Veering Out of The Goody-Goody Lane
Of course, if I croak in the next couple of years, this article will seem strange and ironic
When I set out on my own last year and started a Substack, I experienced a rude awakening. I was earning a few thousand a year as a blogger for Elephant but, in return for what amounted to approximately two or three hundred dollars a month, the proprietor of Elephant owned all of my work.
This means that if, say, I wanted to compile my laugh out loud pieces for a small book, I would actually have to get HIS permission.
I began my Substack as a $5 a month subscription and initially figured that if I could get 50 or 60 paid subscribers, I’d make just as much. I explained this to a family member who responded, “I’m not paying to read your blog.” If this wasn’t disappointing enough, the majority of my readers seemed to feel the same way.
Within two weeks, though, I had several hundred free subscribers and a couple dozen paid subscribers. THREE people coughed up the $60 for annual subscriptions.
When I received the money for the annual subscriptions, I did not take it lightly. It made me feel charged with the responsibility of creating something entertaining or, at the very least, useful once a week.
Looking back, that feeling of gratitude and purpose those annual subscriptions gave me, made it so that, no matter whatever else was happening in my life, I needed to create something good every week. I needed to write 1000 words by Saturday and I needed a good royalty-free photo. I needed to make it look like something that I would click on.
There was no way I wasn’t going to give my very best every week. These people paid me for a year.
Now, if you look at my history for the past half dozen years, it’s fairly obvious that this was just my usual work ethic, but the mindset I was blessed with was of paramount importance. What these awfully gracious people did was solidify my habits.
I say all this because, for the second time since I started this Substack, I’m a day late. As much as I hate to admit it, this is sort of a barometer for my life. If my article comes out a day late, you can put money on the fact that there’s a tropical storm going on somewhere. Some sort of existential crisis and I’m probably veering a little out of the goody-goody lane.
My therapist believes this is what some might refer to as “harm reduction.” For the first twenty years of my adult life, I was the type of person that would’ve sometimes put articles out on Sunday and sometimes just blown it off altogether. I was pissed off enough about the obligations I had to keep just to have a place to live and to stay out of jail. You know, keeping a car registered and insured and showing up for work. That was just about as “owned” as I could handle feeling. (No, I’ve never been to jail. At least as anything besides a visitor.)
So, you can see what I am getting at. I have a tendency to admonish myself for not doing everything perfect everyday (and God, as a parent I do this all the time) BUT I’ve come a long way, baby. And if there’s anything good I took away from the Anonymous programs, it was that we should seek progress in lieu of perfection.
Every month or so, while I am frittering away the precious moments of my life doom scrolling through Twitter and Facebook, one of my contemporaries shows up in a dozen posts with people advising him or her to rest in peace. (I imagine that people think it’s possible to bring your iphone to the afterlife or that “tagging” a person is a way to communicate beyond the ether.)
I have observed that the people I knew who died in their fifties were the ones that did not make a wholesale effort to get their shit together in their forties. They either kept doing coke on the weekends, or ate with reckless abandon or indulged in some kind of behavior that was not conducive to longevity. They did not make any progress and certainly didn’t think too much about perfection.
I, for one, am not close minded enough to assume that I am right and they were wrong. None of us know what the afterlife really has in store for us–as much as we’d like to think we do. Maybe they are, in fact, in a better place.
My dedication to self improvement doesn’t have too much to do with myself. I brought two little kids into the world in my forties, the least I can do is stick around until they are old enough to absorb the loss and not lumber them with an adverse childhood experience. There’s never any guarantees for this, but we can play the odds. Anyone in their fifties who are still down with copping a gram of coke on the weekends are, for the most part, betting on a 50 to 1 horse.
Now, as usual, I’ve allowed all these disparate thoughts to meander about the page–and I’d be a pretty poor writer if I wasn’t able to conservatively wrap this up into one concise thought: those of you who read, who subscribe, and who comment, are of inestimable value to a guy like me. You are the silent force that helps me veer back into my lane and get back to driving straight instead of continuing to veer into the ditch.
And while the goody-goody lane never quite feels comfortable to me, it’s the only lane that will help me see my sixties and even, perhaps, my seventies. Of course, if I croak in the next couple of years, this piece will be considered strange and ironic but I’m a fan of that, too.
Regardless, I want to thank each and every one of you for this love. It has kept me happy in these years where romantic love has been absent.
Progress not perfection.
I found you through Elephant Journal and you were pretty much the only one I read regularly. I will eventually become a paid supporter as I do relate to your writing, and would love to help you on your journey. I have to settle some debts before I can commit. Also, that stinks that they own your writings!
Billy, I never knew when to expect your articles, anyway, just relished them when they came! Really enjoy your honesty and insights about yourself and life!