Walking to the post office to mail my rent. I feel good about it. All the bills are getting paid on time.
3 months ago we had a cascade of utilities shutting down due to missed payments…
This is my new daily Steem Blog, now in beta mode!
INTRO
My goal in life is to start a new genre. To inspire and invoke a new form of art into the world, sending ripples of creativity out into the universe for generations to come.
Right now I'm grinding out the early stages, working two jobs, starting an anarchist art collective, and recording + rehearsing a ton of new music. This daily Steem blog brings you the most useful lessons and ideas that I'm able to extract from each day of my crazy life.
It's kind of like a motivational blog, but with a lot more angst and confusion. Call me the anti-Tony Robbins. Lets do this.
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How about some music while you read? Unlimited free streaming and downloads at my Bandcamp page.
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art from my second album, stellar wave
June 4, Downtown Raleigh, 9:15
Walking to the post office to mail my rent. I feel good about it. All the bills are getting paid on time.
3 months ago we had a cascade of utilities shutting down due to missed payments — and right around this time I started my then-new job at St Rochs, which meant I had to wait several weeks to complete a pay cycle and receive my first paycheck. It was a stressful time.
Now all that stuff is forgotten about. It’s all paid up and FLUX HQ is in good condition (other than some bug issues).
If I think too much about the money stuff it goes sour in my mind. Working this hard for three months just so I can be on time with some bills feels like such slow progress.
I used to blog a lot about personal finance here on steem. The main reason I stopped was that I stayed stuck on the same financial plateau I’m still on today: living paycheck to paycheck, “just getting by” and so on. Money is one of the hardest challenges I have faced in my life.
It’s important to remember that progress is progress. I try to stay optimistic as I drop the rent check into the mailbox.
Then I turn my thoughts towards coffee.
COFFEESHOP, 11:15
Today is the first day I am feeling well since a bad bout of cold/fever at the end of the weekend*. I sip my coffee with gratitude and breathe thru my nose.
*thats why there were no new episodes for four days
The coffeeshop is always where I go to write in my journal and to create my steem content. I could never focus on this stuff at home, there are too many distractions.
Today there doesn’t seem to be much to write about. I handwrite a future steem post to try and sum up my weekend but it comes up short, barely a page long. Mostly it just says I was sick and laid in bed. I scrap it, following up with a few pages of content about my Low Phone Diet. It all goes fast and doesn’t feel so productive.
After opening my laptop I’m browsing thru some of my social media statistics. I notice my monthly Spotify listeners has gone up to 13.
It might not seem like much, but I’m happy to hit that double digit number on Spotify. It feels like a nice little win for the day. The only new promotional activity I’ve been doing is these liveblogs, where I link to my music a few times at the start. Maybe that is working!
The whole point of this steem blog is to be the home base for you to easily/freely find my content, bringing all the other stuff (music, visual art, videos, features) into one place with a cohesive narrative. This is a good sign that maybe it’s actually working.
Then I’m aimlessly browsing the internet for 20 minutes before coming to my senses and shutting down the laptop. No time for that.
FLUX HQ, 14:15
Home for a spell before work at 15:30 at the oyster restaurant, St Rochs.
When I was talking about money earlier, one thing I wanted to mention was that I am trying to work more hours at my jobs.
It’s not urgent. I am ready for it to happen slowly, over the weeks or months. It’s more of a mental game preparing myself for how I have to think and act to thrive in a lifestyle of 50 hour work weeks.
I know I can get up to that many hours in the not-to-distant future if I simply keep my eyes and ears open for opportunities at my jobs. It seems like new shifts become available all the time. I even get double booked between my two jobs by mistake sometimes.
This idea of working more shifts came from a friend and her dog while we were hanging out at the coffeeshop. She pointed out that I’ve never actually worked 50+ hours per week at a paid job.
We were enjoying a Saturday brunch…
Me: I work a lot, but it’s complicated. I have two jobs and several personal projects. I feel like if I focused on one thing I could crush it for 70 hours a week and be extremely productive.
Friend: How many hours/week do you work now?
Dog: BARK! WOOF!
Me: Uh, around 30. But that doesn’t count all of my personal work-
Friend: Have you ever worked 60-70 hours per week? Like, at a job?
