The State of Things #1 | Starting My Art Journey to Financial Independence

The State of Things #1 - March 2023

Mar 23, 2023

Those of you who know me outside of the internet will know that I recently lost my job with the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March 2023.

I had only had that job for 7 months before things collapsed, and I genuinely enjoyed my time working there. My boss and coworkers were intelligent, hard-working, and kind. I felt like my skillset as a Technical Writer made valid contributions to the team. But during my time between jobs, I’ve been thinking… I can’t let my day job be my only form of income.

Within my profession, most jobs are contract work where I may only have stable income for 6 to 12 months at a time. If the economy goes south or the company I work for spontaneously collapses (cough), I would want to have my own set of income, preferably doing something I love.

Concepts I’ll be Following

So, today is day 0 when I officially start documenting my journey to making my first $100 from my art. This blog post is meant to commemorate that and share with you all the concepts and research that I’ll be following as I try to build a business that I genuinely enjoy.

Concept 1: Building a Business in Public

Via The ultimate guide to start building in public - newbie to expert (jexo.io)

Building in public is the practice of sharing stories about how products or services were — and are — being developed, with the aim of inspiring and engaging with like-minded people. The goal is to document the journey of building your buisness and sharing it with an audience. For example:

What its like to build the buisness
What resources I’m using
Books that help me with my business - summarizing key insights
Putting it on a blog then sharing it on Twitter, FB, etc

Concept 2: Dreamlining

More of a thought exercise than a concept, “Dreamlining” is a method for attaching timelines to dreams by author Tim Ferris. Its one of many different goal setting strategies, but what sets it a part from most is that it seeks to bring your “clearly defined” yet “unrealistic” dreams to reality. Dreams differ from goals in that dreams are what you want to do if/when you no longer have to work.

Learn how you can do the dreamlining exercise here: Goal Setting Strategies: Dreamlining | Shortform Books.

Screenshot of my Dreamlining exercise. I completed it in Miro | Online Whiteboard for Visual Collaboration so it was easier on my little pea brain.

An Example of one of my dreamlining “To-do’s”

The stick notes are: To-do, overall cost, monthly cost, do today, do tomorrow, and do the day after.

Tasks Next Up

💡 Milestone: Make $100 from my art.

Progress: $12.50 down (thank you Sneeky!!), $81 to go.

These are the tasks I hope to accomplish before my next “The State of things” blog post.

[x] Finish my personal website
[x] Start posting links to my blogs on social media (Twitter, Instagram stories)
[ ] Finish the rough thumbnails for my first comic

The Content Curve

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