About Me Monday Peeve: Don't Try To Be All Things to Everyone

 

My son has a cold. It's such fun living in an era when a common cold strikes terror into the heart. He was filling in a hole yesterday and got very sweaty. Then it clouded up and started flashing lightning and cooled down a fair bit, so he ended up with a chill.
I have to take the car to the body shop for repairs and will need to have a rental for a few days. This old dude rear-ended me while I was making a left turn. Fortunately, it wasn't a high enough impact to deploy the airbags. If it isn't one thing it's ten others.
The place where I get most of my income these days is doing book reviews, which isn't as much fun as it sounds like it would be. It's actually very stressful. I am also working on my own writing. You know, those grand literary efforts that I share in this hallowed space.
I keep learning the hard way that I shouldn't try to be all things to everyone. I took on two unpaid book reviews for people outside the Online Book Club. (This doesn't count the review that I did as an in-kind favor for a fellow author in return for a guest spot on their blog.) 
Gratis guest posts are one thing because the author is responsible for creating the post themselves. I just plug in the HTML on my book review blog. It's an easy way for me to help aspiring authors. Reviews, on the other hand, take up a huge amount of time, and that impacts my income because I'm doing volunteer reviews instead of paid reviews. It also impacts my ability to work on my own material because my brain is toast. 
I reworked my literary services page (https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/p/ornery-literary-services.html) to reflect the fact that I will now only do book reviews for either a $25 fee or an in-kind trade. I have zero advertising budget, so if someone gives me a guest spot on their blog to spread the word about my work, that is a huge help. 
Part of the problem lies in the fact that I would love to review each and every book that I have an opportunity to promote. They all sound so fascinating. If I were independently wealthy, I would stop doing the paid reviews for Online Book Club and only do volunteer reviews. However, the one bad brain that I have doesn't possess the ability to review two books in a day plus write my own content. 
I have to complete a book review approximately every other day to make at least $500 per month. Unfortunately, I am not able to make a living as an author at this point. 
No more volunteering time I don't have. I've always been bad about doing this.
If I don't take care of me, how the hell am I gonna take care of anybody else? 
And no, I am not a "bad person" for needing to look out for Number One.
I'm a slow learner.
Cie
--  Good Stuff from Grover
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Fellow broke folk, please consider using Silver Dagger Tours to promote your book. I am not being compensated for telling you this. I just started doing guest spots for them and am going to use them to promote my own books. I just wanted to tell you about them because they are the bomb. Check them out!
https://www.silverdaggertours.com/

I've loved this song for decades. It reminds me that I need to take care of myself, which is something I've never been good about.