Creative People Should Speak Out Against Bad Business Practices

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I’ve blogged before about how I avoid buying things on Amazon (especially books!) whenever possible, since I don’t want to give money to a gigantic corporation that’s not only made the publishing landscape worse for authors and small publishers, it’s wreaked havoc on the retail economy as a whole.

I avoid Amazon because I want to make better decisions about where my money goes, how I live my life, and most importantly, how I portray myself as a writer and a creative person.  For me, this was about making a REALLY important decision:

Am I the kind of writer who stands up for what I believe in, or the kind of writer who takes the easy route?

When I built my author webpage, I intentionally set up the page for MFA Thesis Novel in a way that encouraged people to buy it literally anywhere except Amazon, then put a link to the Amazon page at the bottom, if readers absolutely had to get it there.  This seemed like a good balance between clarifying what kinds of buying options I wanted readers to consider (independent bookstores, Bookshop.org, and other non-Amazon online options) while also acknowledging the unfortunate reality that Amazon controls an enormous share of the book-buying market, and many readers (especially casual ones) are likely to go there first. Continue reading »

I Checked My Email in the Morning and It Threw Off My Whole Day

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Yep, that’s what happened.

I’ve gone through a variety of email checking routines over the past few years, ever since I first realized in 2017 that I was checking email too frequently and it was causing me to get distracted during the day.  Even worse was that for me, email (also: texting, social media, Google News feed, etc.) was causing me to feel dependent, so that during the day I’d reach for my phone when I was feeling bored or down hoping for a quick pick-me-up.

Long story short, that way of using my phone sucks, and I really don’t like it.

Recently I also I wrote about my new text-message-free morning routine, where I physically close my eyes when I shut off my phone alarm in the morning to avoid seeing text notifications that could throw off my entire day Continue reading »

Why I Stopped Checking My Phone in the Morning

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My phone is kind of the bane of my existence.  Like, I know it’s useful for staying in contact with people and finding stuff online and navigating strange areas and all that jazz, but there are times when the drawbacks definitely outweigh the benefits.

For example, there are plenty of times when I’m at home or on the train or waiting for someone and I instinctively pull out my phone to check…something.  Maybe it’s a new text, maybe it’s the news, or maybe it’s social media—in any case, that smartphone time is usually time I’d rather be spending doing something else, and I usually finish these screen-staring sessions feeling distracted and scatterbrained.

Oh yeah, and the more I use my phone, the more I want to use it—like I can’t just use it a little bit.

And I’ve been trying to find ways to control that. Continue reading »