“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

–  Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I hadn’t gone out since the middle of March. After developing a disgusting case of folliculitis I decided to stay in on the weekends and get more work done. My skin looked gross, so I figured that there was no point in going out anyway.

Instead of socializing, I sat inside and read books or watched movies on the weekend. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had a job where I have to talk to people, but I don’t. I was basically a shut in for more than a month.

Now that my skin is healing up, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to be social again. This was easier said than done. Because I was at home for so long, going out and doing stuff with other people actually made me kind of nervous. As dumb as it sounds, I was scared to go and talk to people at bars and clubs. Having not done it in a while I feared that I’d be awkward and weird. I was worried that people would judge me. The thought of being ridiculed was horrifying.

Rather than wallowing in my fear, I decided to take action. I analyzed my emotions and realized that it would be near impossible to convince my brain that nothing bad would happen. In my mind I made up all kinds of excuses about why I had to stay home. I hadn’t had a haircut in a while, I wanted to finish reading a book, I needed a good night’s rest. The rationalizations were endless.

Finally I had enough. I looked at a map, found a city I had never been to, and got in my car. I drove to the downtown area, locked my phone in the vehicle and went into the most crowded club on the block.

Within 15 minutes I was talking to people and having a good time. I made out with a couple girls, I danced to some dubstep song, and I met cool people. Before closing time some random girl I had briefly talked with came over and gave me her number in case I wanted to “hang out” after she drove her friends home. I took her up on the offer.

I could have let my fear consume me. I could have made up excuses about America being full of “feminazis,” or sat inside to make a meme about having social anxiety. Instead I manned up, walked out my door and confronted what was terrifying me. Complaining is for whiners and losers. Weak men sit at home and shriek about how evil and horrible the world is. They can’t bear to face their fears so they amplify them and let them control every aspect of their lives. Men who prattle on about how awful the world is are cowards. Thy know that they are weak, but don’t have the courage to admit it. Instead they have to fabricate grandiose tales to try and convince the rest of the world that their own pitiful existence is some kind of revolutionary and genius one man war against the system.

Whining and complaining is for losers. Anyone who dares to call himself a man must take on what he fears the most. There’s no honor in sitting at the sidelines and lying about why you can’t participate.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

– Thomas Sowell

Weekend warriors are killing writing. There’s a slew of forums and message boards where guys sit around and circle jerk about how they are on the way to “location independence” by making $300 a month off freelance article writing. They brag about doing work for thirty cents an hour, or some other silly nonsense. While there’s nothing wrong with making money as a part time hobby, I do have a problem with people who show up on sites like oDesk and drive the expectations through the floor. While I already make perfectly good money as a freelance writer, I try and take on a few new clients every week.

Recently I’ve started to notice a surge in companies who are looking for people to write for infinitesimal amounts. Although this is normal with stuff like content writing, it’s starting to appear in more lucrative fields as well. I like writing eBooks, and I’ve started to notice that many of the jobs are paying a penny a word. It’s the same rate that pulp writers used to get back in the 1940’s. And that was the hack writer rate, guys like Lovecraft and Gibson made far more.

Rather than complaining, I’ve decided to make a brief guide to earning more than what most people will settle for.

How to avoid being lumped in with weekend warriors

•  Don’t settle.

Earlier today I was hired to proofread a 5,000 word article. The client then revealed that they wanted everything done in 24 hours. We had initially agreed on 48. I told them that I’d have the article to them in 12 hours, they just had to pay double.

Once I got the article, I found out that my client had outsourced it to some barely literate third world writer. I would basically have to rewrite the entire thing. While this normally wouldn’t be a problem, the article in question required a lot of research. It related to a medical product and relied on actual facts and statistics. This simple project was going to take several hours. I messaged my client and had them increase my payment again.

While it might sound like I was a greedy jerk, the project ended up taking all day. Had I meekly submitted and been content with getting a client, I would have lost money. By standing my ground I was able to earn what I normally make in a day, and deliver a quality product.

