“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs to Stanford graduates

I was cruising around the Internet looking for a tidy quote to slap at the top of this post, one in the category of notion that if you follow your passion, you get all the treats and dollars you’ve ever wanted. I’m trying to comfort myself really, rather than summarize any grand conclusions for the readers. I need comfort because the thing I like to do more than anything else in the world is to write poems. The problem with that (and the romantic notion that following my passions will bring great material success) is that poems are not exactly on high demand these days. Much like blogging and other entry-level writing gigs, the market is saturated with a lot poor performers and terrible product. Or maybe (I rebut myself) poems are on high demand, and everyone’s just forgotten that fact, and the world suffers horribly as a result.

I’ve always said I’d never be a starving artist. I said this while working in corporate management, while operating my own landscaping business, coordinating a camp, and on through the years and various other jobs. Suddenly, though, something has shifted. Maybe I’ve lost my determination, my drive. Maybe I’ve come to my senses. I just can’t not do it anymore. Suddenly, the only thing I can stand to do is to write. It’s so refreshing and relieving. I have not been so happy in years. I’m writing everything, everywhere: essays, blogs, poems, a play of sorts; I even did poem graffiti project in Hollywood a few months back. I am loving my life.

The problem is the road ahead. I am aware that writers can make a decent living, some even a great one; but the indentured servitude in becoming a writer is brutal. I hate it. I hate the idea of it. I have a couple of young writer friends who live and work in Hollywood. They aspire to write film and/or television, and they are engaged in an actual feudal system, working as personal assistants (bitches, really) with hopes that they can one day slip a script into the right hands. I’m not interested in having what they ultimately want; but their experience is one — by nature — not so different from other beginners in other genres.

I’m basically paying myself to write in the interim between my old life and heading to grad school this fall. It’s well worth it so far, but I’m wondering how long it might actually take to get somewhere with this. My research and the sources tell me that it will probably take years. That’s bothersome. A timeframe like that must actively weed out some of the best while affording opportunity primarily to the well-resourced.

Newspapers across the country are slicing their writing staffs, making print journalism a more remote and unlikely employment destination since before the invention of the printing press. One website reports 72,000 media jobs cut since June of 2000. Blogs and other internet writing sites are screaming for contributors; and, hopefully, this trend will eventually crystallize into a quality, scribe-like system. For now, though, it’s a bit junky; and the pay is, again, something characteristic of feudalism. I’ve been trying my hand at a few different internet writing opportunities. Some, like Queercents, are extremely gratifying writing outlets that position their respective writers in bodies providing quality information. Others collect submissions in a pool of garbage with little chance of ever being read or even posted on their websites. Writers can work all day every day for years, and make nothing. I personally have raked in a whopping $1.57 over the past two months in Google Adsense Revenue through a combination of a couple of different blogs.

I suppose the sluggish to non-existent pay scale is just plainly, historically characteristic of being a writer. The blogger is basically the new scribe. The dedicated medieval scribe, after all, was a monk and not a capitalist and sought to do things like, “praise God, give pleasure to angels, strengthen the just, convert sinners, commend the humble…” and other acts considered far superior to manual labor according to Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim in his 1492 In Praise of Scribes. Those implements are only slightly less appealing than a 401K and a benefits package.

But the truth is, the participation in the beautiful free exchange of information that is the worldwide web is by definition one where only a few – the elite, the well-connected, those who have successfully completed their obligatory period of free labor – will be paid. To sign on is to be aware of such innate laws.

I read an article in the July/August Poets and Writers called “Will Write for Free,” by a print-published author named Steve Almond. He’s published an array of books: short story collections, essays, nonfiction, and a collaborative novel; and the article describes the trajectory of the economic life of a writer. He says, “The basic rules for writers when it comes to payment run something like this: (1) Take what you can get; and (2) keep your mouth shut if you don’t get anything.”

This acknowledgment, coming from the material world of a tangible, bound-book published writer, is less than encouraging. Almond’s point, however, is not to encourage a step-to of this pre-ordained order but to gently encourage writers to ask for what they deserve, compensation for their creativity. That’s an awkward task for an already awkward constituent; and when I first read the article, I thought, “That’s a ridiculous notion in regard to Internet writers. There just isn’t money to be made.”

The nature of Internet contribution requires much free labor to gain “land-holder” status. But then I came across one of Marc’s posts from July, and my perspective shifted. He wrote, “Bill Gates, last I read, was worth just over $50 billion. This does not mean that the world has $50 billion less. It means he created it. Just like carrots grow from the seeds planted prior, your wealth can too. Someone doesn’t sacrifice their income because you invested and generated income. You can, and should, create it by planting the investment seed.”

So, yes, of course, blogging is not just empty, mind-callusing labor. It’s a few hundred word investment seed. Obviously, a writer of any kind will never generate what Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have, but they can generate just as much personal satisfaction.