Andrew's View of the Week

My Next Career

Posted on 03/17/2019 by Andrew Reynolds

In the summer of 1978 I enrolled in an electronics school to learn the fine art and science of electronics. I was just out high school and was looking at my options – well they sucked. The security company I worked for said I’d make a great full-time security officer and I’d heard of some great opportunities washing dishes at the hospital. I did consider joining the military, but the Navy recruiter insisted that to become an officer, I’d have to go to school for like 4 years. Seriously?

Anyway, I decided to go to this electronics school to become an electronic technician. It was an 18 month program; the school had a loan program; and I was impatient. I decided it would be cool to get my FCC license so I could work on radio and TV transmitters.

Just after I enrolled, the school announced that due to lack of enrollment, the FCC license program was canceled but there was this digital electronics and microprocessor class I could take instead.

Halfway through my microprocessor class a family friend said his company was hiring people who knew microprocessors and he thought he could get me in at around $8.00 per hour. At that time I had two great things: impatience and desire for money.

I took the job. Two years later, another company said they’d pay me $10 an hour. So began my career and today, nearly 40 years later, I make more than that, switched to software engineering, and never got my FCC license.

While I’ve had a great career, and could do this for a few more years, my brain, soul, and carpal tunnel syndrome say it’s time to think about hanging up the keyboard, and orthopedic braces to do something else for a living.

So I’ve been thinking about what I’m really good at, that I’d enjoy doing until I qualify for total disability payments. Over the years I have become reasonably good at woodworking and writing. I’m not a bad public speaker and am a bit creative.

Earning money as a writer is somewhere between difficult and impossible. I’ve heard that federal law prohibits poets from earning a living and blogging isn’t much better. In the eight years I’ve been blogging I’ve not earned any money and each year pay WordPress to keep ads off my blog because that annoy me (the ads, not WP). Not going to pay for many orthopedic sole inserts that way.

I have heard of people starting podcasts and earning a bit of money with ads and affiliate sales. Maybe, but so far the only podcast concept I’ve had was a thing I titled, “Get Off My Lawn!” where me and a buddy of mine would complain about young people and all the problems in the world. However, he’s probably right and best to just skip that to avoid all the lawsuits.

YouTube has a certain attraction and I even have a YouTube channel. I’ve got three videos – one as recent as 2015! It has 37 views, 2 likes, 1 dislike (there’s a hater in every crowd). Here take a look: https://youtu.be/bp9saslGZg8

There are millions of content producers out there and some actually making a living at it. I did a little research to see if something like a poet-reciting-scroll-sawing-woodworker would have any chance at earning money there. And came up with a few interesting facts:

To earn money there you have to not offend the algorithm and get yourself banded. Basically, just mindless content that offends no one and gets lots of views for the advertisers. I know I can do the first part – not offend people. I’m one of the least offensive people I’ve met. Mindless I can do for a while, but sooner or later I’ll say something you’ll have to think about.

I’d really have to work at it, but it’s sightly more possible for me to succeed at YouTube than being struck by lightning or win the lotto.

As for subjects you can do on YouTube I did find a number of people making videos with the following subjects. I looked for channels that had more than 50,000 subscribers and had videos with 50k to 500k views (around the range that you’d need to get to earn enough to buy a decent pair orthopedic shoes).

Woodworking Channels
Making a table saw from plywood and a used skill saw
Concrete pouring (more complicated than you think)
Making forms for concrete pour
Heavy equipment operations (as in ‘watch backhoes move dirt’)
Trains (as in a ‘live’ stream of trains doing things like, moving)
The machinists channels (using lathes and mills to cut metal)
Welding channels (tig, arc, mig and arguments on why tig is better than mig)
Poetry channels (although I’m concerned the FBI will be after these folks soon)
Car crashes
Dam removals

and perhaps the oddest one is when I typed in the search bar, “Paint Drying” and came up with this one: https://youtu.be/PLOPygVcaVE

Yup, 85,000 people have watched a 10 hour video titled, “10 Hours of Paint Drying.”

So I think there is hope that the “All Scroll Saw Mouse Reciting Poetry Channel” has a potential audience

Wait. Well look at that. YouTube has videos on how to get your FCC License.

Hum. Maybe I’ll watch a few of those…

Till next time,

Andrew

Friday Wisdom – Bread and Butter

Posted on 03/15/2019 by Andrew Reynolds

The hardness of the butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread.

More science lessons next week,

Andrew

Posted in wisdom | Tagged humor, wisdom | 26 Comments

Wednesday Woodworking – Another new old cabinet

Posted on 03/13/2019 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s finally starting to warm up enough so I can get work done in my outside workshop and this weekend I got another cabinet in place in the laundry room. This is the last cabinet I’ll be able to fully build from my recycled plywood pile.

The latest cabinet

The ladder is not holding up the cabinet and you can see the cat food – note our priorities, more treat containers than food cans.

Next step is to get a face frame on this, then I’ll be building a floor to ceiling cabinet to replace the ladder.

On the writing front, I finished a poem, wrote a blog post, and mailed out a few copies of my book to family.

If you need me – I’ll be in the shed putting the ladder away.

Andrew

Posted in woodworking | Tagged recycled lumber project, wednesday wood working, woodworking | 10 Comments

Thunder

Posted on 03/10/2019 by Andrew Reynolds

A rare sound in my part of the world. The clouds that float over my home are often just fluffy bunnies or prancing puppies. Sometimes they contain rain or are blown by strong winds. But the empty tummy growl of thunder is rare and the stuff of a million Facebook posts.

Earlier there was sun streaming through the window, warming the office. Now, the thunderhead blocks out the sun and the temperature drops sharply – making my cold hands colder.

I sit here struggling over the right words for today’s blog post. Should I be funny or say something of importance? I was looking in my book, thinking I might put my headset on and record a reading of one of the poems.

A few days ago I was reading an article about, “poet’s voice.” That strange way of reading poems that we sometimes fall into – the voice flattens and becomes almost staccato. The sound devoid of drama and taking on an almost unearthly quality where we try to just let the words speak.

Then over head the thunder grumbles, rolls – sounding like a giant empty tummy complaining over the lack of food. Then the rain starts. How long before there is hail?

Perhaps I’m just a bit melancholy. While flipping through, There was a Time, I reread some of the poems I wrote about my mother and I was reminded about her and our difficult relationship. It was just last weekend I attended the memorial service for a friend’s mother and those memories of mother are surfacing again.

As I was considering which poem to record and how I might record without falling into a monotone or starting to cry, the heavens grumbled and the rain hit harder leaving me to wonder if my mic would pickup the falling rain.

A written poem is about the words. A spoken poem is the reader honoring those words with the performance – letting the words fill the heart and put life into the voice. If the words are exuberant so should the voice. If the words are sad, one should be able hear the reader cry.

The rain builds and then tapers off.

My recording is done – flawed and not exactly what I want, but I’ve uploaded it anyway for you to decide. The nature of the poem causes me to fall into that voice of a detached poet.

Perhaps strong emotion causes one’s voice to fail.

Peace,

Andrew

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