You don't have to be a train wreck to become a writer. But it's a damn good place to start. Meme I made a couple of days ago. #stevemigmemes
In May of 2020, this blog hit the 100,000 page view milestone, which is pretty epic for a personal blog. I started this blog in late June of 2017, bringing my other blogs ideas into one, shortly after moving out of my mom's small apartment, in Kernersville, North Carolina, and into a tent in the woods in Winston-Salem, NC. I was completely focused on trying to make a living with my #sharpiescribblestyle artwork at the time. I had no idea if anyone, at all, would every read this blog. Hey, guess what? Quite a few people have checked out this blog in the 4 1/2 years since (check the counter). The start of this blog seems like 20 years ago to me.
I've sold 50 or more original pieces of my Sharpie art since then, and managed to continue as a homeless, but working, artist. I've had three short respites from homelessness in the last 4 1/2 years, about two months each, and about a year apart each. I also tried out a few new blogs. Here they are:
The Big Freakin' Transition- My name for the time period I believe we're in, an 80 to 90 year long transition period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age.
For most of the last 18-19 months, the Covid Era, as we now seem to call it, I had to struggle to just survive on the streets of the San Fernando Valley. It was really struggle to find a place to charge my laptop, and then travel somewhere else by bus, to find wifi to actually get online, until my battery died. For much of this time, it was all I could do to just keep in touch with people. I didn't have much time to blog, and do the nuts and bolts, behind the scenes work of promoting my blogs, linking things, making Pinterest pins, and all of that.
Now I've found a library to work in, so I can actually plug in and work on wifi at the same time. Imagine that. While I was struggling to just keep blogging, and do some Sharpie art to make some money, this blog just kept getting views, from all the various links to it from all over.
So after splitting my different ideas into different blogs, and trying various ideas out for a while, I've decided to come back to this blog, and get it going again. Like always, I'm not sure where that will lead. We'll find out together.
In May, in another blog, I went through and checked out how many blogs I have that actually have about 1,000 or more page views. I try on different blog ideas like women try out hairstyles, there were more than I thought. The total surprised me. I started blogging seriously in December of 2008. Since then, I've created over...
25 different blogs, over 2,405 blog posts, and pulled in over 438,000 total page views, as of May 2021. Here's that post.
There
isn't a really cool blog song that I know of, but Harvey's Danger's
"Flagpole Sitta" is cool, and mentions zines, where I got my
self-publishing start. Close enough.
"I want to publish zines, and rage against machines..."
-Harvey Danger, 1998, When zines were resurging, and when blogs were just being invented.
I
started my first blog about taxi driving in 2007, while living in my
taxi in Huntington Beach. I would go to the H.B. library and rent a
computer for $5 an hour, since I didn't own one, and write about funny
license plate rings or bumper stickers I saw while driving my taxi. I
think I wrote about 30 posts, and had maybe 50 page views in a year,
which seemed to mostly be from my mom and the cops. Not the greatest
start to blogging, but you have to start somewhere.
In
November of 2008 I landed at my parents' tiny apartment in Kernersville,
NC, after a year living on the streets in Orange County, CA. That
homeless year followed about 4 1/2 years of 7 days a week taxi driving,
living in my taxi for about 4 of those years. I lived in an indie art
gallery for 6-7 months, and drove a taxi on the weekends the other part
of that time. When I got to NC, I was 325 pounds, in horrible health,
42 years old, broke, and lost everything I owned in that move. I lost
everything from my 20+ years of BMX riding, except a key chain. I went
from depressed to really depressed.
But I had my parents
computer in my room. I had never really spent any time online up until
that point, I was a total Luddite, thinking "Fuck that goofy internet
shit." I knew almost nothing about the virtual world. Within two
weeks, I started a blog called FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, about my 5 month stint working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN'
magazines in 1986. I've been blogging pretty consistently ever since.
I've learned a few things about blogging in the 12 1/2 years since.
Here are the main blogs I've done...
FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales..... about 212 posts..... over 25,000 page views.... 2008-2009
Freestyle BMX Tales..... over 500 posts..... over 125,000 page views..... 2009-2012
Make Money Panhandling (picked
stupidest title I could think of to practice search engine optimization
(SEO)..... 100 posts?..... about 65,000 page views, 2010-2012
A
month or so after my dad died in August of 2012, I got seriously
depressed, and deleted all my blogs (I had tried about 20 or 30 blog
ideas, trying to figure out how to make money with a blog). I immediately regretted deleting my blogs after I did it. Lesson, DON'T delete your blogs.
Freestyle BMX Tales..... (version 2, on wordpress.com)..... can't remember how many posts..... 40-50 posts? 10-20,000 page views? Not sure.
Create Your Own Dang Job.....
17 posts..... 1,041 page views..... 2017 (If you look up nothing else
here, check out the first post on this one, my playlist for Trump's
inauguration day)
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- Book 1.....this
is a book published as a blog..... 20 chapters/posts, all built
December 2019..... 1962 page views..... December 2019- April 2020
So... Over 12 1/2 years, 25 blogs, 2,405 blog posts, 438,932 page views.
I
just found dozens of blog posts, actually a few hundred, that I totally
forgot I wrote. I've tried at least 30 more blog ideas, and stopped
after a few posts. But a lot of my same themes, like creative scenes,
re-building our world, starting a small business, Sharpie Scribble Style
art, and of course, BMX freestyle. Lesson for today? Don't be afraid
to try new ideas on a blog. When you get one that feels right, roll
with it. If you burn out on that idea for a while (or forever), leave
the blog up online, and go try something else for a while.
So... who wants to go down my rabbit hole? Click one of those links. I just blew my own mind.
In early 1991, pro freestyler and contest promoter Ron Wilkerson held a 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails, outside of San Diego. BMX was "dead," the mainstream world had given up on the sport, and we were a little underground tribe doing our thing in little pockets around the U.S. and the world. Death Jump, the big jump in this clip, was like no contest jump before. I consider it the first 'mega ramp," a 4 foot launch to a 25+ foot gap, to a hard, sandy, downhill landing. In addition, Mat Hoffman tried a backflip on dirt for the first time in a comp. This contest changed bike riding. This is my clip that appeared in the S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, S&M's first video.
This is my most popular blog that's still online, and I retired it with just over 100,000 page view in the spring of 2020. A lot of people still check this blog out, or stumble upon it if the Google me. So here are a few of the better things I've done that are online. Just to let you know, Steve Emig: the White Bear is banned from being linked to on Facebook and Instagram.
Crazy California 43- This blog tells little stories about locations of all kinds in California, places I find interesting, weird, funny, historical, or interesting in some way.
What 12 years of blogging can add up to
I just added up the stats of my blogs, most of them anyhow. Here's what I came up with (as of May 2021):
12 1/2 years of blogging, 25 blogs, 2,405 blog posts, 438,932 page views.
Really. Slow and steady work pays off (in content, if not in income).
In 2005, while actually living in an indie art gallery, I developed a way to shade with Sharpie markers, using overlapping scribbles. Unable to find any job while living in North Carolina, I stepped up my art game, and started to actively sell my drawings. I've done hundreds of drawings, sold around 90 originals, and my artwork has somehow made it to 6 of the 7 continents (I'm looking for art collectors in Antarctica and on the International Space Station, to go fully global). Here's a post on how my Sharpie art began. You can find it almost everywhere by searching #sharpiescribblestyle
In 1988 I got dumped by my first fairly long term girlfriend, got depressed (and a bit drunk), and wrote a poem called "The Journey of The White Bear." It told of my journey from a super shy, naive kid in Idaho, to working in Southern California, and dating a singer in a band who was a few years older, and much more experienced partying, and at life in general. I published that poem in 1992 in a poetry zine, gave one copy to my roommate, Chris Moeller, and he started calling me The White Bear. The nickname stuck. It's not a racist poem, but used the colors white and black as metaphors for going from a naive young man to some experience at real life.
