Pulling the Fucking Trigger

Well guys, I went and fucking did it.

I quit my job.

My day job, I'm still gonna be here, don't worry. That's the plan, actually. I've kept Mr. Boyle waiting for his audiobook for too damned long at this point, and I need to get something out the door to him. I also have several other people that have approached me about doing audiobooks for them, and even though they're royalty deals I don't mind one bit and am looking forward to these projects. Not only that, but me and the rest of the crew at DimensionBucket Media (turns out there's no space between "Dimension" and "Bucket") have been putting together a few audition tapes for Castalia House, to let them know that we're audiobook producers, we're out there, we want to help, and we're damn good if I say so myself. In addition to this, DimensionBucket Media has started publishing actual real physical books! Some of it's original, some of it's reprints of older stuff we wanna bring back into public consciousness. I'll make a post detailing that later, but don't worry, y'all will get the full skinny. There's also all the public domain audiobooks we want to put out (which we will also be doing print and ebook versions of), and that's gonna require a lot of time and effort. All of our original stuff will also be coming out in audio and ebook soon enough, so if that's more your bag, be patient, it's coming.

So I've had a lot of irons in the fire the past few months that I've really, really been wanting to get to work on. I mean you guys have no idea how much I want to devote my time, all my time, to this. DimensionBucket Media is about two steps away from becoming an actual registered business, we're just waiting to hear back from the government at this point. We're not exactly making a shitload of money, I think we've sold all of two books so far, but we've only been selling them for about two or three days, so I'm hoping to see those numbers climb in the future. So in the coming weeks and months you'll be seeing a lot, and I mean a lot of stuff coming from us over there. I'm basically going to be non-stop writing and recording, not just fiction but posts here on the website, and shitposting on social media. So expect to see more of me over there. I'm also trying to ramp up my use of Minds and Gab, but devoting time to four different social media sites is a helluva time sink, and I've got a lot of other work to do too, as I explained.

So why did I quit my job? All of the conventional wisdom would state that I should wait a couple of years until DimensionBucket Media and my personal audiobook business really takes off, and that by pulling the trigger now I'm jumping the gun. So, to quote Kent Hovind, "Whai?"

Well my day job has been going downhill for a while now. I don't wanna name the company I worked for, but suffice to say I worked in a warehouse that sold things out of an outlet store attached to the front. I was the guy who readied the stock for the store. The stores were so thoroughly mismanaged that we had one manager for about five stores, they were never there, and they were constantly bitching at us (the employees) about getting sales up when they absolutely refused to do any kind of advertising for the stores whatsoever. That includes putting a sign out front letting people know we were selling stuff. Stores cannot survive without advertising, I didn't even take any marketing classes in college and I know that. So, due to flagging profits, our hours were cut about a month ago. I went from a full-time, 40 hour a week job with an hour lunch break every day I worked, to an almost part-time, 30 hour a week job with a half hour lunch break every day I worked.

I don't know if y'all have ever done it, but warehouse work can be exhausting. Mine certainly was. It wasn't that bad in the 40 hour a week days because that hour lunch break gave me a chance to rest so I wouldn't come home completely exhausted and fall directly the fuck asleep, which is what's been going on the past couple weeks. This, of course, cuts down on the time I was able to spend doing this, which is why I would release a written post maybe once a week, maybe, and audio has been right out due to sheer exhaustion and not wanting to edit out yawns every five seconds. This has been, on top of my medical issue with my eyes, incredibly frustrating.

I've been drinking a lot more because of it. And because I like to smoke when I drink, I was buying cigarettes much more often as well. Basically I would be killing one of those 1.75 liter bottles of cheap ass, bottom shelf liquor a week. Over the course of the past couple months I'd gone from drinking about one night a week or so to drinking literally every single night, waking up late, having to eat fast food because I didn't have the time to make breakfast or lunch, and spending almost 100% of the day hungover till I got home and would do it all over again. It's having an effect on my health, and I need to get back to the once-a-week model for my liver if for nothing else. I make a lot of jokes about being an alcoholic, and I am, but even I understand that I can't keep doing this. And looking back on it, it was job stress that drove my drinking.

Part of that stress was knowing for a fact that it was a dead-end job. Actually, my coworkers and I didn't actually work for the company that we worked for. Confusing, I know. We were actually contracted out through a temp agency for a semi-permanent position, meaning the temp agency wouldn't shift us around. We could have the job as long as we liked, with the promise that hard work and dedication would eventually lead us to be hired on as full employees for the company. Well, I found out that was a lie. One of my coworkers had been there five years, was doing managerial duties, had seen one raise in her career there, and still wasn't hired on as a non-temp employee.

