It's not a living, but could it be?

I recently read a book by an online marketer who has this whole system for supposedly making a living through writing. Definitely, like many writers of all sorts, I’ve got an interest in the idea, but I also have my doubts.

I’ve never tried to monetize any of my online work, and I’ve never had enough of an online following to make it seem worthwhile. I would consider the idea certainly if my content were a bit less eclectic, and that garnered a real following. I figure I would focus on writing about topics related to religion, as that’s my greatest area of interest, but is that marketable?

The idea of writing about religion and getting paid for it isn’t far-fetched; there are plenty of people who do that for a living, even on Substack. It seems like a lot of these people have some sort of formal training, however. I follow Father Nathan Monk, but I assume as a priest, he’s been to seminary. The sort of stuff that I would write about would probably be similar to a lot of what he writes about, and while I don’t believe he makes a living off of writing, he’s got a respectable following, at least.

Anyway, it seems like being more focused would be a plus in having a following. While I enjoy writing on a wide range of topics, and don’t think I’ll stop doing that here at least, I think someone who’s a paid subscriber wants some consistency. I know the few people that I have paid subscriptions for are consistently writing on specific topics I’m interested in. I do follow a few people who are more eclectic like me, but not with paid subscriptions.

So if anyone is still reading, what do you think? Is there an audience out there for an agnostic Christian writing about issues of faith and doubt?

For the love of money...

I've always had an uneasy relationship with capitalism. I actually don't understand the love of money at all.

Sometimes I wonder if it was an irregularity of my brain that I was born with or if it was learned at an early age, because I always got the impression that while my father loved me, he loved money more. My parents divorced when I was only two years old, and I would see my father on occasional visits. When I visited, he was always working long hours at his job, bragging about how much money he was making; I would wonder why he didn't cut back on work or even take a vacation while I was around. I vowed that I wouldn't be like him when I grew up.

Anyway, I actually have a hard time understanding money on a deep level. I understand that there are wants and needs in my life that I can acquire with money, but still have a hard time seeing the need for acquisition and saving of money. I have to remind myself when looking for work that I need to consider how much money a job will make in addition to whether the job will be pleasant; in fact, sometimes it's more important, I guess.

I do have a hard time understanding why the needs in particular are not something one acquires whether one has money or not. It seems deeply wrong to me that we withhold food and medical care from people who don't have money, and I tend to distrust people who are okay with this. I'm not okay with it at all.

I wanted to tell a bit of a personal story, though; it's sort of a story about how all of this broke me.

Years ago, I was out of work and searching. I wasn't really worried, because I've always managed to find work, and, of course, I don't worry about money. However, I was married with two kids, and I recognized there was a need. I had good marketable skills; I had a lot of IT experience, and I'd been working for about a decade as a database programmer. I knew there was a good job out there somewhere.

A friend from church told me there was an opening at his company for a database programmer. It was quite a distance away, but he was sure the pay was good, so I went and interviewed. The interview was full of red flags. When I had studied database administration at Oracle years before, I had an instructor who gave us some advice. He said, "If you ever get an interview for a job, and they can't fully articulate what they want, don't take the job. It's going to go poorly, and it's going to be a waste of your time and their money." In the interview, I kept asking for specifics, and they kept giving me vagueness. "Well, we're sort of... We're thinking along the lines of... We know we're going to need a database for part of what we're doing."

I said I'd consider it, and went home. They seemed very interested in me, and kept sending me emails asking if I was interested, and what salary I wanted. So there were two problems: One, I didn't think this was a goid idea, both because of the vagueness, and the commute (it would be about an hour via train). Two, they kept asking me to name a salary, but I had always been told to never be the first one to talk about salary, because they would work down from your number.

So finally, I made a decision. I'd ask for more than I thought they would give me, and when they refused, I'd turn the job down. So I told them I wouldn't do the job for less than $70k. They offered me $73.5k. It was nearly twice what I'd ever made on a job before. I felt like I couldn't turn down the offer, so I agreed.

I showed up for work not knowing why I was there, and I told everyone who was supervising me, and many of my coworkers. Surely someone would tell me what I was there for. The first few days nothing much happened, which wasn't highly irregular. I figured it would take time. I got to know my coworkers, sat in on some meetings, took tours around the buildings. (It was actually an interesting place to work, as they were a contractor that mainly designed amusement park rides, including for Disneyland. There are rides currently at Disneyland that I saw visualized on computer screens before they existed.) I was told someone would get together with me and talk to me about my role in the larger project. Any day now.

