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@tonythebrit
I Cast "Revivify"!
I Cast “Revivify”!
I think it’s time to bring this blog back. I stopped writing for it years ago because I wasn’t building an audience, but now I have one thanks to Discord and D&D, so here we go again!Let me start by re-introducing what this blog is all about and telling you how it all got started. This blog is my chance to publically rant or rave about anything I feel like, as long as the subject is related to…
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Not Just Practical, but also Creative!
Not Just Practical, but also Creative!
If you’ve actually had a little poke around this webpage and noticed that there’s a fiction section. That’s because I like to write. In fact, before I had the brilliant idea of starting the Odd-Job Antony business, my hope was to become a successful independent author. I’ve since come to realise that if I want to make story-writing lucrative, I need to do it a little differently.
I will…
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Winter is Coming!
Winter draws closer, the weather is becoming wetter and colder, and the days far shorter. Gardening jobs are gradually getting a bit hard to find. This is the time to explore other opportunities, and I’m not just talking about trying to get more indoor home improvement jobs. You don’t have to limit yourself.
I, myself, will be taking advantage of my extra time to get back into writing. Before…
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You Are Your Best Asset
You Are Your Best Asset
You MUST take care of yourself.
As a self-employed individual, you get to be your own boss, set your own hours, rates of pay, days off and even sick days. You can’t keep going if you can’t keep going. You don’t have to keep coming in for
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You Are Your Best Asset
You Are Your Best Asset
When you’re self-employed, everything depends on you, so you need to take care of yourself. You are the entire workforce from the janitor all the way up through every level to the CEO. You’re the human resources department, the marketing team and customer service. You’re all of it, so don’t work so hard that you burn out.
That’s pretty much the entirety of what I wanted to talk about today,…
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First Steps
First Steps towards starting your own business
Since I’m not well enough to work right now, it seems like the ideal time to write the article that has been swimming around my brain a while. However, my brain is, itself, swimming in snot so this may end up being utter nonsense. Here goes.
I’ve been thinking about three topics that I was going to discuss in details in three separate articles, and I wasn’t sure which should be discussed…
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More Odd-Jobbers Needed!
More Odd-Jobbers Needed! There are still more people asking for help with simple little jobs. More than enough to go around, if you'd like to become an odd-jobber too. I'd be happy to help you do it too.
The blog is in a bit of a mess right now. It used to be my writing blog, where I talked about whatever was on my mind, kept my audience up to date with my work-in-progress, and (eventually) promoted my upcoming books. My writing career fell flat on it’s face when I realised it was a bad business model, and found myself doing odd jobs for money instead.
I then thought I could use the blog to…
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My Definition of Professional
My Definition of Professional
I was considering writing an article about my background and experience to let people get to know me better. My thinking was that it would let potential clients get to know me better.
I was a little worried that anyone mentioned in my story might recognise themselves and disagree with my interpretation of events or their influence on me. Since everyone remembers things differently, this is…
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The Viking
I’ve been wondering lately if I should get back into writing. When I saw that Facebook was piloting subscription groups, I even thought about resurrection the old ‘Creative Writers’ group from the dead. If I could collect a small subscription fee from each member it would help make up for the time and effort I would put into running the group. However, I don’t really have the time.
I had…
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Business to Business
When I first moved to Kidwelly, I tried to get a job with one of the local businesses. One of these businesses even gave me a trial shift. I didn’t hear back from them, until yesterday. It’s been months, but I guess with Christmas around the corner they’re looking to hire some extra hands.
This reminded me of an idea I’d considered a while back. Offering my extensive experience to businesses as…
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Stairway to...?
Stairway to…?
This post is mostly going to be a pic dump showing the progress/process of painting a client’s staircase. It was a fun project, and a little different from the way I normally work. Instead of charging by the hour, I was asked to provide a quote for the materials and labour. Which I did, and they were happy with my quote! 🙂
Technically my client was the landlord, rather than the home’s resident,…
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Time to Commit
I think it’s time to take the stories down. I need to make this website all about the handyman work. The fictiondistracts and detracts from the new direction I’ve taken. So, to that end, I’ll be taking it all down. From now on every page will be related to the Odd-Job business. I won’t take down the old blog posts, they show my journey if anyone is interested, but future blog posts will mostly be…
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A Client Read My Blog!
A Client Read My Blog!
