Paying My Dues
Everyone is having a roll around the notes section, I will toss a few cents in the fountain. CW CSA
I have noticed some editorializing in the notes on the nature of writing and art and whether or not artists should be paid for their work or if they should go around like blind seers, subsisting on tokens of gratitude, creating on the raw power of the muse, and manna dropped down from heaven I guess?
Paying My Dues Semi-opaque sharp and shaped scorching grey lines holding in time scattering rainbows Won’t sell for a dollar won’t sell for a dime Counting p i l l s drawing baths making endless midnight snacks always another cleaning task Lists of steps patterned pages tiny fingers adeptly folded constructing origami accents intricate ephemera energy discarded Take a sip you’ll start to slip forget the hours forget the tricks finally, school has come again the only reprieve in a life of sin What’s behind the exam room door just another dirty floor dump the trash straighten jars sanitize surfaces don't cough on that how can you be sick again? Cooking and caring for family bearing the responsibility since before I can remember helping with homework reading bedtime stories The shrine was always bad enough but that wasn’t the extent of the horror shots I know they exist hopefully, they never get dug up
I am never again going to be treated like a literal slave. I have no trouble building up a business like everyone else, but not if it is a business where people are spreading the falsehood that it is a market that doesn’t deserve compensation. The piece above describes all of the unpaid labor I was forced into before the age of eighteen. I will not do unpaid labor now that I am an adult. I planned to ease you into this one article at a time, but let’s take a look, shall we?: (skip the bracketed section to avoid the CW portion)
I was used for real elder care, which included bathing, cooking, counting pills, and administering shots. This “started” at age 5
I was used for childcare. I watched my brother, helped him do his homework, made food for my entire family, and watched other people's children on top of it; some days, I made food for them, too. This “started” at age 8.
I was sent to help my father on general construction projects, including shingle roofing by age 10.
I created stained glass pieces in a money-making scheme for my grandmother, that made no money.
I created origami-decorated greeting cards and custom gift baskets in a money-making scheme that did make money at the outset of the internet. My grandmother ran an internet business that I did most of the non-computer work on at age six to nine.
My mother knew I had an autoimmune disease, as I almost died from my shots as an infant, but I was forced to work a legitimate part-time cleaning job at a medical facility with my abusive grandfather, three overnight shifts a week from age six to eleven. This caused me to constantly be ill, and pass out most nights I worked from exhaustion, allowing CP to be taken of me more easily.
I was prostituted to members of my grandparents' friend group, my dance skills used to show me off when we went to people’s homes.
I am now disabled and unable to work a job outside the home. I have a worthless degree I fought against getting that I will never be able to use.
Wanting reasonable compensation for your hours of hard work in a world where other people are getting that, and you need money for food, medicine, shelter, transportation, etc…isn’t greedy; it’s life. It is my plan to prioritize investing in other people’s substacks this coming year because I believe what I am saying here. I have to budget to add those to my monthly expenses, but It will happen. It will only be $5 per month at first, but once I start making some money, I will be able to put more in.
We all need to have some small iota of self-worth. We don’t need to constantly compare ourselves to each other and put each other down to maintain it, but we need to believe our work and time are valuable. That is very hard for me, let me tell you. Just reading the article on pricing yourself by substack sent me into a tailspin.
I ran back to Medium and wrote this, and it took me another month to get my first newsletter out.
Pricing Myself Internal quality standards How am I ever Supposed to rise To the cosmic Minimum When you branded Me your slave No matter The efforts I devoted to Learning The years Of experience The sweat, blood, and flesh Shed in service to my craft When the line Flashes Dollars worth My conditioned Answer will always Be Zero
That feeling many of us feel inside, those lies we are being told, are just that. They are lies and cons being tossed down from the top. From a system that wants to keep the money from trickling down. Though I know many people can’t articulate it, and are blaming the algorithm because they have nothing else, they are upset at the choices being made, not the computers logic-ing it out.
There is a person inputting those algorithms. There are choices being made behind the scenes that human people are unhappy with, choices that the human people at the top of Substack are making. Those with dissenting opinions are upset about that, not the algorithm itself; refusing to understand that and fighting over a line of code is ridiculous.
Am I upset by all this, not really, I am just coming off of a much more serious upset where I am relocating from. That does, however, give me insight into what everyone is legitimately upset about. I wrote the top piece originally in response to what was going on where I was writing before, but this seems to be a problem everywhere. Whether the money is being doled out by the platform or being handed over directly, it boils down to the same issue.
We all need to pull together and keep going like professional adults with the goal of selling our writing. It is exactly why I came here. I have no doubt this is a minor bump in the road, but don’t let it sour a generally wonderful experience here on Substack, I can say from my recent experience on Medium that can happen very quickly.
K.B. Silver