And days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. I spent a lot of time blogging (late 2008) and going to lunch in restaurants that I could suddenly easily afford. Nobody ever came to tell me why I was there. I idly wrote some code, and looked at databases which were already in use, not really knowing why. Every day was eight hours of "work" with a one-hour break in the middle, and two hours of commute, leaving very little time for my family. I felt like I had become my father.

Finally, one day I came into work, and I couldn't log into the system. I went to IT, but nobody could help me, or even explain what was wrong. I did literally nothing that day. The next day, my boss called me into his office and explained that they didn't need me anymore. They gave me a good chunk of severance pay and kicked me out. The train that would take me back home would arrive at the station around 5:00. So I waited and reflected on the months that I had just wasted of my life.

I had earned a good sum of money doing nothing. Isn't that the dream? Isn't that what you strive for in a capitalistic society? For a time there, wasn't I a success story? It didn't feel that way at all.

I found in the days and months that followed, that this had broken me. If this was success, I wanted no part of it. Like most people, I was afraid of failure, but now, in addition, I was afraid of success. I didn't look for another job. I fell into a deep depression that worsened as the days went by. A year later, my wife had left me, and I was homeless. I eventually went back to live with my mother for a handful of years before I recovered, but I think there's a part of me that will never recover, even though now, years later, I'm back with my family and working full-time. (Although I'm not working with databases anymore, despite feeling back then that it was my calling.)

I don't know if there's a lesson in this, besides to be careful about accepting a job just because it pays well. I still don't like money, although I have to live with it. 1 Timothy 6:10 says, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." I believe this deeply. I believe that so very much of the evil that is done in the world today is being perpetuated by men who love money more than anything. We live in a system that rewards this pathological greed, and many people look up to the billionaires, despite the fact that they are the cause the problems of our society, and not the immigrants or the LGBTQ community.

Do you love money more than you love people? I think a lot of people do, and it makes me angry and sad and sick all at the same time. It's just pieces of paper.

The Tale of the Paper-Wizard, an economic fable

There once was a man who was hard-working and kindly, and because of this, even though he lived alone he had everything in the world he felt he could possibly want, and was happy. One day, after an afternoon's labor of watering fields and chopping firewood, he sat down for an evening's meal of a freshly-cooked bowl of rice. As he was about to eat, a wizard emerged from the forest and stood before him.

"Hello, sir," the wizard said to him with a sly smile, "and good evening."

"Good evening, stranger," the man replied. "I was about to enjoy my evening meal, but as I see you are travelling and seem to have no food, I feel I should offer to share it with you!"

The wizard bowed to the man and said, "That is very kind of you, good sir. While I do appreciate your offer, I am glad to say that I would like to offer you an even more generous kindness!"

Although the man had entertained unexpected guests before, this was new to him. He asked the wizard what he meant.

The wizard reached into his pocket and took out a small object. "I was wondering if you would give me the entire bowl of rice, as I am quite hungry from my travel. In return I would give you this," he extended the object to the man, "a piece of magical paper."

The man examined the paper. Indeed, it did look magical. The whole of the paper was filled on both sides with fancy writing and images of elderly, wise men. "What does it do?" the man asked.

The wizard smiled even wider. "That is the great generosity of this paper; you see, while in appearance it is merely a piece of paper, with the great value imbued upon it by the writing, the owner of this paper may exchange it for twenty kilos of rice!" The wizard pressed the paper into the man's hand and closed his fingers over it. "I know twenty kilos is much more rice than you have in your bowl, but I insist that you take it."

The man was impressed, and he accepted the offer, giving the wizard his bowl of rice.

Well the next evening, the man had done less work than usual and yet felt far more fatigued and hungry. He figured that somehow, as light as it seemed, the twenty kilos of rice in his pocket must be weighing him down. As he sat to his evening meal, the wizard appeared before his house once more. There was an exchange of greetings, a discussion of the weather, and in the end, the wizard left with a belly full of rice, and the man had another twenty kilos of rice in magic paper.

This went on for several days. Finally, the day came when at the time of the evening meal, the man was lying in bed having been too weak to work that day. When the wizard arrived, he entered the house and asked the man what was wrong.

When the man explained how he found himself with no more energy to rise, and made to apologize, the wizard smiled his sly smile again and motioned for the man to be silent. "Sir, you are a very hard worker, and no doubt you have worn yourself ragged with labor. Do not worry about me; instead think of yourself. With all of the magic paper I have given you in the time I have known you, you surely have all the food you will ever need for the rest of your life. So sleep for now, and I am sure tomorrow you will be fine as you will no longer need to labor for your sustenance."

With that, the man closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. His pockets were full of hundreds of kilos magical rice he would never eat, for he never woke from that slumber again.