Dog: WHINE, SNORT
Me: I mean, not really. But, I mean, what I’m saying, uh-
Friend: I’m not saying you don’t work hard. Just that you maybe haven’t worked 60+ hours at a job ever before.
Dog: AROO!
This conversation made me realize I actually could handle more hours at work, that I am not maximizing my capabilities in that area.
One way I am trying to manifest this is by hoping for long shifts, not short ones. I’m heading into the restaurant at 15:30 and hoping to stay until at least 22:00, towards the far long end of what that shift could entail. This is the opposite of my usual mindset, which is to hope to get out of there before too much time goes by.
I’m out the door just in time, putting up my hair as I run down the street towards St Rochs.
St Rochs, 15:30
Opening the restaurant is a lot of cleaning glass and stocking ice, some physical labor to awaken the body for the work ahead.
At 16:30 we have line-up and get a brief education on some different rums. I guess they want us to learn more about the products at the bar. As backserver I don’t have to worry about upselling people on drinks but I pay attention anyway. If I do work as a server in the future this info will come in handy.
By 17:00 service officially starts. It is flat dead for a few hours. I am talking to the other backserver about chiptune music.
Backserver: There’s this band called Infinity Shred that combine video game synths with real guitars and other instrumentation. It sounds amazing.
Me: Damn I haven’t listened to chiptune in a while. I wonder what synths I could download to get those sounds?
Backserver: It’s all about that Reason Rewire.
Me: This is why having a multimedia studio would be dope. This conversation makes me want to create my own live game boy synthesizer. I’ve seen chiptune bands do it live but I have no idea how it works. The creative process is so interesting.
Backserver: That would be sick.
It goes from dead to slammo’d in a few hours, with more than half-a-dozen tickets floating behind the oyster bar, me running ice and polished little oyster spoons like my life depends on it, feeling tired around the 5 hour mark but reminding myself that I can do more and doubling down.
At 21:10, the word comes down:
Boss: Matt, you’re all good for today. Clock out when you’re ready.
And so I’m sitting at the far left seat of the bar, drinking a Lynwood IPA. The drink is a great reward for a long shift.
The day is done… or is it?
FLUX HQ, 22:00
Roommate and fellow fluxster Ryan Yancey is slouched in front of his two monitors, a YouTube comedy podcast blaring thru the room and into the house beyond. He’s trying to awaken from a nap. My emergence into the house helps him to shake it off.
Me: Oi!
Yancey: Oi! Should we do that cryptocurrency stuff?
With all of this talk about money, I forgot that there’s a qFLUX transaction to do.
Our wallet uses a multi-key system with a majority of keyholders needing to sign any transaction before it happens. It’s a really simple way to manage shared funds relating to house activities. In this case we are using some of the LBRY funding from last month to pay an old FLUX HQ expense dating back to March.
I prepare and “broadcast” the transaction to send LBC tokens out of our group wallet and into my personal wallet.
While doing this, I export the transactions as files and send them to Yancey.
There are three files:
(1) Test Transaction
(2) First Half
(3) Second Half
Yancey receives these files, then opens the first one called “Test Transaction” and broadcasts his key signature to it. This completes the majority needed to get the transaction recognized by the blockchain network. All the miners on the LBRY blockchain will now include this transaction in their next block.
Yancey: OK - should I sign the second transaction?
Me: Wait a minute. I want to confirm the test transaction worked.
Two minutes later, I see 10 LBC (about $0.35) appear in my personal wallet. The test transaction worked.
Me: Ok, fire that 2nd transaction…
Yancey: Roger that
After a few minutes, I see that “First Half” transaction enter my wallet. This one contains half of the money for the qFLUX bills. I always do big transactions this way, in halves. It cuts the risk of the worst case scenario.
Yancey sends the last transaction, which is another success. I now have thousands of tokens in my LBC wallet. I can convert them into dollars for the bills.
Just like that, we’ve taken care of qFLUX business. Cryptocurrency is not so difficult.
Yancey is browsing pizza menus online and I can feel my cravings engage. It’s Tuesday — NOT cheat day for my diet — so I run screaming out of the room.
This is the end of the day. A lot happened today, it might be the longest lifeblog episode of all time. That’s awesome. See you tomorrow.
BITE-SIZED FUN STUFF
What I’m Listening To: Absent Lovers - Sector Four
Twitch Stream I’m Watching: The TypeFun Experience especially sonic saturdays