My best BMX videos
I've produced, directed, and sometimes edited 11 BMX videos, 10 of them from 1987 to 1993. I was one of the first four BMX freestyle riders to produce full length videos, which soon became a key aspect of the BMX world. Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, and Jeremy Alder are the other three early BMX producers. I lost all my videos, masters, and raw video footage in a move in 2008. So only other people's copies online are left to share.
Oregon Pro Ramps-(1987) This is the second of 6 BMX freestyle videos I produced for Bob Morales and the AFA (American Freestyle Association) in 1987. Those video started my video career.A couple of shots from Oregon Pro Flatland were used in Mark Eaton's documentary, Joe Kid on a Stingray.
2-Hip: The '88 Adventure (later called 2-Hip BHIP). (1989)This was the first 2-Hip video that I produced for Ron Wilkerson.Part 3, the Meet the Street in Santee is linked, the other sections of vert riding are on YouTube.
Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer- (1991) - (the first S&M Bikes video)- Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Jimmy Levan. (Footage from Jimmy's section was later used in the documentaryGo Fast, Pull Up).
44 Something-(1993)The second S&M Bikes video, made for about $750 (not including equipment costs), this video sold over 7,000 copies, and was listed as one of the ten best BMX videos of the 1990's by BMX Plus! magazine in 2000.
Huntington Beach Street Scene (1989)- The Old Man/Godfather of BMX, Scot Breithaupt, sold ESPN a bike sports series in 1989. He was editing at Unreel Productions, where I worked, and needed an idea for a show. I talked him into producing a street riding show. It went form idea to event to TV show on air in 15 days, unheard of in TV production. Myself and Randy Lawrence and some H.B. locals appear in the into. This wound up being the first made-for-TV BMX street riding TV show ever, six years before the X-Games.
Where I think our society is headed
My online book/blog about the tumultuous 2020's, where I think society is headed, and our world is headed over the next decade. I think we are now in what will be one of the craziest decades in human history. This 20 chapter book as a blog explains my thinking on why I believe that. Like this blog you're reading now, "Dystopia" is banned from being linked to on Facebook and Instagram.
I'm an Old School BMX freestyler, and BMX/skateboard industry guy from the 1980's/1990's. I also have a brainiac side that thinks about long term events, economic and business/social trends, and futurist thinking in general. These ideas have cost me about 20 years of my life, some people find my ideas that offensive, simply because they disagree. Here are a few of the posts on these ideas. You can make your own decision on whether these ideas make any sense or not.
The Phoenix Great Depressionblog- With the Repo Market crisis in September 2019, the U.S. entered a recession. With the 33% drop in GDP in the spring of 2020, we entered an official depression (3 year contraction OR a 10% drop in GDP). I believe we are in what will feel like a great depression, and may very well meet the official definition (5 year economic contraction). This blog shares my thoughts on that from 2020. For 2021-2022-2023 we will see rising prices. Inflation, high inflation, possible hyper inflation (when prices rise monthly, weekly, even daily on many items).I stopped this blog because no one wants to here what's going to happen ahead of time, even if it will totally jack up their own life.
I've been in the desert, north of L.A., back in Southern California, for nearly six weeks now. I love the lack of humidity. I've got a roof over my head. I'm still working all day every day, usually starting 5:30 am or so, towards the goal of finally escaping homelessness, for good. My current situation is a temporary one. I earn some money, but I'm still along ways from earning an actual living. So I'm helping a friend build one online business, which will be able to pay me a fair amount when it really gets going. But it could easily take 6 months to a year or more for that business to get fully up to speed. So I need to create a smaller business of my own, to earn a living in the meantime.
For three years, I scraped by, homeless much of that time, selling my Sharpie drawings. In the process of actually selling 80 or 100 major pieces of art, I learned quite a bit about blogging, social media, and promotion in today's world. In 21st century fashion, I learned by watching how-to videos to get the basics, and then actually putting the ideas into practice. So that gives me several options.
