Category: Writing

  • Challenge Day 2 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 2 (of 30)

    It’s late; I need to figure out a way to get these emails out before stupid o’clock. You know what doesn’t help? GODDAMN DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME THAT’S WHAT. Despite evidence clearly showing that daylight saving kills or maims or just really pisses off a huge number of people every year, we persist in the monumental folly of meddling with time. And it’s even worse with kids, because they don’t understand why they have to get up and go to bed an hour earlier and it is apparently bad form to give them coffee. “Oh, but it’s so nice to have that extra sunlight in the evening!” Yeah, it is, and that would have happened anyway, thanks to the axial inclination of the earth and the sun’s gravitational pull. I hate daylight saving and I will spend the next few months furious about it until time returns to its rightful course.

    Did you miss yesterday’s email?

    Some of you didn’t sign up to this until the email was already out. Luckily, I am archiving them all on tworuru dot com. Go read, comment, share, and enjoy.

    Challenge Day 1 (of 30)

    Ahem

    Here are the remaining revenue plans/ideas I have.

    1. Art classes/drink&draw sessions etc
      I am good enough at art to know I’m not and never will be top-tier, but I’m also well aware that I have more draughtmanship than the average schmo. If those that can’t, teach, then surely those that can (a bit) would be better at it? Also, I enjoy the science of drawing, and I like teaching people. Some drawing classes or maybe putting on a few of those drink-and-draw sessions could help keep the wolf from the door. I was thinking of starting up an online cohort of folks who’d like to pick up some drawing skill; email me if you’re keen – josh@tworuru.com
    2. Teaching teachers how to draw
      You know who mostly can’t draw, at all? Teachers! To me, this is mind-blowing; it’s like if someone dropped a casual “Oh, I can’t add” or “Hah, yeah, I never learned to read!” in conversation. It’s not just arty-farty; the ability to sketch or diagram is a vital skill for any number of STEM-ish careers and a lot of kids aren’t being taught how to do it, because their parents or teachers didn’t know how. So I’m putting together a little professional development course for primary and intermediate teachers in NZ. The idea is just to teach the basics, to get teachers to the point where they’re “better” than the kids (children have a pointedly unsophisticated view of drawing; if you can do realism, you’re amazing) and they can take it or leave it from there. I’ve been at it for a while now and have a pilot school signed up ready to go. If you’re a teacher or principal or aligned such, ping me on josh@tworuru.com
    3. Investment/crowdfunding
      I think a few of my business plans – those I’ve detailed here and others – have legs, shapely business legs that might actually provide a return on investment. To that end, I am interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in investing, or can simply tell me how to talk to potential investors without falling flat on my face. I also think there’s some crowdfunding potential for painting series – for example painting along with every Bob Ross episode – that might be worth looking into. If any of that is something you know about, josh@tworuru.com will find me.
    4. A day job. I am not proud. I’m aware that the spool-up-your-own business biz may not work out, despite my best efforts — and you’d best believe I am giving it my best effort — and I’m more than happy to take on another normal-er job. On the bright side, the deeply stupid AI bubble should be bursting soon, so people might start hiring humans with a comms and marketing skillset again. On the dark side, the bursting may reap pure economic chaos, so who knows, maybe I’m better off trying to convince people to buy my stickers.

    Your ideas. Give them to me.

    I have more ideas, but that’ll do for now. Is there anything you reckon I’ve missed? Hit the reply button or snap an email off to josh@tworuru.com and let me know.

    Also your money

    The big red button lies below. Do you click it, helping me hit my $1k a month newsletter goal, or do you let it languish, curious to see if I can keep up daily emails for more than two days running?



    A bit of transparency is in order here. I currently bring in about (it varies, for various reasons) $400 a month from this newsletter. That may surprise you; perhaps it sounds like a lot, perhaps it sounds like very little. Either way, I’d love to get it up to $1000, a hefty 10 percent of my revenue goal.

    Tomorrow — bright and early tomorrow, not at what is apparently 10:45 PM but is actually 9:45 PM and you cannot convince me otherwise — I will send out a calendar of all the biz stuff I’m going to do or try to do for the next 28 days. There may, and this is fair warning, also be a spreadsheet. I hope you are ready.

  • Challenge Day 1 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 1 (of 30)

    For those who signed up for the Cynic’s Guide way back when, this new series may be what you were expecting (compared to whatever it is you got) it’s just me, trying on every damn self-improvement business hustle malarkey under the sun in an effort to make something stick, or at least make money, in 30 days. Let’s go.

    It’s business time

    I am wearing my business socks, mm. Because I am addicted to eating food and having a house, I am attempting to spool up a business in 30 days. This isn’t quite as follycious[1] as it might sound; people sometimes manage this stuff in a weekend. The target I’ve set myself is $10k revenue a month, which is a curious combination of lofty and about what a supermarket middle manager earns, but I’d rather shoot for the moon and miss and… end up asphyxiating during a decaying eccentric orbit? Damn my inability to let trite metaphors go unexamined. I’m giving it a damn good go, put it that way.

    The model I am using – because I like easily divisible numbers – is 10 revenue streams of $1000 each. Of course it may not shake out that way, chances are some will be more and some substantially less, but here’s the 10 that I think I can spin up from scratch or develop out over the next 30 days.