Total bullshit, right?

Well all that kinda led me to the conclusion that yes, this job is dead end. The exact definition of dead end. There is no light at the end. Just an endless tunnel that is eventually going to wear me down to either the point of quitting, which I did today, or slow death, or getting fired because the store is being shut down due to low sales. I've developed the slight ability to see where a series of events are going in a limited capacity over the past couple years, and applying it to this, I knew that I wouldn't last at this job. Honestly I'm shocked that I quit before they could fire me. That's never happened to me before. Usually I get fired. Weird.

Anyways, I knew I'd be leaving this job eventually. This is just not the type of company that you dedicate 40 years to and get a gold watch and pension plan out of the deal. So I began to feel trapped. Every day I was walking into this job knowing full well that I was wasting time, and that I only have one life and my time is limited and valuable. I'd been listening to people like Mike Cernovich and Aaron Clarey talk about doing a side hustle in addition to your day job for a few years, until your side hustle is making enough money to become your day job. They repeatedly advised that you not quit your day job till you're certain that you can pay bills with your side hustle. Well, I'm in a bit of a unique position with regards to this.

This might come as a shock to some of you, given that I'm about as full-throated capitalist anti-millennial laziness as they come, but I actually live at home. Not with my parents, my mom died a decade ago and my dad lives out of state. I live with my grandmother, who is old and infirm. Our family doesn't have the money to send her to a nursing home (thank god, those places are fucking terrible. I mean, have you ever been to one? They reek of slow death and loneliness), or hire a live-in nurse, so my brother and I live with her and take care of her and her property. She's over 90, so she definitely needs someone to cook, clean, and take care of the yard work for her, pay out the money for the bills, etc.

Ordinarily all that has fallen on myself and my brother for the past few years. Then we both got jobs, me at the warehouse/outlet store, him at a factory, so we had less time for it and had to enlist our aunts to take care of our grandmother when we were at work. This...didn't go as swimmingly as you'd think it would. I'll just leave it at that. Point is, I talked this over with them, my brother, and his girlfriend, and they were all perfectly fine with me staying home and taking care of grandma while also working on my audiobooks and DimensionBucket Media stuff. I don't expect it to start paying bills immediately, but thankfully at this point it doesn't really have to. I've got some breathing room before I'm out on my ass, and in the meantime I'm gonna be ramping up production on EVERYTHING to get this working. So expect probably five blog posts a week, more book reviews, anime reviews, podcasts, books, short stories, audiobooks, everything.

Because over the past year I've come to realize something. Maybe I actually am autistic, the thought's crossed my mind more than once, but I most definitely am not a normie. I don't function well in traditional employment. As I said earlier, I've been fired from every single job I've ever had except this most recent one for one reason or another. College didn't even work out for me, putting aside the fact that my degree would've been completely worthless had I even gotten it. I listen to guys like Henry Rollins talk about how they can't imagine going to the same building for 40 years, seeing the same people, having the same conversations, and dealing with all that bullshit until you get old and die, and I think to myself, "You know I have never identified with a statement more in my life." I don't know how people do it, and I can't force myself to do it. Maybe that means I'm weak-willed, but regardless I can't consign myself to slow death like that.

Like, I'm gonna die.

One day all of us, you, me, everybody, is going to die. I'd rather take a chance on making something happen, not just for me but for literature in general, and having a startup that I know will be able to tread water at least, than spend another day working in someone else's sweatshop and forking over hours and hours of my life to them for little pay and less fulfillment. I know that people say that no job is really fulfilling, but I've also heard that if you do what you love for a living you'll never work a day in your life.

Well, this is what I love doing. I love recording audiobooks. I love writing stories. I love writing blog posts, and being an entrepreneur. It's the most fun occupation I've ever had, and never once has it felt like work, like something I would force myself to do. Every time I fired up the microphone to do some work in the past year, it has been with a joyful heart. This is precisely what I want to be doing with my life, and if I have anything to say about it I'm going to make it fucking work. I don't have much of a choice at this point, do I?

