Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Hey everyone! I know, I know, it’s been a while since I have made a post on the Today I Noticed newsletter.
I haven’t gone anywhere, I apologize.
I actually wanted to send this out over a month ago and with the holiday season chaos, I got sidetracked.
But I figured this would be a good time to recap what’s been going on in our lives, what I did with writing in 2022, and what my plans are so far for 2023.
It’s strange, though. The year changing is such a man-made thing for keeping track of time. Yet we all take it so seriously.
If anything it’s just a great reminder that deep down we strive to grow. The trick we all fall into, though, is believing we need a new year in order to start growing.
Here is the secret, you don’t need a new year to start a new plan or grow. If it’s May 14th, you can start a new habit!
But I get it. A new year is a nice time to reflect and plan out our growth for the coming year. And so that’s what this post is all about. I apologize that it might be a bit long. I won’t feel bad if you skip around.
First, what happened to Today I Noticed?
The end of 2022 got crazy busy and my weekly articles started falling through the cracks.
Part of this is actually a really fun and exciting update, though!
If you recall, months ago I started talking about a side project called Spatium Stories.
This was originally going to start off as monthly short stories for you all to enjoy; along with trying to sell these monthly stories as NFTs.
What I didn’t tell you at the time was that I had a lot more plans in mind than just monthly stories.
As I started digging into it, this whole “crypto winter” thing hit. That is the name crypto people basically call a bear market.
Over the years, the bear and bull market cycles have been way more frequent in the crypto world than in your typical markets. So much so, they had to give it its own name: “crypto winter.”
Anyways, so we hit that, and people were not as interested in buying NFTs. That started like 10 months ago.
Today, I am actually seeing NFTs start to rise back up in popularity. This is wonderful timing because, for the last 10 months, I’ve been secretly building.
My goal with Spatium Stories from the beginning was to eventually create a platform for authors and readers to securely publish, buy, and read NFT books.
I won’t go into details about why I believe NFT books are important for authors and readers right now, but I have started a specific blog for the Spatium Stories project if you want to read more there.
Although, I will probably cross-post those on this newsletter too. More on that later.
All that to say, I launched the beta a couple of months ago and have started to get some traction. Minute traction, but enough to keep building. Enough to get distracted from my writing.
I just released the full self-publishing capabilities this week, and am excited to see what some authors put out there!
I apologize that my writing here has taken a hit, though.
I was able to keep up with my other newsletter, Biblit! If you haven’t checked that out, I highly encourage you to :)
To top it all off, I’ve also recently started yet another new newsletter with a friend, JD Armstrong, called Writers Without Walls.
This is a bi-weekly newsletter for writers supporting other writers.
We will be mainly focusing on navigating writing in this new web3 space and the best ways to start earning money for your hard work.
But we won’t hyper-focus on web3 alone; this will also include general writing tips and helping to share each other’s work.
Reflecting on my Writing in 2022?
Ok, so now is the time to reflect a little.
If I look at my newsletters, I was only writing for 2 at the beginning of 2022. Biblit and Today I Noticed (the one you’re reading now).
Looking back, the first Biblit of 2022 was going over Exodus 14:
The first Today I Noticed was actually a poem, but a more interesting one to reflect on is my second newsletter for 2022:
In it, I lay out 4 goals for 2022. None of which were accomplished, haha!
But that’s ok!
I recently finished reading a book called “Don’t Start a Side Hustle” and it is an excellent read!
His ideology is all about finding different passive income streams rather than a side hustle. “Side hustle” is just a fancy way of saying “second job”.
Creating passive income streams or becoming a “passivepreneur” as he calls it, is different. Here, the goal is to create income streams that eventually don’t require you to work.
One of the most important keys here is to focus on ONE at a time. Do not try 6 of them at once. Commit to one until it produces income, then move on.
Why do I bring that up at all?
Well, I feel like that ideology is what happened in 2022 and what I think I’ll continue doing into 2023. Let me explain.
These are the goals I had set for 2022:
Launch Spatium Stories by way of monthly short stories
Release the first Spatium compilation book
Release the first poetic spark compilation book
Release my dystopian novella
Then what happened was I ended up putting all of my focus on the Spatium Stories platform.
