Tag: travel

Good morning!
I’m on day 4 of my writing/music career. It’s a silly thing to say, yes. What I mean is, last Friday was my last day of going to work. At a job. I decided to quit because I really wanted to give myself a chance to make things work in my creative career.

Let me give you a rundown on how quitting my job to focus on creative endeavors works:

1. I’m living with my parents. Yes. I’m 24 years old, unemployed, and I like video games. I’m becoming a statistic. I know. Does it help me seem less pathetic to say that I pay rent?
2. I’m very good at saving money. As in, I’ve never made more than $10,000 USD in a year. In the past 2 years I’ve traveled to China (3 months), Malaysia (1 month), New Zealand (1 month), England and Scotland (5 weeks total). If you’re interested, Nomadic Matt will get you started. Author’s note: I hope to make more than 10K in 2018.
3. I worked. This summer I worked 60+ hours a week at two jobs just to fund my U.K. travels. I had leftover money when I returned home and one of my part-time jobs was waiting for me. So for the past 2 months I worked there and tried to pay off as much credit card debt/student loans as I could while saving for these next few months.

If my parents did not let me stay with them, I’d likely be working some low-wage job that drains most of my energy. I’d be coming home from work and flipping on the TV or plugging in the GameCube. And every month I’d be giving more than half my income to some apartment I don’t even like. So basically, my parents are awesome.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about my plans for the coming months.

1. Grants/Competitions. I’m researching grants and competitions for writers and musicians. If granted/awarded, these will help fund my projects.
2. Artist Residency. There are plenty of artist residencies around the country. This will get me out of my hometown and allow me some freedom to work and be around other artists.
3. Open mic. I’ll be performing poetry/music around the Twin Cities.
4. Working. Duh! Most of what I’ll be doing is A) Working on my poetry book and B) Recording an album/writing more songs to go on that album.
5. Reading! I can’t very well be a writer without reading, can I? No. My goal for this year was to read 40 books but I only read 21 so far 😦 oops.

If you have any recommendations for grants/competitions/artist residencies/etc. please let me know in the comments!

In the next few days, I’ll write about my goals for 2018. For now, back to work!

See you soon,
Eva Moe