At 20:16 in this Authors at Google talk, musician/writer Amanda Palmer shares a story from her book, The Art of Asking. It's about how artists of all kinds struggle with making money, and how even 19th century author, Henry David Thoreau, actually had his mom and sister bring him homemade donuts every Sunday, out to his hand made cabin in Walden Woods. As he lived off the land, and "sucked the marrow out of life," he had help. Even the hardy Thoreau got quite a bit of help from friends and family, as he spent a couple of years living simply out by Walden pond. With that help he went on to write the book Walden, one of the most classic American books of all time. Since its publishing, that book has helped millions of people become more connected to the natural world around us all. Without the help from friends and family, that epic book may never have happened.
This blog is 2 years old today
I started this blog two years ago today, three weeks into living in a tent, in the woods of Winston-Salem North Carolina. I'm not a Thoreau, by any means. I went to live in a patch of urban woods for financial reasons. A friend hooked me up with enough money to get a week in a cheap motel right when I started this blog. That help kept me out of a lot of rain storms, and Carolina's lightning filled thunderstorms, for seven days, and made a huge difference.
In Steve Emig: The White Bear, I brought all my blogs and blog ideas into one, the old school BMX stories, the ideas about the future of our society, thoughts on the economy, and my Sharpie marker art. While my two previous BMX blogs, and my blog about homelessness before that, had been successful as readership goes, I honestly had no idea if anyone would read this blog. Not surprisingly, it started off slow.
This blog is mostly about three weird and different things, and my random thoughts and ideas. Today this blog is two years old, and very much to my surprise, it has over 75,000 page views in those two years. My first blog post, two years ago, was one where I talked about why I went to the woods, a much different reason that Thoreau's. I started that post with the Amanda Palmer talk above. I had to leave a really toxic place I was living in two years ago, to even have a chance, of ever making a decent living again. Over 140 job applications I filled out in North Carolina back then didn't pan out and land a job. My Sharpie art was the only thing making me any money, and that was my only hope of making a living again at the time. So I headed out into the woods just over two years ago, with about $15 in my pocket, all or nothing. Either I started making money, or I died, basically. I didn't die. But I haven't thrived, either.
These past two years have been a wild ride I couldn't have imagined at the time, and I'd seen some pretty crazy stuff happen before that. In the 3 1/2 years since I began focusing on on making a living with my art, starting in November 2015, I've sold over 80 major drawings, nearly all of which took 35-45 hours to draw. That hasn't made me a decent living, but it has kept me alive through some really tough times, along with help from several friends. I just want to thank all of you for the help you have given me. In a couple of cases, I've taken more help than I probably should have, and those people may think I took advantage of them. That was never my intention, shit just got crazy. I have a list of people I want to send a cool drawing (or something like that) to, when things get stable enough foe me to do it.
I've spent most of the last three years homeless. People have a lot of ideas about being homeless, most of them wrong, or based on bad information and misunderstandings. When it comes down to it, getting out of homelessness, and more importantly, knowing you're going to stay out of it, is mostly a matter of cash flow. I need to build a decent and sizable income to finally leave homelessness permanently, and to be sure I'll have a place to live, barring really extreme circumstances, from then on. When I can earn a decent living, I'll be able get a place to live, permanently, and rebuild my life in the material sense.
The main reason people become homeless is lack of a strong family and/or social network. Few people really understand that. The common misconception is that most people who are homeless are in that situation because they are alcoholics, addicts, mentally ill, or just plain lazy. Yes, a large number of homeless people struggle with one or more of those issues, but usually the main reason they become homeless is some big personal crisis, AND a weak or on-existent family/social network. MOST alcoholics have a nice place to live. Hell, I was a taxi driver that drove a lot of drunk people home, many of them quite wealthy. A huge percentage of wealthy people are hard drinkers, if not full blown alcoholics, but they have a great place to live. If they get into trouble of some kind, financial or otherwise, they have a family and social network to help them through it, and never come close to being homeless.
Most addicts have a decent place to live. Addiction often leads to alienating the people around you at some point, which collapses your family social network, and can possibly lead to homelessness. But most addicts are not to that point, and have a place to live. In the same way, MOST mentally ill people, and that includes me dealing with clinical depression for 3-4 years, have a place to live. My focusing on my Sharpie art came at the end of that battle. Mental illness can lead to homelessness, but most mentally ill people have a decent place to live. It's the family and social networks that really make the big difference, in many, if not most, cases. They help you through tough times without things getting to rock bottom.
I don't drink anymore, like I did when I was younger. I didn't drink hard, but got buzzed, and occasionally hammered, in my 20's, and 30's. Addiction wasn't an issue, I just don't really like drinking, and I just stopped when I was a taxi driver. I don't do an recreational drugs, and I don't take psych or depression meds. I lived mostly on my own for years, and made enough to live low budget, but well. Then an injury in 1998 led to leaving the best paying job I've had, as a Hollywood-type lighting guy, and ultimately becoming a taxi driver. That led to working homelessness, working 7 days a week while living in my cab. I've been in and out of homelessness since, and I've been in some form of homelessness about 10 of the 20 years since. About 6 1/2 of those ten years, I was working full time, mostly as a taxi driver, and sometimes with two jobs. But I didn't have the income to fully rebuild and get completely stable for the long term. So I kept in the danger zone, on the edge, and wound up homeless on and off. I also got hit by the technological disruption in the taxi industry, which made making a good living driving a cab nearly impossible.
Along the way, I've learned who and what I really am. I'm a writer, artist, and have an entrepreneurial spirit. I've spent the last ten years blogging, and more importantly, learning how technology has changed the game in the media and business world. Now I have a popular blog in its niche, I've started a second one in another niche (more on that soon), I do a unique form or artwork that actually sells, though usually at fairly low prices for the number of hours put in. I've also learned quite a bit about internet marketing and promotion, and that's another skill needed by most businesses these days.
But I've been rebuilding from a super low level, a tent in the woods, and it's a long, tough road to get to a decent income level. I keep plugging along on that road. A couple days ago I left Block Bikes, and the blog I was doing to promote their online store. While I got good SEO results, and some good numbers on page views and things like that, the whole point of an online store is sales. Recently it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to really generate the business revenue needed to really get things going in the time frame needed.
At the same time, I was doing a big chunk of work for that, and also looking for other ways to help build my personal income to the point where I could actually rebuild my life. In the the fairly small metro area of Lancaster and Palmdale, CA, it also became apparent that I would have trouble earning enough to really rebuild my life back. I'm incredibly grateful to Rich Bartlett at Block for giving me the opportunity, for getting me back out to Southern California, and I gave it my best shot with my particular skill set, to really get the Block Bikes Online BMX Store pumping. I just don't have all the skills needed to help such a big project build so quick. I wish them the best. I left on very short notice, which was lame of me, but seemed the best idea at the time.
So I'm back in Orange County, California now, which is a much, much bigger metro area than Lancaster, and I believe it has far more potential for me to earn the kind of living I need, to get back on track once and for all.
Thanks everyone for checking out and reading this blog over the last two years, for buying and sharing my artwork, and the zines I've done (Yes, I still have some of The Spot zine packs to send out, I'm working to make that happen guys). It's a new start, yet again, I'm living low, but I'm back in the place I call home, where I know a lot of people, and I think that will be the big difference in getting my life back on track. Thanks again, I'll do my best to keep it all interesting and fun. I'll get to work on Year 3 of this blog tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment