She stole my photo

Go fetch - Ghostbusters style

I walked into Taiwan’s version of the DMV yesterday to a pleasant surprise. My license had expired over half a decade ago so I wasn’t quite sure they’d let me renew it.

But then four things happened:

1. The older lady behind the glass looked at the picture on my residence visa and said “Beautiful!”

2. She said I can renew it for $6.

3. She asked for a 2nd photo and I’m still not sure where that one went. They only needed one…

4. I noticed the other side of the room had a ‘Services for the Disabled’ sign with some friendly workers sitting below it. You can imagine what services were listed. I didn’t expect English translation to be there, and yet it was. I laughed.

Damn, I love living abroad. It just makes life more fun.

Also, it’s now snowing where my parents live and its 23 C here. That’s probably like 3,582,234 F or something for you Americans or Canadian boomers.

But I digress (while sitting on the beach).

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JJ’s Vault

(All of these links are paywall free ‘cuz you subscribe.)

Twistory:

I promise you you’ll enjoy this one. It’s about one of my more nuttier friends from Iran and how he kept his first kid on a leash for 15 years. Crazy.

Writing:

If you’re a fellow writer/blogger/whatever-the-hell-we-are you would do yourself a service reading about this nifty editing technique. I tend to save it for the larger pieces or the ones I want to do particularly well, as it does take a bit of time. But hey, it’s helped these two creators earn almost $1 billion from their writing—so it’s probably a pretty good tactic.

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JJ’s Progress

I took about 1.5 weeks off writing for my bday and Halloween (and a fondness for partying). I’ve also picked up some more external client work ‘cuz Medium just isn’t paying me what I thought it’d be at this point in my writing path.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought I was there back in the spring/summer, but since then it’s plummeted 60-70%.

No matter though, I still have an incessant desire to annoy all of you with my wordlings, so I’ll still keep writing. I just have to find other ways to pay the bills going forward.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be starting another Substack soon to post some of my stories that revolve in a not-yet-chosen niche. I’ll do that and then use Medium as a publisher rather than a central repository.

The part I’m not sure of is whether I should focus on ‘history’ or the wide variety of what I call ‘society’ as a topic (links to my lists of articles in those subjects). Or combine the two. Or just send all those articles here. Or wonder if I need to continue being a generalist. Or why did I choose November to be my annual sober month and decide to drink 4 coffees this afternoon when I normally pound Taiwan Tea all day.

Ah, the joys of scratching and beating your brain to decide the next course of action for 6 months—the headache side of being a solopreneur.

Any ideas or feedback is always incredibly welcome! Seriously, would love to hear what you think.

Cheers!

J.J. Pryor

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