I don’t know if this is something that happens as you get older or if it is just a sign of the times, but time itself just seems to move at lightning speed these days. It’s 2022 already! I can’t wrap my head around it. 2021 went in the blink of an eye. However, this year, more than ever, I have a list of goals that I must accomplish if I want to be at a certain point in my life within the next five years. 2022 is going to be about building a strong and resilient foundation which will allow me to further pursue bigger and better goals in the years yet to come.
My Goals for 2022 are as follows:
- Generate passive income
- Self-publish at least two works-in-progress
- Podcasting
- Increase social media presence
- Get Back To Blogging
- Learn About NFTs
- Be A Creator Not A Consumer
- Lose Weight
Passive Income
Last year I started looking into how I could, potentially, come up with passive income streams to help me with getting where I need to be in life. So I started looking into print-on-demand (POD) alternatives and decided to dip my toes in; albeit rather late to the party since this concept has been around for a little while now. That resulted in the creation of a Redbubble shop in which I have posted 270 designs.
Now, I am not afraid to admit it. I have no artistic talent.
At all…
Luckily, I was able to take advantage of sites such as Canva which helped with me coming up with basic designs rather easily. One of the big hurdles, aside from a lack of talent, is the fact that I am also creating designs while trying not to spend money. Which prevents me from utilizing better graphics and fonts unless I want to pay a monthly fee. Overall, this means that my designs are basic. So I need to come up with things that will catch the eyes of potential customers as my focus is on the Writing/Reading niche. A niche that is already heavily populated with competitors pushing out their own designs. So the challenge is for me to try and stand out, get people to notice my work, and hopefully convince them to buy an item with my design on it.
Kind of like writing…
With that said, my goal this year is to have around 500-750 designs in that shop. I also plan to open an account on Amazon but that will be a harder thing to do since Amazon only allows you to post a small amount of designs from the start. The only way to post additional designs would be to meet certain sales figures. Unlike Redbubble, which limits how many you can post per day but not how many you can post overall. So unless the first few designs I post will sell well right away, the Amazon route could be dead on arrival. Which means I’ll have to see which of my designs are the most popular on Redbubble and use those to start up an Amazon shop.
Other avenues of potential passive income will, hopefully, be from self-publishing books, podcasts, and even NFTs which I will briefly talk about throughout this post.
Self-Publishing
Every year I say it and every year I don’t follow through. I couldn’t tell you how many story ideas I have come up with, let alone how many stories I started writing. But I can tell you how many I have finished.
Zero…Nada…Big Fat 0…Nil…Zip…you get the idea.
I have yet to fully complete any of my stories. Which is a sad and embarrassing thing to say. I try, but when I go back and read what I have written, I just think it is trash and lose motivation. Suffice to say, I still don’t think my skills are at a level where I would expect people to pay for my stories. Of course, before you say anything, I know that I need to FINISH A STORY and put it through some edits before I should be making that call.
But sorry, it’s just how I think.
Back in 2018 I was making good progress. The “Forget Me Not, Father” novel I was working on that year was the furthest I had ever gone when it came to writing my story. Before things came to a head, I had written 12 chapters with a total of 42,000 words. I was streaming and had created a new podcast that centered around this particular journey.
Unfortunately, things got crazy towards the end of 2018. I found out I would have to move, a new job was taking up all of my time and, due to the nature of the job, my hands were badly affected as well as other things going on that I won’t get into right now.
Suffice to say, my writing came to a grinding halt as well as the podcast (Knight Writer Podcast). At least when it came to writing the novel. I was still putzing around with the concept, doing a bit of worldbuilding, and messing around with other projects. I also posted rough drafts of some of my works and have started posting a story based on my Dungeons and Dragons sessions (The Ashwalker Chronicles).
