."Better late than never" is not something you want to lead with when it comes to impressing potential employers. Yet, it has taken me the entire month of December to publish my November income report. While I was laid up post surgery and took a week off to visit my family, it was a tough month because I lost my regular client.

At the end of October, I had my gallbladder removed. The procedure took a day and then I was sent home to rest. Writing is something you can do while resting, right? Between the drugs and the trauma of surgery inflicted on my body, I slept a lot. Having your stomach stitched together in 4 places is distracting at best. At worst, it is terrifying (never sneeze when you're being held together with string & good intentions). I managed to do a couple interviews and write a few things despite recovery.

A little more than 2 weeks after my procedure I went to the States to visit my mother on her birthday. It was only a 5 day trip, but we were able to see friends and family. It has been 4 years since I left my job and my former coworkers invited us out to lunch and even paid. Every trip back they do this. Those are pretty amazing people. Got some marketing or an app/website you need built, check out ddm. As for me, I did some social media posts for a client and published some stories and interviews I wrote prior to leaving.

After returning from our trip, I spent more time trying to sell my story I wrote the previous month as a test for a new client. Since they passed on it, I reached out to a previous podcast guest, Alan Henry, over at Lifehacker. It was a long shot and I probably should have went through proper channels, but it was worth a try. One of the editors gave me the bad news and I remained positive as I reached out to a local publication. I received an initial response requesting samples of my work, but I haven't heard anything else.

More Low Numbers to Come?

From there, things went downhill. My client of the last 2 years has decided to close their doors. I was looking for additional work, in part because I knew things were rocky in New York. Yet, I had hoped my work would lead to opportunities for the small company. As with most internet ventures, they were slowly getting some traction. In the last 3 months, I had multiple people contacting me to have their products and people featured on the blog. It was exciting that the audience was growing so much that we had offers like that. Thus, it came as quite a shock to me.

It has been a difficult December, coming to terms with my job loss. I guess I'll write about that very soon in the next report. If I was a fiction author this would be a character building set back, according to cliche. However, I'm just struggling to find companies or people who pay writers online as so many sites make money off of people who write for free.

Other Income & Monthly Summary

My friend & co-host has been busy editing our podcast. I've thrown up some short posts on our patreon page and completed the notes for each show. Thus, we'll be ready to record new episodes in the new year. We're going to make some changes to the Patreon campaign in order to motivate ourselves & perhaps inspire more listeners to patronize us. We do the show live on Thursday evenings and then my friend edits the show and we put it on the site. We do the podcast because we enjoy it, but we're not always quick to put it on the site for listening. So, we may offer the raw recording of the live show to patrons at any dollar amount.

As for freebies, I did work on something for my friends' business here in town. I wrote it on the plane ride this month. I haven't taken the time to edit it. Though, it would appear that I should probably remove it from "freebies" because they offered to pay me in store credit. That's exciting! I was just happy to add something diverse to my portfolio, which is why I was listing it in this section.

As shared above, the numbers are low because I was out of commission thanks to surgery. Then, I took 6 days to go back to the States and visit my mother, sister and my friends. Finally, I lost a client. So, the last week of the month my normal workload was absent. December is going to be even uglier because it is the holiday season. It's very tough to find work between Christmas and New Years. Hopefully, I can muster the courage to sit down and write that report sooner.