September was a very good month for me.
For one thing, we saw all that forest fire smoke leave Missoula.
For another, my son was in school each day and that gave me more free time.
Finally, I made more money in September than any other month this year.
Yep, it’s time for the monthly report.
For one thing, we saw all that forest fire smoke leave Missoula.
For another, my son was in school each day and that gave me more free time.
Finally, I made more money in September than any other month this year.
Yep, it’s time for the monthly report.
I really wish I could tell you how many words I wrote for September, but I can’t.
A week or so ago I woke up, and somehow overnight, my computer had deleted my income statement.
This is an MS Excel file that has my word counts, my income, my banking, and lots of other numbers.
Not sure what happened, but it’s gone and with it my daily tallies. I do know that I wrote 26,395 words…as that’s all I was able to determine based on saved files.
I figure my actual total was around 30,000 words, which has been standard this year.
Aside from that I put up 18 blog posts for the month.
I also sold 154 books...my second lowest month of the year (February was 126).
By far most of my income came from the 4 part-time jobs I worked.
What are those jobs?
- I work UM football games;
- I inventory used vehicles once a month;
- I serve legal papers to people;
- I work at a downtown bar.
Here’s how it all broke down for the month:
So I made over $2,000 in net earnings for the month. Back in May I’d made a little over $1,000.
That’s what adding a few extra jobs will do – give you more money.
I want even more, however. A big reason for this is that my wife is making so little.
As some of you may know, she owns a Montessori daycare here in town, but she’s really low on students.
That means workers have seen hours cut, and she’s seen her take-home pay cut…even though she’s working the same hours.
Such are the rigors of being a small business owner.
It’s why I’ve decided to spend $500 to take a bookkeeping class at the Missoula Lifelong Learning Center.
It’ll run from October to December, two days a week, and they work with the job service to find you a job when you finish.
So I’ll have some new skills and the ability to make more money for my family. Hey, I took two years of accounting in high school and got an ‘A’ in the class at UM too.
Mostly, I can’t rely on anyone else to take care of me. If I don’t work and make money to support my family, no one else is going to.
I certainly can’t rely on the government to support me.
When it comes to my writing, I’m still slaving-away on Clark’s Campaign.
This is the 12th volume of the Mountain Man Series and my goodness, it’s been tough!
A big problem is that I’m trying to cram 3 years of the War of 1812 into just 5 months.
It’s been fits and starts. I seem to go a couple days where I get some good work done, then I hit an impasse, and don’t work on it for a few days.
Then I get back into it, but my…this book just seems to be harder to write than some of my previous ones.
I dunno.
My books don’t sell that much anymore (last summer I was making $2,000 a month but this month it was just $600).
That’s frustrating, and it kind of puts a damper on your writing work ethic.
A lot of times I just feel like giving up and saying, “Yeah, I was a writer for a few years but it didn’t work out.”
Again, I dunno.
But I'm sure I'll keep on keeping on, and next month I'll have something else to tell you.
Until then...don't expect too much from this site.
I'm winding down.
A big reason for this is how little 'the news' or 'what's going on in the world' really affects me.
I got an inkling of this after the 2016 election, and then a bit more once Trump assumed office.
It really crystallized for me after the Quist loss in May, however.
Wow...Hillary loses, Trump takes office, and here in Montana a rich Republican beats a regular guy.
None of it had any affect on my life.
Writing about it, either pro or con, doesn't change anything, either.
So why do I care so much? What good is it doing me, and what could I be spending my time on?
Lately I've been spending my time making more money, and it's done more to benefit me than complaining about political things that don't really impact me...or anyone I know, for that matter.
So I'm winding down.
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