I definitely need to take the time to finish updating this blog. I actually had a client ask me about the book I was working on. I had to tell her that there is no book anymore, at least not at the moment. Doing odd-jobs is working out well for me, and so my writing career is on hold. At least for now.
I didn’t make this decision lightly. I really thought that telling stories for a living was…
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What Happened to the Website?
What Happened to the Website?
I changed it! Do you like it? Don’t worry, I’m still going to write (in fact I may actually write more frequently), I’ll just be doing it for fun, instead of trying to make a living at it. My main source of income (for now) is performing random tasks, odd-jobs, chores, and bits and bobs!
Most of what I’m doing is gardening. Mowing lawns, ripping up weeds, pruning, strimming, hedge-trimming,…
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Better than Fiction
This website is going to undergo some changes soon. It was originally intended to be a way to showcase my writing, build my fanbase, and maybe get some freelance writing clients. It didn’t work out though. Every time I tried to get serious about my writing career and get organised and disciplined, it stopped being fun, and I would find myself putting it off.
In the process of putting it off I…
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"I wish you were there!"
“I wish you were there!”
This is so true.
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I’m juggling so many thoughts right now I don’t even know where to start, so I’m just going to start writing and see what happens.
I have ADHD. Almost everyone knows that this means I have trouble paying attention, but to say this is an oversimplification is an understatement. If I’m interested in something, not only do I have no trouble paying attention, I become hyper-focused. This can come in handy and help me get things done. Providing nothing breaks my focus.
That’s where it can be a problem. I’m rather easily distracted. Sometimes, I can provide myself with a controlled distraction. Like a fidget toy or a movie playing in the background. Something that can occupy my hyperactive mind without taking too much focus from my primary goal. It doesn’t always work though. Especially if I wasn’t particularly interested in the task to begin with.
That’s the other not-so-fun part. I have no control over my hyper-focus. Sometimes something I’ve been really into before, doesn’t interest me at all another time. It can be really confusing. A good example of this is self-improvement books and books about living with ADHD. I will go through periods of reading books and listening to audiobooks to better myself and I’ll eagerly absorb every word they say, then suddenly I’ll pick up a book, or press play, and nothing will go in. This can be very frustrating. How can I control my ADHD when my ADHD won’t let me learn how?
Jobs are the hardest though. When I first start any new job, I’m generally fairly eager to learn everything there is to know about the job. Except when I tried car sales. I couldn’t get any product product info to stick because I just don’t care about cars. However, for the most part, I learned quickly and voraciously about how to do the job. I do well, and often hit my targets in the first couple of months. Then I get bored, because I know how to do it and I’m not interested anymore.
I have a few tricks to get around this. I fold origami at my desk, or fiddle with magnet puzzles, or Transformers (the ones with lots of steps). Most managers will consider these activities distracting and assume that they’re to blame for my low-productivity, when in fact it’s the only thing keeping me working at all.
That’s why I thought a writing career would be better. No bosses telling me how to do a job I already know how to do in my sleep. No trying to sell products that I don’t believe in. No boring. Or so I thought. It turns out that writing a story can get really boring. Especially if it’s a formulaic narrative that a client wants you to write because it hits all the bullet points that the marketing tells them it should.
Even the stories I’m writing for myself. If I already know how it ends, then trying to put it into detailed words that allow other people to see the direction the story takes can be a little tedious. Admittedly, I often find that the characters add interesting details to the narrative that I hadn’t originally anticipated, but getting to those ‘wow’ moments can be a slog. Then there’s re-writes! Sometimes I don’t want to write another word simply because, once I’ve finished, I need to rewrite the whole fucking thing to check for errors and tighten up the plot. Boring!!
I had these big ambitions of writing everyday, like it was my full-time job (because it would be). Being the next J. K. Rowling and living in luxury. In reality I sometime go for days without writing anything, and even then it’s only because of ‘The City of Gate‘ and ‘The N-Viron Network‘.
Speaking of which, I love writing those stories and if I could somehow make a living running those RP groups, I think I’d be in heaven. I’ve had the idea of selling merch, but I don’t think my audience much cares about ‘The City of Gate’ t-shirts and miniatures. The minis will be a particularly hard sell, just because they’re so expensive. Particularly if I want to make a profit selling them. More on that later.