So when the boss called today and actually threatened to shut down the store if we don't get our sales up, my coworker and I had had enough. We fucking walked, I don't regret it, and I'm damn sure not looking back. Most of my coworkers were assholes. I can think of like five or eight out of perhaps 20 that were all right, and we didn't interact that often. The place was a soul-suck, like there was a leech on my very spirit, and I'm glad to be through with it and moving on to hopefully greener pastures.

SO

Here's where I get to the part where I shill for shit because this is my job now and that's how it's done on the internet nowadays. Given that I don't have any kind of steady employment apart from the audiobook work kind gentlemen like Mr. Boyle give me, I would appreciate it if you guys would help me out. No, I'm not asking for donations, I'm asking for a different sort of help. A help that is compensation for goods and/or services provided. I don't want a handout, I want to work for my bread and butter.

There are the audiobooks first. The Cat Kimbridge ones I make royalties off of, and that list will be expanding here shortly. There's also stuff up for sale on the Bandcamp if it interests you. Next we have the affiliate programs. If you guys would use those, I would be insanely grateful. We have one for Amazon, so whatever you're gonna buy over there, come here first and click on the Amazon banner on the left. It lets them know I sent you, and I get a commission for driving traffic over there at no extra cost to you. Same deal with mycomicshop.com, and rightstufanime.com. If you need comics, mycomicshop is the place to get them, and if you need literally anything that could possibly be associated with anime and manga, rightstufanime is the place to go. I use all these services I've applied for affiliates with frequently, and they've never let me down. I believe in the service they provide, which is why I'm comfortable shilling them.

There's also Project Wonderful, so if you'd like to go on there and advertise on the blog, you can pretty much set your own rate. It's like an auction house for ads. Failing that, if you have something you'd like to advertise on the blog, feel free to use the contact form and we can work out a fair price based on traffic numbers. We'll do it Old Man Clarey style, one month, and you can see if you got your money back or not, or just don't wanna advertise over here anymore. Either way I know I wouldn't wanna be contracted to have to do a thing I don't wanna do for months on end, and I wouldn't put somebody else through that hell. But that comes with a banner ad on the site, and a spot in the ad segment of the podcast every week. I can also offer social media ads as well, I wouldn't have a problem with that. So get in touch if you want an ad on the blog.

Next, we have audio commissions. If you've got something you want read into a microphone, I'm your guy. I don't charge as much as """"""PROFESSIONAL AUDIOBOOK NARRATORS"""""" who routinely charge $200-600 per completed hour of audio, and what's more I'm willing to work for royalties if that tickles your pickle more than paying a flat fee and keeping the profits of future sales of your audio thing. Individual prices will vary, but my basic formula is $150/completed hour. 9,000 words is about an hour, so take your word count, divide it by 9,000, multiply that by 150, and you've got a basic price. Usually that's not the actual price, and I normally knock something off the end if the number isn't round enough for my tastes, so you'll probably get a discount out of it through my sheer autism.

I should also mention that this isn't limited to audiobooks. I'm willing to do short stories, read an article for your youtube channel, read a funny thing you found on the internet, and I also do voice acting. So, if you've got a podcast or an audio drama that you need voices for, I'm also your guy. So if you want something, anything voiced, I'm always available.

I would also appreciate it if you guys would spread the word, especially about the audio work. If you know a writer who doesn't have their book out in audio yet, send them my way. I will be eternally grateful for the work. I'm kind of relying on social media and word of mouth to get the word out at this point, so retweets on Twitter, reblogs on Tumblr, reminds on Minds, and reposts on Gab are always helpful if you happen to see the thing, and once again I will be extremely grateful to all who help to spread the word, even a little bit.

You guys are all fucking awesome, and I wouldn't be nearly as confident about this move as I am if it weren't for you. I'm not gonna open up a patreon, I prefer to give a service or product for my pay, and I don't want you guys essentially subsidizing my life and then also having to pay for the products I put out. That's why I'm going with commissions, affiliate links, and selling audio and my own writing via DimensionBucket Media. I appreciate all you guys taking time to read my bullshit and listen to my podcast, and I hope that you'll continue to do so in the future.

And likesay, keep an eye out, because there's going to be a LOT of material coming your way from my end of things. I've got nothing but time at this point, and there's nothing I'd rather be doing. Maybe I'll even ramp the YouTube channel back up, but I doubt it seeing as how I don't put ads on my videos. I'll also look into vid.me. I heard they have a monetization thing, but I haven't read too much about it. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, keep the faith, brothers and sisters, and I appreciate all the support.