It’s been a while since I last wrote on A Life of Mental Illness. I didn’t give up writing. I was writing on other forums, like Medium. It’s easy to pay wall my work on Medium. I guess after years of honing the craft, I thought it was time to see if I could make some money from my blogging.

Even though I haven’t written on WordPress the last several weeks, I was still getting pretty decent traffic. I had gotten discouraged with the fact I was actually losing money on WordPress. Even though I’m not getting rich, I turn a profit every month on Medium. I’ve made more money on Medium in the last eight months than I ever did with any of my writings on other forums. This includes the print on demand books I wrote and sold through local shops when I still lived in Nebraska.

I’m seriously considering republishing some of my old works. Found most of my old poetry writings from years ago. Poetry is how I learned how to write. The only real writings I haven’t found yet are the drafts for the three novels I wrote back in my twenties. Both were coming of age stories about friendships in college and young adulthood. I would describe them as 21st century versions of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, but not as much drug abuse.

In addition to my novels about young adulthood in the early 2000s, I made notes for some other stories. One was a story about middle aged private investigator who was falsely accused of a crime and lost his job on the police force and was trying to clear his name. Another story was a science fiction story about settling other planets. I was big into playing Star Craft and watching Star Trek Enterprise reruns at the time.

I used to make up stories all the time while I paced around my large backyard as a child. The backyard was my Fortress of Solitude. It’s where I went when I needed an escape from reality and my bullies when I was a kid. I’m wishing I wrote some of those story ideas down. I made up stories ranging from Indiana Jones types, to war stories, to science fiction stories, to stories about world class athletes who were also academic geniuses, to trying to predict the future, to even my own made up in my mind fan fiction. But I never heard the term Fan Fiction when I was young. Hell, I grew up over an hour’s drive from the nearest bookstore and comic book shop.

Since I didn’t have easy access to bookstores, I did the next best thing. I spent much of my childhood at the village library. It was one of those old-fashioned Carnegie Era libraries from the early 1900s even though I don’t know if it was built using Carnegie Foundation grants or not. It had the aroma of old library. I’m talking the smell of bound leather, Lemon Pledge, and just enough mustiness to be pleasing to the nostrils and not overwhelming. As a kid if I wasn’t in my backyard, I was at the library.

I’m really kicking myself for not taking extensive notes and writing things down as a child. As an adult I use my blogs as my mental notes and storytelling. I also have copies of all my blog entries offline. Have some of them even in paper copy. I believe in being prepared for emergencies. I just have too much of the old Nebraska Farmer in my blood to do otherwise.