May 8, 2023
12:19pm
Location Sarasota, Florida Tesla Service Center
I’m sitting at the Tesla service station here in Sarasota, Florida. My tire has a slow leak so I brought it in to have them check it out. It’s going to be around 2-3 hours of wait time and I have my iPad Air, so I figure I would write a bit to pass the time.
I haven’t really been blogging on my personal site in many years. Although I did start a journal habit a few months back, which has been enjoyable. Basically every morning at 8am my iPad has a shortcut that goes off and tells me it’s time to journal. So I open up the “DayOne” app and set a timer for 5 minutes.
It’s a good way to kinda recap what I’ve been doing and keep myself accountable about stuff I’m building. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Amazon influencer review videos. I make little 1-3 minute videos talking about different products I have or have been using. I then upload them through the app and if people who are on the Amazon product pages watch my video and then buy the product, I get a commission. That’s the super easy version of it, there are some things with compliance and getting accepted into the program and stuff.
I had started that in December of 2022, I think that I first got approved on December 16 when my first three videos went live. Since then it’s grown nicely. I have been taking it more seriously and am reviewing a bunch of stuff. My growth on it has been fun, because I get to talk about different products and what I like/dislike about them. I just quickly opened the app and looked. Last month I earned more than the previous month which is good.
What else is new?
Last year we moved around Florida a lot, so no change there. We lived on the Gulf for a while, between St. Pete and down a bit south of Sarasota and then spent a few months up in St Augustine where I got to surf a ton. It was a lot of fun there, but the water was chilly and it wasn’t super convenient charging the car. We also spent the first 3 months up in Panama City Beach, Florida and one month in Indian Shores, Florida.
We’re really exploring and trying to find the right spot for home base. St Pete Beach is awesome, but it’s tough to find a spot there because of how small and built up it already is.
I started a blog post last month that I never ended up publishing. It had a big update on everything I had been working on.
I am not 100% sure why I never published it, or finished it. That has been common with me in my past, starting a project and struggling to finish it. I’ll get really excited about something but if it doesn’t turn into a profitable thing I end up getting distracted with other projects that have been working or that are on the verge of working.
(it’s now later in the day and I went back and published that blog, you can see it at: What I’ve Been Working On April 2023 Edition” if you’re curious)
That’s how I got into the Amazon review stuff. My YouTube homepage had a good video recommendation from someone I’ve followed for years. I watched his video and immediately took action on it… then I had to wait for approval and it took around 48 days. It was frustrating, but something I knew could work out.
It’s worked out pretty well.
The blog post from before? No idea why I didn’t publish it. I could go re-read it and see, but then I’d be getting distracted from this particular article. Then I’d probably not publish this.
I am probably going to struggle with figuring out how to upload a blog post image for this post as well. We’ll see how that goes when I’m done writing.
Other things I’ve been up to:
I also started creating AI artwork. When I was young I enjoyed drawing stuff. I used to make little baseball cards in art class. I would also draw some stuff randomly but I got away from it because I had no way of monetizing it (in my mind).
But, someone else I follow online showed me how they were using MidJourney to create artwork and selling it on Adobe. I had wanted to play with MidJourney, but it’s $30/month for what I would use… which meant I needed to find a way to have it pay for itself.
So far it has been. Last month I earned around $200 from selling AI art. I’ve been super consistent with creating photos everyday and uploading them. It’s been fun to get a bit creative and leveraging AI tools makes it way easier to actually get the things I want. Is it cheating? I’m not sure.
If I was an artist, using AI could be a cool way to see different versions of potential creations before putting in the time to make them. But on the other hand, part of the joy of creating is just starting and kinda working through all the hiccups. It’s a tough thing for me to truly understand. Although now I can say I’ve sold art, which is fun to me.
It’s kinda like when I first published my kindle book on juggling. I went from normal dude to “author” by simply writing a book. Since then, I’ve written a couple other kindle books. I really used to love writing, back when I started my blog and I was documenting a ton of stuff. I really got out of the habit because of it not being profitable at all for me.
All of my niche stuff worked out way better than my “personal brand” stuff so I put all my attention to that instead. I don’t regret it, since it’s allowed me to live my dream life. But I don’t have all the documenting from a bunch of different things I’ve learned over the years.
I also pretty much stopped doing personal Youtube videos as well. I guess I still don’t have a clear direction for my channel. I ended up building other niche YouTube channels that actually made more money, so I once again moved towards that.
This has been a fun experiment in writing.
There really isn’t a lot of direction with this, it’s kinda just whatever pops into my mind and I just write it. It’s way different than my niche stuff. With that, I know exactly what needs to be written because it tends to be for certain keywords. With my blog here, I’m still not 100% sure on the direction.
I guess it’s all just a big experiment. Maybe someday I’ll have a family of my own and this can be used to see what I was thinking during certain time periods in my life. Maybe not. Who knows for sure.
There was an interview that Tim Ferris’s did with Derek Sivers that I really enjoyed. Derek mentioned how he likes people who just have personal blogs and document stuff and I vibed with that. Honestly that interview is probably why I started writing this article. So, thank you for that Derek. You can see his blog at Sivers.com
Anything else that’s new? I bought a walking pad and have been using it to walk 5 miles a day. Yes, I bought it with the idea that I could review it and get a return on it… and it’s been getting a return, which is awesome. But it also allows Sam and I to get a few extra miles of walking in each day, so it’s a return on overall health as well.
I also started doing 100 pushups everyday as another positive habit. I started that I believe in October of 2022 and have only missed 2 or 3 days. They were either moving days or when I went to the Masters with my dad. Btw, The Masters was incredible. The course is immaculate and watching the players have fun and be incredibly talented was such a memorable experience. I also bought and flipped a bunch of stuff from the tournament, which is always fun. I ended up getting a hat and a few other things for me personally for free from flipping stuff. It’s great.
That seems like it’s a good update overall. I’m still not sure on the direction of the blog here, so I guess that’s it for now.
I’m still at the Tesla service center and I’m trying to get Discord to work so that I can use MidJourney to make an image for the blog post… but it’s not loading. So I’m just going to publish this without a picture for now and will update when it works.
What will be the image? Who knows.