writing

Why It’s Okay — Maybe Even Great — To Be Average

~ Georgia Tell ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had a revelation. I think I just figured out the key to success as a moderately smart, moderately hardworking person who doesn’t really want a normal job.

The key is diversification. I’m always trying to find that one thing that’ll allow me to be my own boss or the intense amount of work it takes to crank out novels like I’m a rabbit popping out babies.

I’m not expert level at anything, as much as I would like to be. I’m not a genius. And while I’ve been bemoaning that fact for years, internally, it suddenly became clear to me just now that I don’t need to be a genius. I just have to be passable to get the life I want.

I’ve always heard that you should go with your core competency and stick with it — that’s my business school education. If I was great at corporate things, I should focus my energy on that. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine focusing all my energy on one thing, and I think that I’m like the typical person in that aspect. In essence, I don’t have the passion in any one field to have the patience for expertise. I am truly a jack of many trades.

And this might actually be a good thing in some ways. The single most impactful thing I learned in my finance class when I was in college was that if you had a monkey pick 40 stocks and put him up against a professional fund manager, the monkey will win most of the time in terms of long-term profit. That’s why so many people invest in index funds. They’re mitigating risk and reducing workload by spreading out their investment across an index.

But if I did that with my various hobbies that I would like to turn into income streams, it would essentially be the same thing, except instead of money I invest my time. The good thing here is that I’m only pursuing things that I find interesting, like: personal finance, investing, crafting, writing, real estate and education. I already like to research and do things in these topic areas. So my time would be investment but also entertainment.

I don’t working on things I love doing. And since I’m not an expert in any of those things, why not do them all a bit?

I made $37.95 from five months of having my book out and self-published. That’s about $7 a month for one book — the sales have been relatively spread out. If I write 7 more books, I’d get $56 a month — assuming that is a conservative rate. At 1/40th of what I need to survive, it’s not shabby. That’s a week worth of groceries if I’m frugal.

I see so many people saying that writing books isn’t worth it unless you’re going to be super prolific and an amazing marketer, but why? I write because I love it. Why not continue self-publishing? And working on all the projects I love? It’s fun, I’m not planning on quitting my job until my side projects can generate reliable income anyway.

There’s something to be said for pursuing your passions, even if you can’t strike it rich. Maybe all my passions can collectively support me one day. I’m aiming for it now!

Poem #611

~ Georgia Tell ~ 1 Comment

she wrote everything in cursive
on every piece of paper she got
in the dust of the window of her mom’s SUV
on the shower door during her bath time
because she learned how to in school
“third graders learn cursive!” she’d exclaimed
she wrote with curvy lines and dots
her favorite pen was a sparkly blue gel pen
but she’d write with anything
she kept glittery notebooks of her thoughts
and any sign she read
Verdugo, Victory, Magnolia, Alameda
then she got a laptop in sixth grade
and she stopped writing in cursive
but she still wrote everything
tapping away at her keys
coloring the fonts with her favorite blue
she loved Cambria
she typed science words and historical names
Jefferson, Edison, Roosevelt, Washington
it wasn’t the cursive she had loved
it was the words

Poem #539

~ Georgia Tell ~ 1 Comment

you need to write
doesn’t matter if it makes you sleepy
get more sleep
you need to write
doesn’t matter if Facebook is calling
get off the internet
you need to write
doesn’t matter if you have no time
get your life in order
you need to write

You’re A Bad Poet, And That’s Okay

~ Georgia Tell ~ Leave a comment

You’re a terrible poet. You’re also an awesome poet whose writing touches people (this all assumes you’re reading this post because it’s relevant to you).

For example, I’m in a poetry class that has a lot of workshops where read and critique each other’s poems. Sometimes my classmates love my poems, sometimes they don’t. The same is true of their poetry.

It’s the name of the game with art that you can’t be universally loved. Not everyone loves van Gogh. Not everyone loves Monet. Not everyone loves Silverstein. But there are many people who like van Gogh and Monet and Silverstein.

I adore Silverstein’s poetry. I’m a huge fan. I couldn’t put Where the Sidewalk Ends down when I was a tween. The binding even started falling apart from so much use. However, I have met people who don’t love Shel Silverstein. Just like there will be people that don’t like my poetry and my writing.

Style in writing and art is highly subjective. As much as I would love to be profuse and literary and full of description and emotion, my poetry is meant to be read with an even cadence and lots of silence. Some people will love it! I get feedback from my classmates that they think my poetry is great (we do have a class rule about being positive, just full disclosure), which is way more important than the folks who just don’t jive with my style.

So, please, don’t get down on yourself if someone criticizes your poetry. Someone likes it. That someone might be me or your mom or some retired man in Wisconsin. You can do this! So can I!

Enjoy this wonderfully positive and gentle video of the great painter: Bob Ross! As he says, “you’ll make beautiful things!”

Feel free to send me your poetry on my contact page or on Twitter @GeorgiaTell!