One of the newer projects happens to be a kid’s book. I’m not going to go into too many details. But one day I was analyzing my youth and wondered what were some things I could have done differently if I had only known about certain facts of life. This kid’s book came out from that reflection. Now, as I stated earlier, I have no artistic talent. Fortunately, Canva allowed me to, at least, come up with some visuals I could use for my book.
I’ll talk more about the book in a future post, but the goal is to self-publish it in February or March; depending on what kind of feedback I get from beta readers. I have a bunch of ideas for this book and want to try and turn this into a source of passive income if I can do a good job of writing it first.
Once it is published, I’m not sure which story I will want to publish next. I want to continue working on “Forget Me Not, Father” but there are a couple of short stories that I might prioritize first for a couple reasons: additional passive income and throwing my hat into the culture war.
But that last one can be talked about in a different post.
Maybe…
Podcasting
I know, it’s not really a verb but it’s the easiest way to describe what I am doing in this particular space. My longtime readers know that I used to be a participant and then host of the Press Pass Podcast which was a show that revolved around the video game industry. Then I created the ARKeologist’s Podcast which centered around a single survival dinosaur game called ARK: Survival Evolved which garnered some success that ran for two years with over 100 episodes (one which I will talk about in depth in a future post).
As I started phasing out the ARKeologist’s Podcast, I wanted to create a new one that would have longevity and focus on one of my lifetime passions: literature. I wanted to use it as a vehicle to get me back into writing stories with the intent to publish. It worked, for the short time it ran which was 14 episodes long. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop but, at the time, a lot was happening and I just didn’t have the time to keep going.
Unfortunately, that was 3 years ago and I never picked it back up. Even now, I am reluctant to do so because of the lower sound quality, the fact that I am not an entertaining or interesting person to listen to, and the structure of the show wasn’t great. In fact, looking back on it, the podcast feels more like a narcissistic, attention-grabbing vehicle that focused too much on me and what I was doing rather than focusing on the industry and then talking a little about myself.
It’s a fact that I am not capable of holding an audience’s attention on my own. I need other people to keep listener’s from getting bored. This is one of the reasons the ARKeologist’s Podcast was able to go on for so long. Maybe, with time, I could develop the necessary ability to keep people entertained, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
The sound of my voice is also something that doesn’t help either. In fact, I hate how my voice sounds. Always have, always will.
But if I am going to get back into podcasting, I’ll just have to make due. I want to go back to doing the Knight Writer Podcast but I need to offer something that listeners will want to come back and listen to. For that, I need to go back to the original concept which was for me to focus on talking about the news revolving around the literary world and, every now and then, opine about my own journey as an author.
While I am doing the solo act, I’ll also be looking for other people to join me who can help offer up different opinions and some flavor to the show to give it life.
I can do it. I just have to get better at it and improve upon what I have started..
Increasing Social Media Presence
Speaking of doing better and improving, social media is something I need to get a better handle on. Problem is, I am not a huge fan of it. I tend to use it for keeping track of what is happening in the world, but I don’t necessarily use it to voice my thoughts or to really try and promote myself.
The latter I have been doing more. Especially when it comes to my aforementioned Redbubble shop. I created a new Instagram exclusively around the Knight Writer Podcast and the designs I created for the shop. However, I am having trouble trying to grow a following on Instagram while Twitter has been stagnant for a while.
For Instagram, I need to sit down and properly strategize my approach to the platform with proper usage of hashtags and pushing out more engaging pictures of my merchandise. With Twitter…I honestly don’t care. It’s tiring trying to toe the line of what they will and will not allow. The censorship is annoying and hypocritical. But there is always a way around these things in order to keep growing. Just have to figure it out.
There are some alternatives to Twitter and so, I’ll probably focus more on those platforms to grow an audience. In addition, I need to network through social media as well and across the various mediums I am in like podcasting, self-publishing, Redbubble, and even my blog.
