Early Retirement Extreme Forums

S_W: I'm new here, and I'm reading through the journals as I get bored and/or the weather is too extreme for me to build things.

Yours was really interesting. A few things I picked up on that I wanted to mention. You mention repeatedly how discouraging writing is for you because it's "a loser investment" and "the readership hasn't been there". Anecdote: I'm a songwriter. Have been doing it professionally for 8 years now. Also a solo artist who's more or less on hiatus. One thing I've learned that is critical to producing art I care about is that it is imperative that I divorce myself from using any commercial metrics to judge my success or failure as an artist. My last record is the best thing I've ever done, and it didn't sell well. Those two statements are 100% independent of one another. The former I can control and the latter I really can't. I can influence it; true. But it's not my decision for someone else to buy my stuff. I made the record I wanted to listen to, and I sent it out to my mailing list and social media people when it was released. Everyone loved it, but I'm not touring anymore so there are still 200 copies in my basement. That happens. It's a great record, and I'm proud of it whenever I hear it.

Point being, if you want to write; write. Write whatever moves you, and make sure you finish it. Then, if the costs are as reasonable as I think they are, self publish it and let the chips fall where they may. Being rejected and ignored while less talented people are commercially successful is an inevitable part of being an author or a musician in 2016, so if that's what you want then you just have to write because you enjoy it.

The second thing that's obvious to me, reading the whole journal at once, is that you don't seem to have much of a connection to your username. I wonder if that's a decision you consciously made or if priorities got away from you, as they do from me.

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@SW - The design constraints on ERE was that it should be robust ("if you do this, it _will_ work"), scalable ("it is still workable even if everybody did it"), and change the world in an optimal direction ("less waste"). In many ways, quite the opposite to the 4HWW book (the competing choice at the time) ;-P ...

What's pertinent to note is that ERE was/is deliberately intended to be an emergent behavior inside the total system.

As far as I can tell, this is quite unusual in that most reformers pursue a plan like 1) This world has problems, but here's the fix. 2) ????(*) 3) Problems are all fixed. Such plans are impractical because they are either only compatible with the end-point (post-transition) or the entry-point (pre-transition) AND/OR require mass-agreement to enact.

(*) "After reading the manifest we're finally all enlightened and the world is instantly transformed?"

Using such constraints is stymieing. The social/eco impacts of investing aspect of ERE is one such aspect. My position on that is that one can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Sure, current investment choices are mostly incompatible, but I don't want this to stop the process/progress. Rather by combining what I believe is the consumption choices of the future, which I can do now, with the investment choices of what I can get now (because I can't get the future ones yet), then I can both demonstrate and contribute some level of change---my consumer choices can increase demand for future goods, my investment choices can increase supply for future goods. There are some degrees of freedom here. I think that's more pragmatic than either not acting at all (because it's impossible) or waiting until the future arrives in the optimal form.

The revolution is not a dinner party The current menu is limited ...

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Spartan_Warrior wrote:I guess I'm just really sick of playing the game at all, knowing not only how unfair it is to the individual participants, but how destructive it is to the broader human race and even the world at large. But, there is no opt-out option I can see.

You should take care of yourself before (or while) changing the game. Remember that the culture around you is economic. Economics and greed built it. To disassemble it, you would need to redirect the greed motive and I doubt that is possible (e.g. pursuit of power would most likely replace greed, though some people equate them).

So far the sideways route (e.g. Nearings and others) appear as most successful, but it comes with a social cost.

I hear your objections to amazon's death grip on epublishing, and the monopoly therein. I feel similarly about itunes for digital distro of music. But the fact is that they provide the ecosystem through which people who live all over the world can discover and purchase my music (and in very small dribs and drabs they do). For that, they take a sizeable percentage that I can't negotiate (30% or so). I can tilt at that windmill all I want to, but it doesn't change the equation. All I can do, is when people ask me if there's a place I prefer they buy, I direct them to my online store for physical copies or ask them to buy at shows. But again, that's a discussion about the business of art. I think you're letting the business of writing majorly ruin the art of it for you, which is causing you quite a bit of existential strife because "writer" is central to your identity. Just an outside perspective from someone who's also gotten pretty down on how little commercial success is available strictly based on merit of the work.

And that's interesting about your username. The "spartan" part made sense to me, in the modern sense, where it means "sparse". But with "warrior" I was thrown a bit.

The Amazon experience for self-publishers has been inconsistent to dreadful of late. Up until now, I've been willing to learn the new steps every time Amazon changes the dance, but over the last couple of months the issues have been related to quality and tracking problems and not just corporate greediness. I'm not publishing any new work with them until I'm confident the issues have been resolved.