Meditations on money.

First off, an an article on the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion that's kind of relevant to where my head is now.

It's been over a year since I had to hit the panic button, as I call it when I suddenly realize I need much more money than I have. I think that's happened basically three times in my self-employed career to date, less than once per year, and each time it was a smaller panic. The last one was medical related. Since that time, I've *usually* managed to have some money in my bank account and more often than not had money in my PayPal account.

(Note: This post is not a preamble to hitting the panic button again. It's a reflection on progress. I would love to get a few more sponsors, even at the $1 level, or have a few more people buy an annual newsletter subscription. I would love to see more sales of The Gift of the Bad Guy on Kindle. But these are routine matters.)

Talking about how bad I am with money feels kind of risky to me, since... from a certain point of view... I ask people to give me money for a living. I mean, from a certain point of view, we all do that. Everybody who participates in this modern money-based economy has essentially made a career out of having other people believe that giving money to them is a good idea. But my methods of doing so look more like the socially unacceptable ways of doing so than a lot of people's, and I have an inkling that the more I manage to look like a Highly Professional Person Who Has It All Figured Out the better people will feel about paying me for what I'm doing.

The thing is, I am bad with money but I've been getting better. I'm at a point in my recovery where I think it's more helpful to talk about it than not... well, a shorter way to say that would be "at any point in my recovery". To be more specific, I think I'm at the point in my recovery where I've come as far as I can without being willing to talk about it, to face up to it. This up-facing wouldn't necessarily need to be public, if it were being done by someone else, but this is how I process things.

Having grown up in a small town and not being able to drive, I had limited opportunities to earn and spend money growing up. Every trip somewhere that I could shop was something of a special occasion for me. I watched my older brother drive up to Omaha and back as he pleased, envied his weekly or more frequent trips to the comic and gaming shop. I envied my classmates who could go to the Old Market or one of the malls whenever they pleased. Every time I was able to go to one of these places, I felt the urge... the need... to buy something, to make the trip count, to make it worth it. The chance to shop somewhere new became a highlight of family trips for me.

When I was 20, I moved into my first apartment. I had my first "real" job. For the first time ever I was living on my own, had my own money, and was within walking distance of places that I could spend money. There was a grocery store, a Fashion Bug, a dollar general, and a few pharmacies within easy walking distance. A department store and comic store and numerous other things were within about an hour's walk or so. The thing about walking everywhere... especially the places that were a few miles away... is that it did nothing to diminish my sense that if I went somewhere and didn't spend money, it didn't count.

I overdrafted my checking account on a fairly regular basis during the early months of having it. A similar thing happened when I got credit cards.

The other thing that happened at that time was that I became involved with two women who were appreciably older than me but who in many ways had even worse life skills. In some respects, I suddenly had to be the adult. This also meant that I didn't have to walk everywhere, but my most impulsive shopping habits became furtive... I couldn't explain why I needed to buy certain things, why I needed to spend money, and felt it would be better if I didn't have to. So when I had the opportunity to do so I kept up my habit of walking three or four miles to a store, spending way too much money, and then carrying my purchases back.

The fact that I was supposed to be the "smart" one in the group made it difficult for me to talk about how "stupid" I was being with my checking account and then with credit cards, and if I couldn't talk about it with others than I couldn't really acknowledge it to myself... that might sound backwards, but if you feel unable to talk about something then your choices can be to either go crazy stewing over it or push it away. Having a somewhat congenitally fuzzy memory to begin with means it's pretty easy for me to push things away... though of course, that made it worse because it took me from "not keeping careful track of how much money I spent" to "carefully not keeping track of how much money I spent."

My overspending tended to fall into patterns. For a while it was LEGO brand building sets. For a while it was SD cards. Today you can buy a 2GB SD card for like $19. I used to basically collect 1 GB cards, when they cost close to a $100. What did I ever do with them? Not much. It was the thought of what I could do with them that kept me buying them. Sometimes I told myself they were for work (i.e., writing), though why I would ever need one gig of storage for writing I did on my Treo was a question I never answered.

I bought a lot of things I didn't need. Some things that I didn't even want or couldn't use. Everything instantly fell into the zone of the Sunk Cost Fallacy... the same stream of impulses that convinced me that I had to buy things, that it was more of a waste (of time walking, of opportunity) not to buy something made me try to convince myself that every purchase was a good idea, that it was justifiable... I was already emotionally invested in everything I bought.

I bought a bait-and-switch laptop (was shown one with Windows 98, was sold a box that had a Windows 95 machine that barely turned on) at a consumer electronics show and never admitted to myself (literally up until this moment) that I was scammed. I bought a rip-off plug-into-the-TV ROM machine from a holiday mall kiosk. I bought clothes that didn't fit me and devices that weren't compatible and things that I would have seen were broken if I had checked them in the store instead of acting like I was buying something illicit and might get busted if I lingered five seconds longer.

I'm using past tense here because the behavior I'm describing is in the past. I'm not writing this seeking advice or support, I'm sharing the backstory so people can understand where I am now.