I'm working on a small book, which I'll likely publish as a zine, to help small businesses start or improve their content creation and social media. Very few small businesses do this much at all, let alone really well. In the major recession that's looming, this will be critical. A lot of businesses, large and small, will soon get wiped out. In the same way that the wind in a thunderstorm trims the old, dead, and useless branches off trees, recessions and depressions weed out the poorly run businesses. In today's rapidly changing world, the businesses based on old, Industrial Age business models that are no longer valid, will also fall by the wayside.
I can sell the little book I'm working on to the small businesses who are interested. That's one option. It's inevitable that some of those businesses will ask me to do their social media, but I'm already doing that for one active business, and the small one I'm building, to help me build my own income in the meantime. But the going to rate to help people figure out how to best use blogging, social media, content creation, and get them going, is $20-$30 an hour, so there's another option. A few hours of that here and there would add up.
In addition to that, I recently learned there are job boards online, filled with businesses who hire people to do the menial work on Pinterest, which I'm doing a lot on these days. Instagram is for fronting and pretending. Pinterest is for selling. That's why I spend far more time on Pinterest. But I can sign up for those jobs, doing the same menial Pinterest stuff I do everyday, for $1,000 or $1,200 a month. One guy says he was doing as many as ten of those jobs at once, making $10,000 to $12,000 a month. So that's another option. I could probably handle two, maybe three, of those jobs, and keep doing most of what I'm doing now. Boring, but it pays well for a while.
The more appealing option, is to simply use these tools to build my own income with affiliate marketing, and selling my own writing and artwork online. Less money at the start, but far more interesting, and it's a long term thing. This would focus on some smaller drawings and written works. In any case, I need to find the combination of these ideas that will put at least $1,200 to $1,500 a month in my pocket, enough to get a room or apartment before too long, a cheap car, and a good bike to ride. And a skateboard, lots of good skate spots around here.
With all that going on, I've barely been doing any drawing in the last couple of months, my last days in Richmond, and my time here in Lancaster. So I'm going to go kind of underground with my Sharpie art for a while. Rather than keep drawing people's favorite musicians for $2-$3 an hour, I'm going to draw some ideas I really want to draw, and then have a little solo art show somewhere around here. I'm aiming on making that happen by the end of August. When I get to that point, you'll all be invited, if you're anywhere near Southern California, anyhow. The move back out here to California, though it's keeping me super busy, has given my life some basic stability, which is what I needed to take the next step, and begin to rebuild my life.
Oh, and I'm sitting on hundreds of little stories about taxi driving, homelessness, and other weird things I've experienced, so I'm going to start sharing some of those stories, as well as more ideas on creativity, art, the creative process, and using social media and blogging to promote whatever it is that you do. So that's the tentative plan at the moment. Things an change at any time, I know that better than most people. In that case, I'll adapt, and keeping moving on.
Here is the drawing I just finished, for freestyle friend Alma Jo Barrera, last night. This is her Project Bug, built as a tribute to other soldiers. It's followed by a couple more of my favorite Sharpie drawings. #sharpiescribblestyle
If you're from Generation X, you know this clip. Millennials, you've probably saw this a bunch, too, growing up. Mr. Miyagi doesn't actually say, "Focus, Daniel-san," but that's how most of us remember it. This past week was a time for me to find focus.
After almost six months living on the streets since I landed here in Richmond, a friend from the BMX days loaned me enough to get a room for a week. Many of you reading this would balk at the thought of spending seven nights in a low budget, weekly motel, but for me it felt luxurious. Seven nights sleeping in a real bed, which was actually really comfortable, able to sleep when I felt like it and get up when I felt like it. Being warm for seven days straight was epic. Being able to take a shower when I felt like it. 24/7 wifi. A microwave. These things most all of you take for granted, are amazing when, like me, you've been without them for a long period. But most of all, I slept knowing I would actually be alive the next morning (barring an alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, or well placed meteor). That's one thing I haven't experienced for seven days in a row, for well over a year.
