Blogging For Nothing and the Clicks For Free
Money is important, but my blogging hobby has paid off in other ways
As I’ve grown comfortable with Medium, I’ve glanced through the reading suggestions based on my originally selected interests. Quite a few headlines reminded me of the days when I subscribed to Writer’s Digest Magazine regularly. Yes, articles related to improving your writing were helpful, but what truly fueled my enthusiasm were those about making a living at the craft.
I fantasized about receiving a publisher’s affirmation — ”Wow, we really like your work; let’s work something out!” — that justified the money I put into a new electric word processor (anything resembling the current clamshell laptop was both a few years off and many times more expensive.) That initial success would lead to more submissions, more acceptances, more money, repeat the cycle, ad infinitum.
Suffice it to say, this did not happen. For me, a regular paying job, a slightly ADHD-addled brain that jumps on a new or dormant interest at a whim, and just sheer time constraints gradually wore down that initial enthusiasm. But the headlines for my suggested Medium articles still show the gusto to make writing profitable is out there. Pieces about blogging and writing as a viable money maker are within a click’s reach; other stories tout strategies ensuring financial success through writing and others are author’s chronicles documenting their personal writing journey.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with any of these intentions — everyone has their own journey to make. But over the years I’ve come to realize writing gives me a gift far more valuable than money: sanity.
While my travel and tourism blog Critical Rice Theory has been my most enduring writing endeavor (reaching its tenth anniversary this year,) I have had several blogs that I regularly posted to over the years. However, this blog, a continuation of the 614ortyniner blog on Google’s Blogspot.com website, has been the most enduring and important of these ventures.
And here’s the thing: money wasn’t a consideration. Even when I moved to WordPress (something I laid out cash for versus the free Google Blogspot) to spiff up the look of my current blog, I had long thrown out the idea of profit. Rather, the blog continued a habit I picked up in the late 2000s, when I dropped 150 pounds over a few years as a way to keep troubling health signals at bay.
The premise was simple: if I was going to eat, I might as well eat at the best and most novel places the San Francisco Bay Area offered, rather than defaulting to the most convenient fast food meal I could find. I then documented my findings via mini-reports (not unlike what you find on the average Instagram post) on the old Chowhound food forum, a place where similar food-interested folks could share their thoughts, findings, recipes, etc. on various topics.
This proved good training for when I moved to Ohio. My 614ortyniner blog, about my food and travel excursions around and from Columbus, Ohio, was created as both a food diary of sorts as well as what a big city (with a well-regarded food scene) resident thought of a generally unexplored food scene, both on a personal and national level. Luckily, I’ve found the food scene around Columbus to be far more diverse and worth sampling from, an unexpected finding that one may not ascertain from the city’s ongoing Fast Food Capital reputation.
I didn’t have monetary compensation in mind in writing this blog, but I’ve gained side benefits from it. I’ve met some really wonderful people behind the food scene here in Columbus, obtained a side hustle as a local food tour guide, and took advantage of select promotional events geared toward social media influencers. Even then, I’ve considered these aspects more of a “cherry on top of the blogging sundae” than anything else.
With that said, I only realized how much additional benefit I got from the regular writing when the COVID-19 lockdown took place in 2020. With little but gloom and doom on the food/travel front to write about, I felt lost without my typical state of affairs. Also, I felt like I had other important topics to write about that really didn’t feel right on the existing blog. Mix in all the chaos that came with the pandemic, the lack of social interaction, and the increasingly negative bent of the country’s goings on, and I felt an overwhelming sense of grimness that was both incredibly corrosive to my mental state and had no real outlet for release.
Admittedly, a lot happened during those months, and the negativity that infected this country hasn’t really eased all that much in the following years. But I grew up a lot in that time and realized a lot about myself, including how much of a mental benefit my writing gave to me. Critical Rice Theory is back up and running with its typical focus and this new Medium account has become a pressure valve for everything else, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that.
Some may look at the monetary costs over the years as a net loss, but for me, the money is irrelevant compared to my writing’s contribution towards that healthy mental state. The non-monetary rate of return I’ve earned has far exceeded the money I’ve spent on my blogging hobby.
And if I actually DO make some regularly arriving spending cash from my writing in the end? I’ll still consider that the cherry on top of the blogging sundae (I might even venture to Tom’s as a treat, an old-timey shop that does have some mighty delectable frozen confections.)
Thank you for reading — this “Side Dishes” platform expands beyond my food-, travel-, and tourism-focused Critical Rice Theory blog, which has documented my experiences in those worlds around Central Ohio and beyond since 2014.