Blog More
Speaking of my blog, last year I said I would start blogging more and speak up more. On both counts I did so, but not to the extent I wanted to. I need to get back to my roots of why I started blogging. When I started blogging, I wanted to speak my mind and voice my opinions. Recently, I found a way to view some of my old blog posts on IGN where I started blogging. What made blogging on that platform so easy was that there was an established community. There was a way for people to see what I wrote without having to promote it myself.
Not the case when I am now blogging on my own site. Which I have always known. My Castle Pyramid site wasn’t for blogging, but an attempt to establish a legitimate video game news site. It lasted for one year, but I was already gaining notice and was able to attract a little over 10,000 unique visitors to my site during that first year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t generating any revenue but learned that, even on my own, I was able to make gains. Sadly, when it came time to renew the website, I couldn’t afford it and, when I was able to renew my ownership another company had scooped up the domain and, to this day, are still trying to sell it.
For $1,488…
Suffice to say, I’m flattered that someone thinks my old domain is worth that much. So I guess I did something right. Which means that, if I can combine what I did when I first blogged and when I was writing a news website, I should be able to make some headway again.
So I want to blog more often with the goal of not just generating discussions on all kinds of topics, but making it a paying venture that I can live off of.
I know it can be done. After all, by the end of the MyIGN blogging scene, I gained over 3,600 followers. Meanwhile, on my Castle Pyramid site my news writing and editorial skills were able to entice over 10,000 unique visitors. So surely I can do that and even surpass it with this site. I just have to get back into the grinder mentality.
Learn About NFTs
The NFT craze is here and it doesn’t look like it will stop for a while. It’s not hard to figure out why this suddenly exploded. The main reason is that there is nowhere for crypto investors to really spend their cryptocurrency. So someone came up with this brilliant concept for them to spend it on digital items with the idea that these would be collectibles and be worth more than the initial investment.
The concept makes sense although the execution might be flawed. At least to me.
I don’t want to talk about it any further since I haven’t seen anyone even consider using NFT’s in the manner I am conceptualizing. But when I do, and if it is a success, everyone in the space will start to use it.
Suffice to say, I am hoping this could become a lucrative source of income.
Be A Creator Not A Consumer
A common trait for the very successful is that they are creators and not consumers. They might have a general knowledge of what is going on but, for the most part, they aren’t going to be able to have an in depth conversation about the latest movies, tv shows, games, anime, what a celebrity said, or who a celebrity might be, etc unless it has something to directly do with their profession/passion/job. Whatever you want to call it.
These days, I’ve been consuming more than I have been creating and it shows. I barely put up any blog posts, I just retweet stuff on social media, and I have barely put out any YouTube videos (though YT is a whole different discussion). The shift in mentality is not good for me and, without a doubt, I was having a better time creating than I have been consuming. So I need to get back to it.
Sure, working on my Redbubble shop has been taking up my time. But it isn’t exactly an inspiring thing. No one is going to have a discussion around my latest design. It won’t generate a dialogue and that is what I want my work to do. To make people think, to generate a civil conversation, and even change people’s minds and outlooks if possible.
Yet, to do that I need to significantly cut down on consumption and get back to creating.
Something I want to do is put out some songs. Yeah, I’ve written some lyrics but I don’t have music to put to those lyrics. So I’ve never really bothered to pursue anything further than just using this an exercise for my writing. So this year, I want to at least release one song.
Lose Weight
Speaking of cutting down on consumption, losing weight is another thing I keep talking about year after year. There were times where I was losing weight and putting on muscle, but it never lasted. Considering I am older now, I really need to lose weight and keep it off.
It’s time to stop being fat and getting back to being healthy and physically active. Which means taking time out of the day to make that happen. I’ve always hated cardio, like running, but never had a problem with doing weights. I’ll probably go back to doing weights again and then incorporate some kind of cardio into the routine.
Once I start a routine and stick to it…and cutting down on the amount of food I eat. Which, if I must confess, is really hard to do since I love food.
Well, I’ve told you my goals for 2022. What are your goals?
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