That Unemployed Friend #001: On Unemployment, Monetization and Swimming.
Don't even come around here askin' where my cash is.
My rule was “get back out there.” Getting home from work after an exhausting day I still needed to get my ass to the gym so I made sure after I was finished with dinner and probably cleaning up a couple more work tasks from home no matter how tired I was I knew if I just got back out there again I’d wake up enough to get a workout done. Usually heading out around 9pm, biking through endlessly hectic DTLA traffic, then pulling up at Gold’s for a quick jog, some weight lifting and a rush back to the house to handle whatever Slack messages I got while I was at the gym. Then, and only then, could I try (and probably fail) to work on my personal projects. Collapse into bed around 2AM. Repeat.
Since getting laid off at the beginning of September I head to the gym now around 2 or 3PM. Take my sweet ass time there too. While I was on my full time+ gig I was lucky just to make it at all - the last two months especially we were regularly doing 9 - 9 shifts that left me totally wiped out - now I can lift, run, swim, and finish with a trip to the steam room. The swimming part especially has clicked with me. I’m not much of a swimmer, I’m more shoving water out of the way than performing any kind of formal backstroke or butterfly, but over the last month I’ve gotten good enough at it that I don’t have to think about swimming and can let my mind wander while I’m under.
It’s incredible to consider how much of my own brain I’ve reclaimed in the last month. I haven’t awoke to a phone of Slack notifications battering me with “first thing this AM” tasks, rock stupid client notes, urgent @’s, circle backs, follow ups, pings, or enervating “ASAP”s. Going into my unemployment era I was concerned I’d be sleeping in every day with nothing forcing me awake. I was wrong. I regularly beat my own alarm out of bed now. Turns out when you have a day full of stuff you want to do you don’t lie awake staring at the ceiling afraid to of a phone filled with the day’s horrors you hop up without a fuss at all.
I’ve been thinking a lot about monetization. Unemployment is fun until you run out of money and I took my first real chunk of savings out to pay rent this month. I did finally get unemployment which is wonderful but that staunches the bleeding not cauterizes. So I have to monetize. My initial gamble was this very Substack newsletter. 800 subscribers would net me something like $4,000 a month? I have 60 thousand Twitter followers, that’s nothing. I’m set, let’s do this. Turns out that’s not nothing. To date I have 19 paid subscribers, just shy of $100 a month. Now, let me be clear; this is not something I take gently. That’s 19 people entrusting me with their money, some have already paid for an entire year up front, one of whom took me up on my founding member offer for an even heftier amount (Thanks Dad, love you). But it’s still not going to butter my bread for long.
How about Twitch? September alone netting me a whole 53 subscriptions. That plus other Twitch based trinkets paid approx $143 in revenue. Again, that is incredible, people are trusting me with their money so I can enjoy nu-metal music and video games with them, but I have to concede I won’t be taking any celebratory shoulder rides anytime soon.
Couldn’t I get back into the film/editing game? Pick up some projects here and there freelance? This is something to consider, I do plan on at least getting a solid LinkedIn together early this month, but the entire post-production industry is currently a hellfire of burnout, shit work, and no money. The entire reason I’m even laid off is because the work was so trash my employers just couldn’t take it anymore. The project that broke the camel’s back found us putting in delirious amounts of overtime - enough that I got justifiably dumped because she said I cared more about work than I did her - for a vegan sausage commercial. Stories abound of VFX houses giving their all to film studios that give less than nothing back as companies are forced to drastically undercut one another to score the project and often end up losing vast sums of money in the process. So I could, and should, start seeing what’s out there but is that industry really safer than this one? What happens if I find myself face down in another project that makes it impossible to keep up with my new beloved personal obligations?
Hanging above it all is my own sword of Damocles; copyright. Everything on my 60k strong Twitter account and the majority of my Twitch is copywritten music. On Twitter I’ve already been hit with two incidents of DMCA takedowns, in both cases the offending clips were simply removed but I was made to understand that I could lose my account if I keep it up. I’ve been regularly pitching my backup account which is closing in on 3,000 followers, not a bad launch pad if I have to start all over, but there’s no denying it’s going to be a vicious punch in the stomach if I lose the big account.
So, what to do. First things first; gotta get the Patreon going. I thought Substack would be a more attractive substitute for a Patreon, more tangible reward right you get this fun newsletter a couple times a week? Wrong. My audience doesn’t know what Substack even is. I suspect many of them are so young that the very concept of “email” is going the way of the fax machine and the beeper; an outdated form of communication. My Slipknot review has been by far my most popular article and to date 605 views has driven a whopping three free subscriptions. Turns out Substack is only profitable for political doomerism and cancel culture fear mongering, nu-metal evangelism not so much. It is not something I’m giving up on, I love music journalism and criticism almost as much as I love music itself, but holding out hope that it’s going to turn me a profit someday isn’t going to work either.
At some point during my little swim, as I push off the wall for lap three or four I think to myself “Why can’t I just be unemployed?” I don’t want to have to aggressively monetize like this, every paywall put up prevents someone from discovering new music, I’d rather keep the doors open for everyone. It’s going to be a balancing act, certainly the Twitter feed will remain the way it is, but the fact remains I’m going to need to turn this into a full time income. And believe me, this is a full time job. Maybe that sounds silly - it’s just another crazy ass gimmick account - but the amount of time I’ve invested in being online has paid off in incredible ways. Hardly 24 hours can pass before someone recommends yet another mind blowingly good nu-metal band that put out two albums in the late 90s and split without leaving anything close to an impression in the states. Or how about when I post the music video of an incredibly obscure one album act and the lead singer of that act happens to hop into my mentions to thank me for the post. Or when I host a Twitter space that turns into a surprise two hour Q&A session with one of nu-metal’s definitive artists and gives people the opportunity to thank said artist for providing a light in their darkest days. The very first day of my unemployment I interviewed Drowning Pool and met Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson, two things that would absolutely not have happened had I still been working. Not that I’m not working. I’m actually working way more now than I was. This is a 24/7 gig and I’m happy to be on it. I’m happy about a lot of things these days actually. I’m happy to have more time to myself, I’m happy I can see my friends on random weekdays now, I’m happy that my back pain has cleared up since I haven’t been sitting in a computer chair for 10 straight hours 5+ days a week, I’m happy that my days are filled with listening to music, discussing music, discovering music, and recommending music to other people. I’m happy. But happiness isn’t paying the bills… yet.
Hey speaking of bills…
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