckered, I started writing my own stories and poetry. At the end of my four years of service, I had enough notebooks to fill a footlocker. When I was in the job market I left my old hobbies to create videos as my favorite pastime. I didn’t do any writing until I went back to school. I actually found a lot of joy in writing papers for class. As well as, found out I actually do enjoy reading. After college, my chosen occupation couldn’t keep up with the loans that it required. So I went for a change of pace and became a truck driver.
Truck Driver Rants
I only drove freight for a couple of years. I found it greatly limited my artistic creativity and what I could do. However, I did find some time to write some creative short stories and outline some long ones. At the time the U.S. laws required that commercial drivers have to stop every eleven hours and not drive again for another ten hours. This gave about three hours to twiddle my thumbs at the truck stop each day. With my milla mutt. This was in 2012 the year of the Mayan Apocalypse. I wrote a lot about futurism and shared my ideas about the world on Facebook. Mostly rants and rambles about politics and opinions. Just like everyone else on the Facewaste. Little did I know it, those junk posts really honed in my writing voice. Without that social voice I don’t think I would have ever considered blogging at all. So thank you Facewate #silverlining
Becoming An Artist
By October of 2012 I decided to step out of the Truck. It just wasn’t the lifestyle for me. Over the two year I had put on a lot of weight. I really like my cheeseburgers and wasn’t getting enough exercise to compensate. I needed a more active life and really wanted to pursue my passions while I was still young. So I did. I had no direction though (still don’t). I was bouncing betwixt jobs and careers to pay the bills (still do). In 2014 I was frustrated trying to figure out how to sell my art and become an independent artist. A lot of You Tubers made it look so easy. But, that is another article for another time. I saw a quote from Ellen Degeneres saying, “Every overnight success requires ten years of hard work”. That was a lightbulb moment for me. I declared to myself in tens years I’ll either be running my own art business or give it all up for good.
The Ten Year Pact, Promoting my Art and Making Friends
So I really started digging in my heels. I started my YouTube channel “Breaking Art” now known as “BAMvfx”. I spent the first five year focused more on developing my skills with a minimal focus on sales and commissions. As I get closer to the ten year mark I would slowly switch over towards the marketing. But along the way I met some really insightful people though networking in art groups. It astonishes me the amount of information you can find on just about anything. “Lachri Fine Art”, really leveled me up quickly. Her tutorials are great in all aspects of running an art business. Also, a really big shout out to MA Taylor of “Beachhouse Media”. He personally gave me the encouragement to pursue writing. For months I dragged my feet proclaiming, “I’m a vlogger”. I like the videos. But eventually I came around. I was kind of forced into it by circumstances.
Website Nightmares & Adobe Muse Trap
Once things started getting super serious, I decided it was time for the Breaking Art website. Being on Adobe Creative Cloud I thought it would be best if I used Adobe Muse. There was a lot I really liked about Muse. It’s interface was awesome but it was very buggy and created buggy websites. I even took on a few web clients. But, totally under charged and got manipulated into a six month contract that at the end of the day put my pay rate at about $3.50 an hour. That was a very valuable learning experience. I did get to see how other people write and did a lot of proofreading. It was more exposure to the written creative process. Then one day Adobe said it was no longer going to develop Muse. I was very upset at the time but looking back from their perspective I think it was a good business decision. And for me, I am thankful that they did. It forced me to learn WordPress.
Time to WordPress
At the time my sister needed help with her work’s website. I coached her with what I knew pro bono. Both her and her boss really wanted me to develop the site together. I was very hesitant because of the learning curve. They were very persistent, however. Needing the money I eventually took on the project and we did a great job. But it was a very painful process. Doing that site I saw the power of WordPress. It was very intimidating at first but the visibility and SEO it generated was very impressive. To figure out how to build the client’s website I used the Deposit to buy my own WP business plan. I would test things out on mine before trying it out on the clients. It was a crash course. The secret to generating SEO is in the blog. But being stubborn. I just built my site and used the blogs to post my art videos. And shying away from that crazy copywriting.
Blog in Boiling Water
Over the last year and a half I started to write more and more in my blog post. I learned the more you write in a post the more the search engines can categorise your content and make sure it gets seen by the right people. Writing gives me great anxiety though. Growing up lysdexic, I frustrated a lot of teachers and parents. But many people suggested I write more content. That imposter syndrome can be insidious. But at this point I am over it. Now it has become another skill set to add to my mental toolbox. Now I can test that skill set too. Thanks to Sarah over at Wholesale Ted, I learned of a website called, “TextBroker”. This matches freelance writers with clients. But, what I really like about it is that they grade your writing skill on a scale of one to five stars. I cannot wait to try it and see how I score. I’ll do a follow up post to let you all know how I did.
Meeting The Ten Year Pact 3 Years Early
Over the last couple of weeks I have been really assessing my skill sets and looking to change my day job short term until I can run BAMvfx full time. At the start of the year I estimated I could do that in 2021. But due to the global beer bug I think that is going to happen quicker. My content is getting exponential growth and I have a lot more skills then I thought. All perfect for the stay at home worker. Graphic Design, WordPress, Blogging, Writing, Animation I feel ready for this brave new world we are going into. And I want to help as many people as I can to learn from what I know. Not to mention I have learned other side hustles. I can set up a shopify store. I do print on demand and I have become pretty good at trading stocks. As soon as my side income out paces my day job. I will be able to free that job for someone that needs it more than I do. But that will be another article for another day. Turning my side hustles into my main hustles.
I greatly appreciate you stopping. If you are interested in some design work jump on over to the contact page or dm me in the social media. Keep scrolling to find the spots to follow. Special shout out to MA Taylor of Beechhouse Media for getting me to jump into the blog pond. Scroll past the Gift Shop to hit that like button at the bottom of this post and feel free to leave me a comment in the comment box. But most importantly don’t forget to be the best you that you can be.
Love you guys so much I built ya a T-Shirt. “Blogging Ain’t Easy” for the bloggity bloggers that like to blog. This awesome T-Shit is made of a thicker, heavier cotton, but it’s still soft and comfy. And the double stitching on the neckline and sleeves add more durability to what is sure to be a awesome!
• Sport Grey is 90% ring-spun cotton, 10% polyester
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• 4.5 oz/y² (153 g/m²)
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