    1. Corporate comms and marketing stuff. I would be silly not to do this; it’s been my bread and butter for a decade now. To that end I have set up a website for a freelance case study business, specialising in being a tech whisperer for industries that absolutely suck at selling themselves. If you’re an accountant, systems integrator, infosec consultant, or your business has anything to do with Linux, you’d better make that call to the Content King.[2]
    2. Art shop. https://tworuru.com has been ticking over for ages now, but I’ve never really souped it up. I’ve been absolutely smashing out art lately and the plan is to make – at minimum – three kinds of product for each new piece I make: a print, a sticker, and a t-shirt.
    3. Commissions. A bunch of people have bought a commissioned artwork since I opened them up again and I am very grateful; you are keeping the (two) wolves from the door. You can get one of your own here if you’re so inclined: https://www.tworuru.com/product/custom-commission/
    4. Two Ruru Snail-Mail Print Club[3]. You subscribe and you get a print and a letter in the mail, each month! Like the olden days! I am actually absurdly excited about his one as I think I have come up with a really unusual twist on the fairly well-done concept of a snail mail club. I’ll introduce in an upcoming email. I’ll let you guys know first, because you’re cool. Oh and everyone who joins the Snail Mail Print Club also gets access to:
    5. Two Ruru Email Print Club. Exactly the same idea as the above, but users will subscribe just like you do to this newsletter and I’ll send you the letter and prints via electronic mail. Oh and I almost forgot; everyone who subs to either Print Club will get access to a downloadable archive of every artwork I’ve ever made.
    6. The newsletters. Yup, you’re here too! If I can get around ~200 paid subscribers a month, that’s 10 percent of my revenue requirement taken care of. And – as I hope this email proves – I will be writing a lot more. If I’ve made my case well enough, scroll down to the big red button

    That’s just the first six for now – I realise, now that I’m on a roll, that I have lots more of these in various stages of feasibility and completion, and these emails are meant to be short. So I’ll talk about the next five ideas/revenue streams in the next one of these thirty day challenge emails. And in the following email I’ll put in what I plan to be doing on each of the subsequent 29 days – there will be a new, business-time focus for each day. Today was “Explain the plan”.

    “Artwork” of the day

    I’m tired. Here’s a duck.

    It's an image of a duck on a lake, I painted both. People thought this was AI. It's not!

    Today’s video

    I made a video of me painting the black hole scene from Interstellar, one of my favourite sequences and visuals in any film. I love the painting. I’m less sure about the video, but I never know about those.

    And here’s the one from the day before, in which I painted those weird lights you see when you shut your eyes. People seemed to like it.

    What did you do today self-improvement-wise?

    I went for a run. Pre-kids I could whip out a casual 10k and now… I can’t. So I am taking it easy, because nothing will stymie me like a swollen knee. I am doing Couch to 5K. Should you be struck by the urge to join me, feel free. Because I am more bougie than I am comfortable with, I am using an app. You don’t have to use the app; there are plenty of training programs available online and you can get pretty accurate distance estimates via Google Maps or your neighbourhood.

    Lifehacks

    When I come across anything I’m doing that helps me on this mad caper, I’m putting it here.

    Making the most of your spare minutes

    I’m writing this particular snippet in the nine minutes the air fryer has to finish doing the burger patties we got in the 3 for $20 deal. If I have a useful lifehack to offer, it’s that productive activities – or, less toxically, “things I genuinely want or need to do but end up doomscrolling instead” – can be done in the same time blocks, on the same device, that you’d typically use to have a hoon on the Tok pipe. The more I do this the more I find that the phone in my pocket is a boon instead of a curse, and it’s one of the very few self-improvement plans that survives contact with kids. Things that have built-in timers work well for this method. It’ll go beep in a minute or few, and I’ll leave the laptop and go assemble burgers for me and (Borat voice) My Wife.

    Markdown

    Writer? Get yourself a Markdown editor and learn Markdown. It’s the fastest, most distraction-free, and ultimately foolproof (and I am very foolish) way to format as you write. I use Obsidian for the moment – it’s what I used to write this – but there are lots of others. Many, including Obsidian, are free. Get amongst!

    Yeah/Nah

    A few minutes before sending this out I realised that some of the people who signed up to my “Yeah” list also clicked “Nah” to receiving an email every day for the next 30 days. I am sorry about this but you must admit that it is a very funny, very Kiwi problem to have, given how we tend to use this expression. Of course it’s my fault; I simply shouldn’t have included a “Nah” option. If you’re getting this email and you’d rather not, simply reply to this one and let me know I messed up, and I’ll take you off the list.

    For everyone who did want to get these, welcome! I hope you enjoyed Day 1.

    1. This, a portmanteau of “folly” and "fallacious’ is not a word, but it should be. ↩︎

    2. Old Simpsons fans: this is exactly the joke you think it is. Also I apologise for the AI generated image; it’s a placeholder. I need to create a new File Photo as none of mine were even verging on professional. ↩︎

    3. I am thinking of setting some ground rules, and the first and second rule will probably be “Talk about Print Club”. ↩︎

    Here’s the big red button, click it to help me on my follacious journey