That and I kept up with weekly writing.
It turns out that editing a full novella is a big project.
It turns out that writing monthly short stories and compiling them into a book is a big project.
It turns out that compiling 50 or so poems and photos into a book is also a big project.
Are these still goals? Yes! And I’ll get to that in my 2023 vision.
However, before we jump into 2023, I wanted to focus in on Biblit for a second.
In 2022 we finished Exodus!
It took a little over a year, but we are through now! That’s wild!
I also started releasing Biblits in 3-4 distinct editions (Context, Interpretation, Application) throughout the week rather than one large devo. People seem to enjoy that.
Lastly, I started recording a voiceover and really enjoyed doing that! This also helps me prepare for the Biblit podcast one day!
What is the 2023 Plan?
As this book, “Don’t Start a Side Hustle” is saying, I want to focus on one passive income vehicle or PIV at a time. My first focus this year will be Spatium Stories.
I am actually pretty close to having it in a stable position. Once I fully release the self-publishing features, then in theory I will have built a PIV.
If an author publishes and sells a book through my platform, I will take a fee. That fee will be received with zero work on my end. That is the definition of passive.
I do have a lot of other visions and features for Spatium Stories, but the actual PIV will be built soon, and after that, it’s a matter of scaling it so more users are on there and the income is more than $0.20 / month.
So that’s my first focus goal.
But I also have some writing goals, some I will do simultaneously; others I will wait on.
I think my new philosophy is that you can build one passive “income stream” at a time, but you can have multiple “learning streams”.
I have other PIV’s in mind within writing like the monthly short stories, the annual compilations, the poem compilation, novellas, and even a quadrilogy I’m planning.
But I want to give those the focus they deserve.
However, I don’t want to stop writing either.
As such, here is my 2023 writing plan thus far. If I find success in one PIV, then perhaps I’ll tackle one of the writing PIV’s above.
Biblit
I will continue releasing these in the 3-4/week pattern with voiceovers like I’ve been doing.
A future project will be launching a podcast from that, but that will be a dedicated “PIV” (although I don’t plan to take an income from Biblit).
Today I Noticed
This is the newsletter that might have the biggest change.
I plan to continue my weekly poems with Taylor’s photos. Part of this is because it’s fun to work on a collab project with my wife and hopefully gives you a nice reflection time midweek.
The other side is that eventually one of our PIV’s will be doing poem compilation books. Having an arsenal of poems and photos ready to go will help with that.
This year we are going to focus on the Burnsville area, and hopefully release a compilation of Burnsville photos and inspired poems.
So in this newsletter, you can expect weekly poems. But you can also expect cross-posting from Spatium Stories (below). I will also have sporadic newsletters like this one giving life updates.
And we may even do our running videos again as we pick up our training for the Nashville half-marathon!
To sum up: you can expect weekly poems, articles on books and NFT books from Spatium Stories, and sporadic life updates. And potentially some videos.
Spatium Stories
The Spatium Stories blog is up and running. The goal is to release specific platform updates, as well as blogs on why NFT books are so important, current book trends, and other things around books and NFTs.
I will plan to cross-post these on Today I Noticed when they are more interesting. You can expect to see some articles on book trends, NFT books, and other things about books or writing.
Writers Without Walls
This is my newest writing endeavor, but fortunately, I am not alone on this one.
I have an Australian friend, JD Armstrong, who is also a writer, and we have launched this newsletter in hopes to build a supportive writer’s online community.
Specifically revolving around the web3 space, how to navigate writing in that space, and ultimately be able to support each other in that space.
This is a bi-weekly newsletter, but we are also building a community for “accountabuddies”, giveaways, writing competitions, and more exciting things.
This was a very long post, I apologize. If you made it to the end, congrats!
I look forward to reading this again in 2024 and seeing what happened.
I’m hoping to pick the poems back up next week, but I’m going to try and build a backlog for Biblit articles. As such you can expect Biblit to come back in February. I’ll let y’all know for sure!
Again, thanks for the support, and I’m excited to see what God is going to do in this new year!