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- [DIGEST] Vacation, not meant to be spent alone...
[DIGEST] Vacation, not meant to be spent alone...
I'm back from Tanzania and can't wait to hear how you're doing.
I’m back from my safari in Tanzania and boy are my arms tired. Seriously, I know I messed up that joke but that’s because…my god every part of my body is tired. I have been sleeping since I got home on Thursday morning to try and recover, but I think I need a vacation from that vacation.
It was an amazing experience though, and worth every painful moment. Here are a bunch of awesome photos from the first part of my trip in Arusha, where we spent a day hiking Mount Kilimajaro and hung out with some monkeys. I’ll be dropping new photos every digest for the next few weeks.
If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.
1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.
2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.
I’m doing about a 2 right now because of jet lag, but I made it all the way up to a 4.5 on safari. It’s amazing what having no stress and somebody drive you around for two weeks does for your mental outlook. Still, I was waking up in stress sweats the last few days and now I’m back in that good good entrepreneurial anxiety cycle again. It fits like an old glove.
Because of some publishing drama, I bumped my previously planned post to give an explanation why, even after 10+ years in direct sales, I don’t use or recommend Shopify. It’s not the way I wanted to spend my vacation, but it was necessary and I think it turned out really well.
A new chapter of Magic dropped this week, and things are getting tense.
I rolled over, my face on the cool tile floor. It felt good against my burning skin. I had never used so much energy as I did with that spell in the sushi restaurant. Most days, all I would be thinking about was how I could return to full strength, but tonight—I turned my head to see Anjelica writhing on the floor, moaning, her demon face no longer a deep red but a light pink. She was dying.
“Hang on, kid. We’re almost there.”
“It hurts so much,” she whimpered.
“I know, but we’re so close. We’re so close.”
Kitsune shuffled out of the back room with a steaming cup of white goo. She yelped as Kimberly, following behind her, prodded a knife into her back. “Drink this.”
New chapters are free, but paid subscribers can access the archives. You also get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog.
Barring any new drama, next week I’ll have a post about when to burn it all down and how to rise from the ashes. Here’s a little taste of it.
I made $50,000 more last year than any other year in my whole career, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to keep it all together.
I don’t say that kind of thing lightly.
I’ve dealt with depression, anxiety, and a myriad of chronic illnesses for years. While I am prone to hyperbolize, I don’t ever joke about that kind of thing. The only thing that saved me was that I was so burnt out I was numb to how close I came to complete and utter collapse.
Fun start to an article, right? I’m not sure it gets more fun from here on out, but I sure do write a whole lot more words so that’s something, at least.
It really is quite a fun article if you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or like you are buried under a mountain of suck.
If any of that sounds like you, then first I’m sorry you’re going through that, but also, here’s a bunch of articles I read and loved this week while recovering which might help you get into a better frame of mind.
gives his latest breakdown of the creative economy, navigates through the valley of churn, can’t fix the information ecosystem, and breaks a broken internet even further.
talks nostalgia as culture, eulogized three publishing greats, opines the wake we leave behind, and creatively dresses herself.
takes on the future of media while asks why entertainment executives hate entertainment, navigates a changing media landscape, and peers out over the book publicity landscape in 2023.
shows how to make a “you are here” map for readers, gives us the rundown on aspirational archetypes, wrestles with the writer’s bargain, and ’s words fall short.
reclaimes her childhood or something like that, tracks down the last remaining lesbian bars in America, makes me fall in love with yet another dog, and tries to feel like herself again.
Also, since all the cool kids are doing it, just released the ability to add referrals. So, if you refer people to this publication through restacks or whatever then you get some free months of membership to The Author Stack. I’ve basically made it so every referral is worth $1.
So, five referrals gets you one month, 15 gets you three months, and so on. I’ve never been much for pushing referrals, maybe to my determinent, but after spending two weeks being continuously hassled to leave TripAdvisor reviews for every place I visited, I am okay with my choice. Still, if you do want to refer people to get some months of free subscriptions, I want to faciliate that as well. More details here about how they work.
If you like this post and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. I’m recovering this weekend, and hope you get a chance to do the same.
You also get access to one of my most popular comics with your membership. In Katrina Hates the Dead, a woman gets sick of living during the Apocalypse so she sets out to Hell to kill the Devil.