(I'll repeat part of that last part: I'm not writing this seeking advice. There are a few people on my friends list who mean well but seem to frequently reply to my posts with advice that makes me see red because it's either inapplicable or redundant. Being able to graciously accept advice I don't want is something else I'm working on, but one thing at a time and I'm not working on that today, so please, no advice. And double please, no advice that begins with words to the effect of "I know you said you don't want advice...")

((I wrote "always" where it now says "seem to frequently", but then I recalled this article. I believe that my tendency to generalize memories probably has a lot to do with my penchant for emotional overreaction. Any advice-giver becomes every advice-giver, and it's the annoying advice that sticks with me. Still, like I said, one thing at a time.))

These days? I'm slightly better at making money than I am at spending it. I'm a lot more aware of my problems. Back when I was doing things like walking to ShopKo and writing a $200 check for LEGO brand building blocks I was aware that I had trouble keeping track of my money and that perhaps I spent too much on frivolous things but I couldn't have broken down the how and why like this. It's taken considerable introspection (and a lot of Jack pointing out the obvious) for me to understand what's all in play.

I still spend money a little too freely. I still feel the urge to buy things just to take advantage of the opportunity to... well, to spend money, like it's a unique experience. To say "I was there". It's an urge that if I cannot precisely ignore, I can deal with in other ways than by giving in. I'm still paying for some of the mistakes and missteps of my younger years in various ways, literal and metaphorical, but I have gotten to the point where I seem to be better at making money than spending it.

Yes, I do have some debt I could have paid off several times over by now if I'd been... I was going to say "wiser" or "smarter", but instead I'm going to say more in control. My first and biggest panic button-panic put me on solid enough ground that I could have gotten out of debt completely within a year of that, but I didn't grow enough fast enough in that year and while I managed to not acquire any more new debt I did not manage to effectively deal with all that I had accumulated so far.

I'm dealing with it now.

If a year ago I'd been where I am now, psychologically and emotionally, I probably wouldn't be going to WisCon this year because I wouldn't have felt comfortable committing to pay for my airfare and the hotel room and downtown Madison dining a year out... but I think it's going to work out for the best anyway. Being careful and thinking about what I'm spending money on and whether or not it's actually necessary or worth it but without forcing myself into self-punishing austerity measures--something I believe to be counterproductive in so many ways--I believe I can be out of debt in two years.

Or one year, if subsequent quarterly fundraisers go like the first two have... I'm not counting on that eventuality, though.

My two enormously successful fundraisers of the year so far haven't left me swimming in as deep a swimming pool of cash as one might imagine, as a large chunk of that money was necessary for things like debt repayments and taxes and WisCon-related expenses I committed to a year ago... and while I have no doubt they earned me more money than if I'd just spent three months saying, "Hey, don't forget I need money to live!", they also took some of the earning potential I would have had over three months and concentrated it into one spot. It's going to take a few more repetitions to see what the actual pattern is, but it's not like getting $2,000 of completely unexpected bonus money.

But they augur well for the future.

And that's really it for this post. No big sweeping conclusion. No plan of action. No call for help. Just a meditation on where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going.


When I started writing this post I wasn't sure I was going to mention my debt in it. In my first night of the panic button, I had one person who responded with something like "Enough is enough. I'm not helping some kid pay their credit card bill." That was only one negative voice in a sea of positivity, but it resonated, because it kind of hit on exactly how I fear I'm coming off. But the thing is that any time you spend money, you're probably helping someone pay their credit card bill. Or their mortgage or car loan, which may or may not have resulted from something you'd consider to be a wise financial decision. Or you're paying for their Hummel figurine habit or their Pay-Per-View wrestling or something else in their life that might seem like a bad decision or a waste of money to you.

And like I said, I think I've come as far as I can... climbed back up out of the hole as far as I can... without talking about this. Also, one of the tentpoles I've built my internet presence/career around is the idea that self-published authors can make a living. I'm not the only success story there, but the opposition loves a failure. Even though my credit card debt is stuff I piled up before and immediately after I left my day job, if I fell behind again and my whole life fell apart because of it, it would become one more piece of evidence that self-publishing doesn't work.

Even though most of America is drowning in debt, if I drowned it would be seen as a consequence of my specific career choices.

So that's why I'm putting it out on the table now... not to fish for pity or "extra help" or whatever. Just to say... well, really, just to say.

And now I have said, and it's time to get to work.

Something else I've figured out.

In real life, few emotional problems actually boil down to anything so simple as a single cause, much less anything that can be summed up in a single sentence. But I think a lot of my more disproportionate responses to criticism comes from things that, if human beings were perfectly rational creatures (or to be more specific, if I were a perfectly rational creature), would make me care less.

First... if I think the criticism is groundless or misses the mark, it ticks me off because it feels unjustified, and thus, unjust. This is very much rooted in a middle-class white kid's definition of injustice (where unfair is somebody else getting the last green popsicle... this is sometimes called a "first world problem", but using that label would ignore the fact that in the first world there are a lot of people who have to deal with actual injustice. Heck, I have to deal with actual injustice, but not at a level that's stopped me from worrying about popsicle flavors) and it ties into "Wrong On The Internet" syndrome. It's the worst kind of Wrong On The Internet... it's somebody being Wrong On The Internet about me.