I had a whole bunch of drawing, writing, and blogging I wanted to get done. But I quickly realized just how exhausted and physically beat down I was from the time on the streets. So I didn't get near as much done as I wanted to, especially the first 2 or 3 days. The one thing I did get accomplished was to step back from the stress of day to day survival, and figure out where I need to focus for the coming months. It may not sound like much, but it's huge in my situation. Homelessness has many different levels, and micro levels, which most people don't realize. I landed here in a completely strange city, with $3 in my pocket, six months ago, with a back pack and shoulder bag, with a few clothes and art supplies, not knowing a single person.
Survival on the streets starts at the hourly level. Where can I go to the bathroom? Where can I sit? Where can I sleep? What's the best way to scrounge up money to eat? Where can I get out of the rain? Where can I sleep? Will I get jumped in this part of town?
It started with one question after another, minute by minute, hour after hour. I wasn't even looking to the next day, except for the weather. To survive homelessness, I've learned to try to stabilize one little aspect at a time. Humans are creatures of habit, and when you are suddenly in a situation where you don't have any habits, because every basic necessity needs to be met, every question "normal" people never think about, needs to be answered. Weather, also, becomes critically important immediately. When I got here it was about staying cool and trying to keep hydrated in 90-95 degree (F) heat. Then came rain, wind, lightning, cold, cold rain, and I even spent 17 1/2 hours outside in a snowstorm that dumped 11 inches. It has, by no means, been easy.
My life has been six months of struggling to meet one basic need, get it somewhat stable, and then immediately move on to another. When you're homeless, questions like, "Should I buy a $1 McChicken sandwich and a drink for lunch? Or should I buy new trash bags, and spend $4, to keep all my stuff dry? The trash bags won and I skipped a meal. Obscure things take on near life or death importance.
On top of that, my best chance at getting back to making a living is writing and art, which the majority of people (who don't realize Etsy, Shopify, and similar things exist) think is completely stupid. If I could actually get a job that paid enough to get me back on my feet, I would have, long ago. Yet I managed to sell some drawings, find a little work, and scrape by. But taking a step back to really set a direction and make some goals, beyond surviving another night, just wasn't possible until now.
So that, along with just resting and healing my body and mind, were the thing I accomplished this last week. I thought long and hard about what makes sense and will help me build a viable business with my art, blogging, and writing. Yes, I put blogging and writing in two different categories, blogging is a very specific type of writing, and I need to spend more time doing other types, but keep blogging as well.
So here's what's coming, providing I manage to survive the cold nights and sketchy weather ahead, which is definitely not a sure thing. I'm going to stop doing so many original drawings of rock stars, and selling the originals. I have three drawings lined up, now and in the near future, after that my original 18" X 24" drawings will cost $350. That's actually just above minimum wage for the time I put into them, but they're worth it at this point.
I'm going to do more smaller drawings, from 8 1/2" X 11" to 11" X 17", and sell copies and high quality prints when I can. I'm going to do more BMX drawings soon. Several people have asked about those.
I'm going to get the zines you guys have already ordered shipped as soon as I can. I'm really sorry about the delay. Since my sleeping bag and blankets got stolen (trashed, confiscated, whatever term you want to use), I have to use money to buy new ones right now, that I'd rather use to ship your zines out. They WILL get to all of you who've ordered them. I will do more big, fat zines in the Freestyle BMX Tales series, as well, maybe one every 2 or 3 months.
I just started a new writing project, basically my first novel, which will be published as a blog, free to everyone. It will have some BMX stuff in it, but is largely a vehicle to express the worldview I've come to, which was influenced by things like BMX and skating, but also by the hundreds of books I've read, and insights I've had along the way. We're in a really crazy era in human history, not just right now, but our whole lives. I have a lot of ideas on where society is headed, and why things are so chaotic. This fiction story will attempt to get those ideas across without being completely boring.
So that's the general plan. I've got a ton of ideas. I've put many of them on the back burner in order to focus on what I've realized is most important in my week of taking a step back looking at the bigger picture. Thanks for reading, and I'll do my best to keep putting pretty cool stuff out into the world.
