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2023

Abstract

she wanted to express how inadequate she thought <i>I</i> was? Hmmm (tapping chin, and looking at the ceiling).</p><p id="8ea3">I swept out of her office without a goodbye, which she deserved. I passed a tall, thin young black woman cheerfully conversing with the bank teller. “Go on in,” said the bank teller, gesturing towards the sorry Karen with the stank attitude.</p><p id="e955">The tall young black woman happily bounded over to Karen’s lair. I wanted to say to her, “Be careful, there’s a hungry Karen over there,” but I didn’t and I went on my way.</p><p id="8d12">After meeting up with my friend in the warm enough New England afternoon, rubbing our hands over the flame heaters outside the cafe, I decided to stop by the independent computer repair shop. The bell clanged against the door, alerting my presence, and the man I recognized from before Christmas when I had brought my computer stood at his station.</p><p id="1395">But why, in good God’s name, did it smell like poop in that place? It hadn’t ever smelt like that before. I looked around. Was there a bathroom somewhere? I peered around. No. Just a smaller office and a supply closet. I mean, I was wearing a mask, so the smell must have been BAD. Had a disgruntled customer recently come in and taken a revenge dump on the carpet and marched out? I wanted to make some odor-related remark, but I didn’t really know what to say. In fact, I pictured someone else coming in behind me, thinking, “Did this lady blow up the indie computer repair store?”</p><p id="2696">I was wrongly implicated in this way in graduate school. I went into a single stall bathroom and the toilet bowl was flooded with diarrhea leftovers. Sorry, I don’t know how else to say it. I couldn’t stomach using the sight, so I turned heel and edged my way past the person waiting to come in. The door closed behind her, and one second later, it opened and she ran out with a disgusted look on her face. I wanted to rush up to her and say, “It wasn’t me, I swear!” “Tell her it wa

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sn’t you!” My friends urged me, but I felt too foolish.</p><p id="0a64">I‘m sure the computer guy knew the source of the stench, or at least, knew it wasn’t me, so I pleasantly explained my computer problem to Chris or Bob or Dan or somesuch. My stomach begged me to get out of there as fast as possible. ChrisBobDan was one of those guys whose statements continually failed to indicate the end of a conversation, like, “Ok……. so I’ll order the part and email you……” He didn’t look up and kept typing away. “So, we’re done?” I breathed anxiously. “Yeahhhh….” he drawled in an insecure, noncommittal tone, still jabbing at the keyboard. I dashed out of there into the fresh afternoon air.</p><p id="bea3">Thanks for reading,</p><p id="d01a">~MJ</p><div id="a264" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/karen-i-prefer-boa-constrictor-1eee10b46222"> <div> <div> <h2>Karen? I Prefer Boa Constrictor</h2> <div><h3>This insidious kind of Karen kills you with fake niceness.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*6N8Y_d01iS-4s4NJb3F-Xg.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="9698" class="link-block"> <a href="https://mjadia.medium.com/i-cheered-when-they-came-for-amy-coopers-dog-38ee2da484"> <div> <div> <h2>I Cheered When They Came for Amy Cooper’s Dog</h2> <div><h3>She deserved it. But maybe call-ins are better than canceling and call-outs</h3></div> <div><p>mjadia.medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*ECc8nVelcIbK72LNtf_OeQ.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

I Won’t Write For Nine Days Starting Tomorrow

Even as a productive author, you can take a vacation. It all depends on preparation.

Photo by Robson Hatsukami Morgan on Unsplash

If you live in a relationship in which one person is employed, and the other is self-employed, it can sometimes be challenging to have days off together.

While the employee simply applies for leave and someone else does the work during this time, I can’t do that easily as a self-employed person.

As long as I do not write, my projects will not progress. If I don’t publish an article every day, I earn less money because my readers can’t find my content anymore. If I interrupt my next book’s work, it will be finished later, and I earn less money again.

For this reason, many self-employed people rarely take a vacation. They believe that only if they work every day, they can survive financially.

Under such circumstances, it isn’t easy to have a relationship. The partner would quickly get annoyed if you could never take a holiday together. Taking no days off is, therefore, not a sustainable solution.

Planning is everything

About three months ago, we decided that we would take a holiday during the week we celebrate our twenty-third wedding anniversary. The two weekends before and after should also be free. So in total, we are talking about nine days.

So I had to find a way to bridge those nine days without losing too much.

As far as my books were concerned, the problem was not too big. Postponing the next publication for nine days wouldn’t make much difference. I would have more issues if it were a whole month.

So I don’t even try to write enough extra in advance to compensate for the nine days off.

I’ve done something else to keep my sales reasonably stable during the holiday week. As soon as it was clear that we wanted to take this holiday, I started to work intensively with Amazon ads.

This way, if it works out well, I can prevent my books from slowly decreasing visibility during my free time. So in the last weeks, I experimented with these ads and found out how to sell a few more books per day without making a loss.

I’ve wanted to look into this form of advertising for a long time, but so far I’ve never found the time. The upcoming holidays finally brought the urgency I needed to take the time.

I will continue to benefit from what I have learned about marketing in the last few weeks after our holidays.

However, I can’t just stop my work here on Medium for nine days. I tried out some time ago about the consequences of not publishing for three days, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t afford it.

You can read the article about my experiences here.

I wanted to know how dramatic the losses would be if I didn’t publish a new article for three days.

Every Medium author has heard the advice that you should publish an article every day. I kept to it for three months…

medium.com

Fortunately, Medium offers the possibility to schedule the publication of articles for the future.

So I just had to write nine additional articles. Since I only write on weekdays, I have always had to write in advance for the weekends. So the principle was familiar to me.

So far, I had to write seven articles within five days to publish every day. That means, two days a week, I had to write two pieces each.

To cover nine additional days, I had to write two articles on each day of the week instead of two for three weeks. This was easily done.

So everything you will read from me on Medium between July 11th and July 19th will have written by July 10th at the latest.

Conclusion

Independent authors who publish every day can also take a holiday if they prepare accordingly. So we are not worse off than regular employees, because those of you who have a regular job will know that it gets stressful everywhere before the holiday. Everybody tries to do as much as possible before the holiday so that you don’t have to do so much work afterward.

I am looking forward to my time out, and I am convinced that I will come back with new energy and fresh ideas.

Instead of writing myself, I will undoubtedly read a lot during this time. Maybe you will hear from me when I comment on one of your articles.

See you again on July 20th.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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