And of course, my ire gets compounded when somebody comes along and repeats the canard that if criticism stings there must be something to it.

Obviously if I were perfectly rationale, then that canard would be true... except I wouldn't be bothered by on-target criticism if I were rational. I would just be affected by it, while more-or-less ignoring off-target criticism.

But I'm not perfectly rational, so reading criticism that I think misses its mark or misses the point still has the power to ruin my day. Or I have the power to use it to ruin my own day. I don't know.

Second, the more the majority of reader comments are enthusiastically positive, the more I seem to be bothered by the few complaints. Anybody reading this or observing that might be inclined to first think that it's fly-in-the-ointment syndrome, or that I want/demand universal adulation or something... but like "If it bothers you it must be right", that's too simplistic and off the mark.

I keep finding myself wanting to tell the people who aren't happy with the latest chapters that they're far out-numbered by the people who do like them and that I can't make everyone happy with every chapter. And here's where we come to a truism that actually is true: they aren't the ones I'm trying to convince. I am.

I'm being defense, but it's not because I see their criticism of me as something I need to defend myself against. I'm defending... for lack of a better word... my record. I'm defending my failure to have entertained this one person this one time, and by extension every person I've failed to defend every time.

And of course, if I were perfectly rational, then "I can't please everybody all the time." would be a freeing sentence. Instead it manages to ring in my head as both an admission of failure and my only defense against that failure, which leads to the most vicious of vicious cycles. I actually sit down to respond to comments saying words to the effect of, "Sorry you didn't like this one, but I don't expect everyone to like every chapter. Hopefully there will be some ones more up your alley soon enough!" but then I find myself getting more and more worked up as I go.

Sometimes, of course, I do manage to say just what I mean to and walk away feeling good.

In case it's not clear to anyone, the purpose of a post like this is not to go "OHHHHH MY GOSH THE COMMENTERS ARE SO STUPID AND ANNOYING" or to complain about having to deal with them. Because I don't have to deal with them. If nothing else I could just turn comments off again. Rather, I'm working through how I deal with them, so that I can deal with them better in the future.

Y'know, the funny thing is...

...that I woke up this morning ready and rarin' to write, and I told myself, "Don't sign into the Tales of MU site. Don't look at comments. Just sit down and start writing." And I did my normal morning routine and I did my first hour of prep, but then I noticed that something I re-tweeted earlier in the day from Tim Pratt about his 99 cent e-books was showing up on the Twitter feed on my site like I had said it. Apparently turning off avatars in a Twitter feed like that also means there's no name display?

That was brought to my attention right when I was about to start writing, so I signed into the site to do so... and in the process, I saw the most recent comments on the admin Dashboard.

That's when the RAEG started, and when I lost my writerbrain for the day, for reasons I meditated on in my previous post.

...and I've just realized I can minimize/close the "recent comments" section of the admin dashboard. Wow. That's going to help a lot. Actual self-control and a sense of proportion would be even better, but today would have gone a lot differently if I'd done that at some point in the past. Now I'll only see comments when I go looking for them.

"Did you wish really hard?"

On this episode of Doctor Who, a sadistic megalomaniac named House fixes people while not caring about them!

( I'd say more outside the cut, but Dr. Song would shoot me. )

A micro-incentive.

For every 10 sales of The Gift of the Bad Guy Kindle edition... up to the first 70... I will expand the map(ish) that I drew showing Pelorus and the Mother Isles. So the "finished" expanded map will cover eight times the area, extending north to show Tylea, south to show the Argentus, more of the Ardan, and the location of Malbus and some other assorted places, and east to show the western part of Khazarus and the edge of the Shift proper, plus some other stuff to the west.

Note: It's not going to be any higher quality or more detailed... I'm working with physical limitations here. But it'll give the relative locations and approximate shapes of things, which more graphically capable people could use as a starting point and readers who have a difficulty reading about distant lands without a visual aid showing where they are in relation to each other can have that aid.

American Kindle Store.

UK Kindle Store.

German Kindle Store. (Note: Book is in English.)

Note: Kindle format e-books do not require a $100+ piece of specialty hardware to run. You can read them on your desktop or on many major smartphones using free software. While I get the same money even if people buy it just to see more of my map scrawlings, my actual goal here is to get more copies of the book into the e-hands of more people who want to read it, faster.

This offer expires in a week. When I wake up on Tuesday I'll check the sales and then start drawing the appropriate number of map segments. After that I won't have time to draw the map before WisCon, and after WisCon I won't be at my desktop computer for a while.

Edit: To sweeten the pot a little... my housemate has some actual "skills of an artist", as they say dans la belle internet... so when my scribblings are finished, and after I've shared them with you, I'll be turning them over to her to produce a higher-quality version. What do you say, internets?