Self-Inspired Addendum to an Ill-Advised Account

I wrote earlier that I’d describe what I’ve done to reach the targets listed there.

Of course, I felt obliged to admit I chose not to take that course to become an instructor in English as a second language. Instead, I’ve remained in my much-despised state of wage-slavery for the past nine months working IT customer service in a call center, despite my general lack of IT knowledge and the fact that “unplugging and plugging it back in” works too often for me to feel any sense of job security.

Meanwhile, I attempted returning to Steemit. Or, at least, I kept “post on Steemit again” in mind, without following through. Honestly, as much as I wanted to avoid accounting for having changed my mind about becoming an English instructor, neither did I find myself with much free time: in January, I started a two-year master’s degree program to earn an M.S. in Scientific and Technical Communication at the University of Minnesota.

You might say the choice itself already represents a contradiction: though I’d intended (and desire still) to escape my hometown, I decided to take a two-year program that will likely keep me here until 2019. However, I enrolled because the program purports to prepare “students for local and global careers in online design and social media,” which I gambled would open more opportunities for higher-paying remote work in the future, so I can only hope this tactic of delay works to my benefit.

So, I believe I’ve now finished accounting for having changed my plans. Perhaps I should have done so to my satisfaction in my previous post, but regardless: we’re done with that now.

Instead, I’d like to write about a project I’ve been working on since before Steemit even launched.

Since 12 December 2015, I’ve been publishing short stories, poetry, essays, graphic narratives, music reviews, book reviews, and political commentary on DiaphoraMagazine.com. The magazine began as a collective project, but in the years since has shrunk to one I run alone, and for which the frequency of posts has dropped accordingly. You could call the whole affair a mad-dash effort to move straight from my undergraduate into a career as a self-employed literary editor, but if you recall my current condition as a wage-slave, you can imagine how well that worked.

Still, I’m proud of the work Diaphora has published so far, and I look forward to continuing with it. I don’t know a great deal about social media marketing, but I do believe that the first rule is to post high-quality content, and even if Diaphora crashes tomorrow without having ever earned a dime, I’m happy with what we’ve put out, and forever grateful to the writers that contributed their fine work to the magazine, including @aron.wolde, @mada, @rashard4, @utopiaboy, and others.

But with that being said, I had an idea of how I could compensate these writers who donated their time and energy without any financial reward at all. I realized, you see, that I could re-post what I published in Diaphora, and however you Steemians choose to reward the writer, that’s what I’ll share with them. If you want to know whether a post comes from Diaphora or not, just look for the Diaphora logo below:

So, if you see that logo, you’ll know that upvoting the post will reward the original writer.

Sadly, that’s all I can say right now. But, there’s big news coming, so if you follow my posts, you’ll see something coming major next! Something I’ve been working on since before I started publishing Diaphora, believe it or not, and I’m so excited that soon I’ll have the chance to tell you all about it.

Ciao for now,

Zach