• Have some forethought.

People mistake online hustling with sorcery. Forums are filled with men who gleefully boost about making ten bucks an hour by writing penny a word articles. They proclaim that they are actually saving money, because their job doesn’t require them to drive to an office or wear a suit. While working for yourself does have benefits, there are also some drawbacks. You have to have your own insurance, no one pays you when you’re sick, and you have to dig up clients on your own. Ten dollars an hour becomes nothing once you factor in personal expenses. Electricity, taxes, insurance, getting sick, and a slew of other factors can place your earnings at less than minimum wage.

I like to use magazine writers as a metric for pricing my services. Even small publications with limited circulation pay more than a penny a word. They’d have no content otherwise. A company selling a twenty dollar eBook to a massive audience can spare more than a penny per word. At ten cents a word for a 10,000 word book they’d have to sell fifty copies before recuperating their losses. That’s not terribly hard to do.

If you want to freelance, don’t expect that doing menial and worthless jobs is going to actually do much for you. I spent an entire month writing garbage content for a couple bucks a day. And I’d still be doing it if I hadn’t quit. People undervalue writing. They don’t do it out of greed, they do it because no one ever presents them with an actual bid. If you’re willing to stand up for yourself and have quality material, don’t be afraid to ask for more. There’s absolutely no reason that you should be thankful to make someone else rich without taking any of the credit or money.

“I’m not sure whether I should approve this because you’re obviously making an honest attempt to learn English or remove it to hide your shame from the entire internet.”

– Smug whiner on Reddit

Right now I’m working on a project that involves Twitter. It’s a business thing, and is pretty boring. While posting some stuff, I noticed that #CancelColbert is trending. As someone who occasionally watches The Colbert Report and read his book I decided to find out what all the outrage was about.

Apparently, in mockery of actual racism, Colbert had made some joke about Asians. The jest was aimed at the Washington Redskin’s owner and his alleged racism, and had nothing to do with mocking actual Asians. Since everyone on the internet has the mental capacity of a child, a boycott erupted.

This didn’t really surprise me. At this point being a victim and becoming outraged is “cool.” Growing up I remember when the only people who protested and wrote angry letters were prudes and old ladies. Letters to the editor were always something I enjoyed reading as a kid because they were always penned by some weirdo who spouted off histrionic arguments that boiled down to “think of the children!”

Now it’s fashionable for people in their 20’s to pull the same trick. Anything they don’t agree with has to be destroyed. The entire planet has regressed into becoming old church ladies.

Anatomy of a smug whiner

• Faux intellect.

For a bunch of independent thinkers who are persecuted by the neanderthals that are whoever they disagree with, very few whiners ever seem to have an original thought. Despite this, they’re somehow superior to everyone else thanks to all the Malcolm Gladwell books they’ve skimmed and episodes of Dr. Who that they’ve watched. Aside from snark, none of them ever seem to produce anything either. They simply regurgitate whatever someone else said or did, and provide commentary on it.

• No regard for personal damages.

With #CancelColbert and a million other social justice campaigns, whiners want the “offender” punished no matter the cost. When someone hurts their feelings they rally to get that person fired. Donglegate, Pax Dickinson, and a million other incidents have all resulted in people losing their jobs and having their reputations tarnished over a random dork’s inability to shrug something off. As I’ve mentioned before, I was running a successful series of subreddits which contained affiliate links. I wasn’t hurting anyone and I even disclosed that I got a commission off the links. Almost no one had a problem with this and all my sites had a pretty good sense of community. Despite this, one dork, who’s entire post history consisted of arguing with people and posting “that feels when she doesn’t text back” memes, was outraged that I was “spamming the internet.” My links were all contained to my own area, and anything I posted on other subreddits had nothing to do with my ventures. I still ended up getting banned from Reddit and losing out on something that was going to earn me about $500 a month. All because some crybaby couldn’t stand the idea that someone was doing something he didn’t agree with.

