Why Is Everything Taking So Long?

Little blog update because people have asked when I’ll be returning to blogging, much less finish the Vault of various wisdoms. Some notable fellow pirate-minded folks have even expressed concern and sent well wishes for the health bits.

Let me stop with the tongue-in-cheekness for a moment, and say the following.

Health Update

Firstly, thank you to you all for sticking around, asking about my health and so on. Last time I wrote on this blog, I was suffering from chronic headaches, insomnia and other related things. I’ve been tackling those head on over the past few months, and everything is doing better. I’m now wearing proper prescription glasses, taking regular breaks, new mattress, chair, lighting, and so on. It’s making a difference.

The big one though is stress and workload, which is why I’ve been slacking on the updates front and non-existent on the blog front. Well, some of the reason at least.

On The Future

I get asked a lot, despite my muted presence online, about getting started with copywriting, writing, and other internet businessman bits.

Add that to the fact that people still ask about the Vault and other online ventures I’ve talked about, and I feel very bad about not answering.

We’ll talk about the Vault in the next session, but I need to preface it with what I’ve been doing workwise, as well as address a flavour of question that’s recently come up:

Namely, people have asked, repeatedly, “What do we do about AI? Is there even any point in writing anymore when it’s all so flooded?”

And the answer to those questions, (which we’ll cover in detail in blog posts that cover the questions specifically,) is an obvious yes.

There’s plenty to still play for, writing and the secondary skills you can use writing with and for are still big potential business and investment wins.

However…

I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to go forward, and I think I have the answer, but obviously I’m shooting into the dark just like everyone else is. The world’s quite tumultuous and I don’t like not having the answers. More importantly, I don’t like giving the answers until I’ve figured out whether the advice I’m giving is going to work or not.

(It’s why I never made it as guru to the masses.)

So when someone asks, “Jamie… how do I start copywriting? How do I be a copywriter? Is it even worth it?”

I don’t really want to recommend going out there and competing with the billion other barely literate ChatGPT users and cold-emailing Hustler’s University graduates to offer someone email marketing for their dropship knock-off aftershave brand or start a “social media agency” that runs off affiliate marketing for whoever the next shouts-at-OnlyFans-girls podcaster of the day is.

There are better ways to make a living; if I’m going to teach you copywriting or ecommerce or any other subject I write about on this little blog project, it’s going to be in service of building real, tangible stuff on the commercial end and becoming a High Quality™, High-IQ™ Individual on the non-commercial things.

Which brings me to the subject we’re avoiding.

 On The Blog and Work Front

Cutting out all the waffle excusing my behaviour, two things have gone on:

1. I lost enthusiasm for the stuff I was writing about on the blog, then kind of lost the plot in terms of “what are we doing here and where are we going?”
2. When I found that again, actually redirecting the energy was much more complicated a process than I thought

To elaborate on these points and take into consideration the last section, talking about the future, I’ll summarise.

If you want to survive as a writer, you’ve got to take all the future bits into consideration. This ultimately means you’re going to need to be a lot more than a copywriter and/or online business guy. You’re going to need to have the skills and tech behind you, sure, but it’s also a vision thing; you’re going to need to build things. Intellectual property, conceptual things.

Combine that with the other front on the war; fighting AI; you’re going to fight that by being more human, and you have what I basically think of as your toolkit for surviving the future.

This then, was what the Vault was supposed to be; I create a bunch of courses that give you the skills, I put together challenges so you actually learn the skills, and then I frame it all together with the high level concepts (what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we’re going to survive what’s coming) so that it’s actually something useful for you all as opposed to some bullshit Gumroad info-product.

And really, I’m getting there, but it’s taken a long time and I’m still not ready to launch.

Soon though.

That’s Why It’s Taking So Long

It’s all taking so long because I realised I was a typing monkey, and a typing monkey has limited capacity to give long term advice to humans, especially in an era where the monkeys – even the smart ones – are being replaced by machines.

To give good advice, I need to figure out the answers, massively upgrade my own skills and knowledge, and then work out how to pass that on.

And the solutions I’ve found aren’t easy.

Build IP that’s valuable.

Create a writing style that’s very engaging and couldn’t be replicated now or ever by AI.

Become a Renaissance Man™ by absorbing human knowledge and figuring out what separates us from the monkeys and the algorithms.

That Said…

I should probably force myself to do all this in public, maintain accountability for myself because while I’m framing all the above as something noble, there’s also a lot of sitting around worrying about the fact I’m not working on the blog bits and letting you all down.

So, firstly I’m sorry for my silence of late.

Secondly, I’ll keep everyone updated and actually work to get this ark built before the flood starts.

And I’ll try by blogging regularly from today onwards.

(This isn’t an April Fool’s, by the way.)