Reflecting on the Future
2025-12-23
I've been reflecting on what I want my future to look like and my plans for it moving forward. As it stands, I haven't been employed in about two years. The main focus that I've had in these two years is writing and managing my bipolar disorder. When I first started taking writing seriously, I pursued a career in freelance writing. I made ads on websites, filled out hundreds of applications from job boards, and made a little bit of money from a few one-off clients here and there. As I kept going down this path, however, I felt unsatisfied with its optics. Not only were jobs getting more scarce due to the emergence of LLMs, but there were also more and more scams surrounding the hiring process. It wasn't a sustainable path in the long term, especially with the way I was pursuing it.
From there, I found sites like Medium and Substack where writers could build their own audience and generate income based on their own writing. Through joining Substack with my first iteration of IOKTIKN, I started to find my voice and come to enjoy writing as a craft. Unfortunately, I couldn't experience a significant level of growth on the platform because I wasn't writing content that was favorable to Substack's algorithms. On top of that, I wasn't producing articles or using the website frequently enough to appease the algorithm and gain exposure to a larger audience. I felt locked in by the platform and that catering to it was unfair and a waste of my time and readers' time as well. Then I started to write on my own website, and have been growing my audience here with more success.
I have since deleted my Substack account and decided to focus on building my audience here full time. As of writing this entry, my site has gained roughly 64k views since I launched it in February of this year. This is a much greater level of success than my Substack, which got maybe a few thousand views over a similar amount of time. On top of my independent writing, I have also made some efforts toward getting traditionally published in literary journals and magazines. The idea for me is essentially doing what an MFA student would do without incurring the costs of a formal program. With the degradation in relevance and prestige of mainstream literary institutions, this feels like a fair play to make.
Also since I started writing, I applied for disability income through social security. I have since been denied (a common occurrence) but the law firm that I'm working with has filed an appeal and I am waiting for a second decision as of writing this entry. I haven't had a job on paper, even though I received a very small sum of money from the few one-off freelancing gigs I did. My intention is to get disability income while still maintaining my website and making attempts to break into the literary world. With disability income, I can more aptly stand on principles I believe in such as not putting my work behind a paywall or "selling out" in any major capacity. To me, the integrity of my work matters more than what I could get paid for it. I don’t love that this is my path, but it’s the most honest way I know to protect both my health and my principles.
I am at a bit of a crossroads with this situation, though. I don't want my disability to impede on my ability to be a functioning member of society. I like the idea of being a normal dude with a job who helps keep the world spinning. Society is flawed, but there will always be a need for people to contribute to it. That is something I truly wish to do. I don't want a bullshit white collar office job, though. In the past, I've been successful in jobs that are active. I’ve always done better in jobs where my body is engaged and the work has a visible, tangible result. Not having to sit at a desk in front of a computer all day sounds like a fulfilling prospect.
My main aspiration regarding employment is to join the electrician's union and become an electrician. The most significant obstacle towards this, aside from my bipolar disorder, has been my base of fitness. Thankfully, I've made progress this year towards improving that, but I still don't quite think I'm at a level where I can sustain a physically demanding job like that. So with this year coming up, my crossroads is between continuing my path as a writer full time or trying to become an electrician as my main vocation and write on the side as a passion project.
I'm not too sure where I want to go with it. The financial support from my family lets me take this kind of risk without having to think too much about bills and other typical adult anxieties. I'm also single and don't have children, which minimizes my responsibility further. At this point in my life, I am really only responsible for myself. It might pain my ego a bit to say this, but realistically that's all I can handle right now, I think. I still want to make progress in the gym. I still want to keep writing here and attempting to break into the literary world. I still want to be independent. All of these aspirations loom around me, and while I can easily become overwhelmed by them, I know that God has good things in store for me as long as I remain faithful to His process and timing.
This temporary monasticism can feel like a sentence, but as I keep going, it feels more like a forge.
Things can go wrong, but they can also go right.
I hope they go right.