Works In Progress

Several projects on tap right now, none of them moving as quickly as I'd like.

Next video will deal with racism and bigotry in light of the recent discussions about gays in the military. I'm still debating a bit about how I want to write the articles for this one, and still trying to find certain images and film that are in the public domain so I can do something reasonably creative without stealing someone else's work.

I'm also still slowly working on a larger piece about the young woman who contacted me a few weeks ago about my Authoritarianism, Spanking, and Casey Anthony show. She has told me quite an interesting story and let me to some interesting material that I think will help frame some of the arguments I've been making about how pervasive authoritarian thinking is in our culture and what that does to us over a period of generations. This will likely be almost more like a "real" documentary show, like A&E's "City Confidential" or something. It will probably be months before that's done, but it's going to be really good.

Several other smaller pieces I'm working on, most of which I've discussed before. I'm sort of working on all of them at once right now, going where the mood takes me with them.

The 40 Year Old Freshman

School is going quite well. My test scores are not as high as I'd like them to be, but that's good - it shows me where I need to learn most. Tends to be specific things like dates, but some of it is also refining my own thinking about labels and how they're used and what they mean. This has actually put a hold on one project I'm working on, as I want to do more research on it, but that's for LowGenius.Net

In the next week or so I should have both some audio and video for you from school. I'm taking production classes in both this semester, and starting to kick out the homework. The nice thing is that some of it I can integrate into directly creating content - for instance, a "what I did this summer" video where I talk a bit about where I'm writing now and my various websites. Multi-purpose and all that, you know.

Money

This is - as usual - really troubling me. I haven't had a single contribution in over a month. I've got like a week left on my trial period for Adobe Production Premium CS5.5, and while I can continue to produce video after that it won't be nearly the level of quality I'd prefer to stick to. Additionally, components of CS5.5, especially AfterEffects, are going to be very useful (not sure if I'd go so far as to say "required") in my video production class. All of it goes to helping me become a better content producer so more people here what I'm saying, because I think the world needs to hear a lot of what I'm saying.

The people who actually hear it appear to agree. When I am able to get content produced, it's getting better and better positive reactions and wider audiences every time - my latest article at Politicus had something close to 750 shares last I looked.

I hate talking about money, but the bottom line is that I need it to live and I don't have much in the way of opportunities to make any in traditional ways. Not only am I not a traditional person, but I've also got my classes as well as the continued production of content, which includes a lot of research time and frankly some time that ends up wasted because I decide to toss something.

I need - need - as much ongoing support from the community of people who read my work as I can get. Rent is coming, utility, phone...the things people need to survive. I don't get paid for what I do in any other way (aside from VERY minor income from affiliate advertising). I'd like to - if enough people are sharing my work and talking about it, eventually I can try freelancing for better-known publications (or media for that matter; many of my essays wouldn't be out of place on NPR), and then things just snowball.

But right now I need absolutely every bit of help I can get to keep pushing that snowball up the hill. It'll hit the top and start rolling eventually. I think it's beginning to.

Some people characterize this as begging. It's not. I work hard to produce the content I put out into the world, and I'm constantly learning more about how to do it better. I am changing the world for the better; I've been told that too many times by too many people to not believe it.

I'm an employee of the people of the world. I need to get paid enough to survive, or I can't afford to work for the people of the world. Then I have to go to work for corporations and someone tells me what to write and owns it afterward and if they don't like what I have to say, I don't work.

If you're familiar with my work I'm sure you can see my dilemma.

So please - I appreciate your patience as my workrate has dropped over the last few weeks, but I'm climbing back up. I need my tools to function; I need to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly to do what I do. I need your help to make that happen. If you can't afford to help with a cash contribution, spreading the word - especially links to lowgenius.net and 40yearoldfreshman.com and even lowgenius.com articles - is also a big help. The more people find out about what I'm doing and find it worthwhile, the more people might be willing to contribute a little bit to helping me take care of the demands of a material world.

Look for articles to come. Share them please. If you can help directly, then that's awesome too - critical, really, but I'm trying to be as low-pressure about this as I can. It's humiliating to admit you're broke and basically unemployable.

NB: If someone has freelance work - logo design, simple websites (I don't really have the ability to commit to a large, complex site right now; time is not predictable enough) my sites are as good as resume as anything - I'm certainly open to suggestions, if you'd like to be mentioned as a sponsor in show credits or something we can certainly talk about that, etc. Drop me a line, I'm not hard to reach and there are contact forms on all my sites.

On a brighter note...

Things are going well in school and I am thoroughly enjoying the entire experience. I'm biking back and forth to campus four days a week. Slowly getting in shape, I think. it's somewhat painful, but necessary. And not as bad as you might think. The only times it sucks is like today because it's rainy and kinda cold and crappy, although the actual ride in this morning was decent, going home doesn't look like it will be very fun. Life without a car, you adapt. I don't know how far into the winter I'll be able to ride, as I really don't have safe clothing for moving through sub-zero temperatures. We'll see how it goes.

I need to go get some homework done. New content coming. Please help. This is the biggest adventure of my life, and if flippin' money gets in my way it's going to really hurt.

By the way...

I'm transferring my sites to a different hosting plan, so you might experience some weirdness over the next couple of days as things get settled. -jh