• Hypercritical.

For people who get offended by racism, whiners tend to make a lot of racial jokes themselves. Most of their humor comes from stereotyping and mocking people. The “we’re Asians, not B-sians” meme is equally as “offensive” as what Colbert said. The only difference is that everyone likes the meme. Other jokes, like the “Successful Black Man” meme, also rely on stereotypes to provide humor. If people want to cry racial insensitivity, they shouldn’t be allowed to use the exact same jokes.

• Inability to articulate.

years of making snarky comments and looking at BuzzFeed articles have eroded the minds of most whiners and force them to use childish taunts. back in high school I was on a speech team. If anyone tried to use an argument like “wow just wow,” or “you went there” they’d have been thrown out. The arguments and attacks that most of these people make sound like something that you’d expect some 1900’s turnip farmer to use while protesting outside the Scopes Trial. H.L. Mencken was almost lynched by an angry mob for calling them yokels. Now some guy on will get persecuted online and fired from work because he used “hate speech.” We haven’t evolved at all over the past hundred years.

I hope the people behind #CancelColbert have fun being outraged. I hope it infuriates them and ruins their weekend. I hope they lose sleep over the very idea that someone somewhere could be saying things that they don’t like. If some smug whiner was mollycoddled and sheltered enough that a comedian’s television joke upset him, he deserves to suffer.

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

– Mark Twain

If you’re reading this, I decided not to publish today’s original post. Initially I had a one thousand word angry rant that was going to go up. Now it’s in the trash. Instead of rehashing my beef here, I’m going to write a little guide to crafting hate mail.

How to write hate mail

• Have an outline.

Most people suck at insults because they lack any kind of cohesive structure. They meander around and lose focus. By typing up your platforms of attack you can stick to the point. It gives your words an edge and turns anger into a weapon. Additionally, you can build on your attack, a subtle crescendo of slander is truly a sight to behold.

• Be wordy.

If you’re going to call someone out, do it the old fashioned way. Draft a letter. While you can post something to Twitter, the character limit is going to impose on your creativity. If you want to get clever with your insults, or make a compelling argument, you need to write a solid essay. “Wow. Just wow,” pales to the insults you can craft in a thousand word tirade.

• Rest for a day.

After writing your scathing article, wait 24 hours before publishing it. It’s a good idea to rest up before your attack. Whenever I write something that I intend to either post or email to someone, I wait a full day.

• Throw the letter out.

I once read a story about Abraham Lincoln. Whenever Lincoln was mad he’d write an angry letter to the person who had infuriated him. Instead of sending it he would put the message aside until he calmed down. Afterwards, he’d write at the bottom “Never sent. Never signed.”

With a handful of exceptions, I never post angry content. However, I’ve probably written at least two dozen scathing posts with the intention of publishing them. Typically, after I write something aimed at someone, I find that my rage subsides. I get all my anger out without ever letting anyone else know.

While I’m sure someone will say this is passive aggressive, I actually get a lot of use out of it. It’s also saved me from making myself look bad on more than a few occasions. For example, I had a client who hadn’t paid me for some work. I messaged them a few times and never heard anything back. This upset me and I drafted a long winded negative review that touched on everything from their failure to pay on time to a funny typo that they had made in their initial message.

Before publishing it, I waited a full day. The next morning, I felt a lot better and decided not to make my attack. I shrugged it off, that’s the price of doing business. Two days later I got an email from my client.

Apparently they had been having some business difficulties and were behind on all their stuff. Not only did they pay me, but they hired me for another job and paid extra to make up for any inconveniences. Had I criticized them, I probably wouldn’t have seen any of the money.

Anger is an emotion, it passes. There’s no sense in holding a grudge, or trying to get revenge in a public setting. If you have a problem with someone, take care of it one on one.