At the moment I don’t make a lot of money. None, in fact, from the writing. I can, however, make up to about £120 per week doing odd-jobs. I like doing the odd-jobs. I get to help people, do something physical, get some fresh air, meet new people, and make a little money. Since I’m not a fully licensed and insured handyman, I only charge £10 per hour and generally only work in two hour shifts for each client. If I can work my way up to two clients per day, Monday thru Friday, I could make £800 per month.
This would be fine if the plan was still to stay with my parents for as long as I could, save up £1000 of ‘oh shit’ money, and then start working on getting a car and a place of my own. However, I now have a girlfriend. My parents house has no soundproofing whatsoever. If my parents are in the living room (directly above my room) I can hear everything they say and every footstep they take. There are occasions when my gf and I would like some privacy.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been looking into the cost of renting a flat. I’m pricing it up as if it was just me since, understandably, my gf doesn’t want to commit to moving in with me just yet. We’ve only been a couple for just over a month. Kidwelly, the town I live and work in, doesn’t have any one-bedroom flats available at the moment, according to my Google search results. However, the nearby city of Carmarthen has a few places available in the £300 – £400 per month range.
On top of that I’d need to pay council tax (about £60), utilities (included with some places but up to £120 on top otherwise), a monthly bus card so I can still do my odd-job gigs in Kidwelly and get around in general (£21, I think), handyman insurance so I can take gigs from the council or businesses (a little under £100), and food (both to cook at home and to grab on the go, about £280 per month). Altogether that’s £980 per month, which is way more than I can afford right now.
If I also take into account that there’s going to be additional surprise expenses, like new tools, dates, the occasional gift, a sudden pet, and it’s clear that I have to modify my plan. Hence why I’ve been seriously thinking about other ways I could make money, such as selling ‘The City of Gate’ merchandise.
I’ve designed some pretty awesome miniatures through a website called HeroForge. The ‘premium plastic’ versions of each mini cost £29.99 to 3D print (about £20), which is fairly reasonable for a custom-made miniature. The bit that makes me nervous is marking up the price so that I can make a profit.
Most of the books I’ve read on starting up a business point of that the biggest mistake new businesses make is undervaluing their product. They set the price too low, and end up making a loss when people ask for a discount. At least on of them recommended an 800% markup. That way you can offer them a 50% discount, it looks like they’re getting and amazing deal, and you’re still in profit.
If I did that then each mini would be $239.92, marked down to $119.96. In GBP that’s £159.95 marked down to £79.97 (roughly). Tell me honestly, as awesome as these minis are, would you pay nearly 80 quid for it, even if the ‘full price’ was £160?
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If so, that’s awesome, but I’m thinking that a $15 (£10) profit per mini is more reasonable. This would make the premium plastic versions $44.99 (about £30) and the standard plastic $34.99 (about 20). The difference being that the premium plastic is design to be paintable. People are still welcome to cut out the middleman and design their own HeroForge minis, but if they want the characters designed by me and the players of ‘The City of Gate’ then they can pay the extra.
I’m open to other ideas though. I’m even willing to consider going back to working full time if a) I can find full-time work in Carmarthen so I don’t have to commute so much and b) I can find a role that won’t bore me stupid within three months. I’d also still like to become a full-time writer, but I may have to get a better handle on my ADHD before I can seriously consider that a career.
I have (finally) registered with a local doctor’s office. So soon I will get to see if a British Doctor will agree with my American Doctor about it being ADHD, or if it’s something else (I’ve noticed a few autistic behaviours, particularly when I’m stressed). Maybe there’s even some sort of benefit I’m eligible for.
I’m going to the Job Centre in Carmarthen tomorrow anyway for the next step in the process of Job-Seekers allowance. I looked into it because my Mother suggested it and found out that if I drop below 16 hours work a week, I can get a little help. It won’t be anywhere near enough to reach my monthly target, but it will help when the gardening gigs drop off and I’m begging people to let me hang shelves or organise their junk room.
I think that covers everything I’m stressing out about at the moment. Oh, wait! There’s also the fact that I have recently started a Games and Geekery group in Kidwelly, and that most of my friends and odd-job clients are in Kidwelly, so even if I did have a place of my own in Carmarthen, I’d still be spending most of my time in Kidwelly anyway!
I may need to think this through some more. Any suggestions and advice would be appreciated. I know there was something else I wanted to bring up, but it’s gone.
Have a great day 🙂
ADHD Makes Adulting Harder Than It Should Be! I'm juggling so many thoughts right now I don't even know where to start, so I'm just going to start writing and see what happens.