What makes you happy?
I can’t speak for other people. I was looking over my schedule a few days ago, and toying with the some new software, and I was delighted that the synchronization went so smoothly but upset that it took so long. I’ve also enjoyed working with the rather narrow limits of what my little “Visor Cam” will do. Just toys, images I want to catch. What I like best about it is that the field of vision is so narrow, and what it can capture is so limited. That’s really appealing to me. Has to be well lit. Can’t do the delicate texture of an autumn tree leaf, but it does just fine with certain items. Have to respect the limits of the hardware. Plus, it’s paid for. And the images are tiny, a mere 320 by 240 pixels. Limited space. Small footprint for a digital image. Loads fast & etc.
So I was looking at the schedule I’ve got coming up. I’m trying to predict which event in El Paso I should skip this year. I’ve got five scheduled, and one of those will be a wash. I’ll barely cover the coast of an airplane ticket and the hotel, plus maybe a meal and the expense of the show itself on that one trip. Now, all I have to figure out is which one. April’s never been good. Realistically, I should skip April, do June, then skip August, and do October. But from my memory, I can recall June being good one time, then a great August one time, and so forth.
And I like El Paso. The personalities, the culture, the atmosphere. The food. Oh yes, the food is inevitably good. Plus it’s travel. That’s a good thing. I’ve been doing El Paso for over decade now. Wouldn’t keep doing it if I didn’t enjoy the trip. Wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t derive some kind of joy from the trip.
But what makes me happy? What makes you happy? It’s a question I’ll be faced with – literally – hundreds of times in the next the few weeks. “Look at my chart, tell me what will make me happy.”
Right, like I can wave a magic wand, and that effort on my part will straighten out some poor soul’s life. All for a few dollars, no less. I do enjoy my work, but I’ve encountered a great number of folks who are just not happy these days. And I don’t have an answer.
Sure, a chart and a reading have many clues, but I can’t do the client’s work. That’s not up to me to make something better in your life. I happen to really enjoy what I do. I trimmed some of my workload so that I could concentrate on just the parts that I enjoy. Web tweaking? That’s an intellectual challenge for me. Layout and design? Visual arts? That’s amusing, to a certain extent. Leads me think about matters in a strictly analytical sense, again, pleasurable experience for me. Some of the design work itself might not be so great, but the experience I get from “getting my hands dirty” is.
When the bottom fell out of the last boom time, a lot of folks were miserable. Some still cling to shreds of ideas. Holidays and their related depression are over now. I’m as busy as I can be. In fact, I’m stuck in the same loop I’ve suggested so many times, to clients. I thought it was rhetorical question, little did I know that I’d get stuck in it, too. If your idea (screenplay, movie, novel, gadget, invention, work of art, whatever the passion is) is so wonderful, then what’s stopping you from holding down a part time job in order to make ends meet until that passion pays for itself?
Or, in my case, until that passion pays for itself again. Maybe I’ve gotten soft. But when I looked over the last year, I understand one more part of myself – I’m less willing to put with certain discussion about what I should be doing.
Another article got me thinking about refining the business model for astrofish.net. As it stands, the model here is quite simple: I write what I write, post it regularly on the server, and that generates web traffic. Out of the traffic, less than 1% of the hits generate a sale of some kind, either a reading, or the sale of an astrology report. But even at just few per day, that’s enough to pay for the server. Doesn’t cover all the costs, all the time, and I still remember the depth of depression I felt last once 11 month ago, when Mercury was RX, and then again, the last month or two, seeing the established business model cease to function. To be sure, it’s paying for itself, but that’s about it.
Let’s go way back. Two influences started this track. For one, I was upset with what astrology columns I read, the bulk of the material was too layered in old-fashioned astrology thinking, and the material itself was either too arcane, or too focused on one particular pattern. Not very entertaining to me, and/or without a lot of study, not very useful. The other purpose was showcase my writing itself. To that end, within weeks of going weekly, the page landed me an underpaid gig with an AOL incubator baby at the time, Astronet. And although it was, as I found out later, hideously underpaid, with my simple lifestyle choices, I was happy. Between being paid for one column, then two columns, and what I was doing elsewhere, I did well.
Not all good things have to come to an end, but that did. Astronet was eventually shuffled around and bought out by the “Dell Computer” of astrology content.
And I’m back on my own.
I still haven’t hit the magic of making money at this game, remember, I spent a portion of January 1, 2003, doing tax related calculations.
The old model for a writer like me, the old methodology was to get picked up by a parent publication. Right now, there is none. I’ve solicited several, but that’s filed under the “we’ll get back to you” category.
Then there’s my material itself. Too South Austin? Too Texan? Too long for newspapers, that’s for sure. On the average, though, I’ll get one e-mail per week, and one of those “scopes that are too long” and “don’t make any sense” will really hit one person.
I tend to work up to a year in advance. It’s simple, too. I was trying to proof read Thursday’s column, and I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, “Who thinks this stuff up?”
I did. Point of creation. That’s happiness around here. Which doesn’t answer the question of the dynamics of web content, or business models, or how to make more money, but being content is important. Much as Dell is big, local industry, look at its business model, what do they sell that’s actually new?