A Flask & A Pen: When Passion Doesn't Pay The Bills
The bittersweet reality of building a career around my passion and creativity while facing the harsh economic truths of a changing industry.
There’s a flask on my desk and a pile of bills in my inbox—one’s a reminder of who I am, the other of why that’s not enough. I don't drink while I work... hell, I barely drink at all anymore, but I keep the flask on my desk as a visual token of what I do and who I am. The flask itself is pretty standard; an 8 oz pocket of stainless steel. It's encased however in a custom leather holster with a brass monogram plate brandished with the initials "WC". This was a thank you gift from a custom clothing company that I once gave coverage to because they were dressing my favorite local musicians at the time, and I was writing under the pen-name "WhiskeyChick".
I've been writing as an independent country music journalist under the WC moniker for almost 20 years now and it has become inextricable from my legal name. When you google one or the other, they both come up side by side. This writing I've done has been my passion and my bread & butter for literal decades now, and it's a career one can only dream of. Discovering and supporting talented musicians from the tiny dive bars to the big arenas is a dream job that anyone with an ear and a pen would be lucky to have. The problem is that it doesn't pay.
I've taken the odd job here and there to help make ends meet. In our house we call them "fundraiser gigs", and we use them to bolster the finances when the writing income just doesn't cut it. Usually the Mister and I will trade off in what we call "guarding the castle vs slaying the dragon", and it's a fair way to make sure we each have the time and space to follow our passions while also meeting the needs of our household. Need a water heater for one of the tiny cabins? He contracts a graphic design job. Want to pay off that car loan a little faster? I go out and run social media strategy for an air freshener manufacturer. Once he played DJ at a pair of strip clubs for nearly a year while I set up a robust eCommerce system for a wholesale cannabis product distributor... the stories from those resume marks were incredible to say the least.
The side jobs are always interesting, creative, and at the very least, entertaining, but they are temporary by nature, and they're usually found through an odd conversation and a handshake deal. They're side quests, not the kind of work you build a career from. Our primary income still comes from publishing articles on our own country music websites, hosting ads, and sharing affiliate links.
I’ve taken that flask to radio conferences, concerts, festivals and networking events all over the country, and it has served me well as I gathered exclusive content for our outlets. We keep it focused on the music, avoid clickbait and gossip, and generally have been very proud of our little independent blogs that have outlasted some of the biggest players in the industry.
But the industry is ever-changing and these revenue streams are both diluted and drying up. We’ve never entertained investors because we like that we can run mean and lean and never have to cow-tow to a higher power, leaving our readers in full control of what we publish. But Adsense doesn't pay like it used to, Google is as inconsistent as the weather in Oklahoma, and the most profitable affiliate programs don't serve our target audience with integrity so we've backed away from the bulk of them (I'm looking at you secondary concert ticket platforms). What used to pay all our bills now barely covers our groceries. So much for independent niche news I guess.
The decline has been slow, although there was that several year plummet during the pandemic when the entire industry went topsy turvy, but it only hastened the inevitable. Writing solely about country music just isn't a viable plan if we want to keep the lights on.
I'm 45 now. I've been a member of the working masses for 30 years, but I still have another 20 to go before I reach a respectable retirement age. That's enough time to pivot into a whole new career if I want to, and so I have been exploring that. Truth be told, I've been exploring it for almost 4 years now. I've written, revised, revamped, and rehashed my resume at least a thousand times. I've signed up for every job hunting website, polished my LinkedIn profile, and direct-applied on every company website of every physical and digital product I enjoy. I have kept an Airtable database of every job I've thrown my name in the hat for since 2020, and the number is staggering. Even more staggering is the response rate; it's less than 1%.
I can't help but think that the only consistent thing in all my applications is my name. The name that when googled, returns with the "WhiskeyChick" moniker attached. What does that say to potential employers? How do I explain to the 24 year old junior HR executive that when they were 4 years old the internet was a wildly different place?
In 2004 I had a high-profile job in a large corporation with my name and face on the company website, so when I took up writing about country music I had to use a pen name. That name was in theme with the first site I was published on, DrunkenHillbilly.com (RIP), which covered underground and unsigned artists found in honky tonks and bars. That name became a calling card that has carried me through this industry for 20 years. That name became how I am known to the point that a clothing company sent me a custom made leather-wrapped flask with "WC" proudly emblazoned on a bronze tag.
I keep the flask on my desk as a reminder that my name has value. For all the silence from the working world at large and all the unheard rejection I get for my list of skills and experience because I couldn't get my resume past an initial screening system, whether AI or human, I have a physical token right in front of me that says no matter what, I add value to the world with my work. I'll keep digging, keep applying, keep trying to find some way to make a few dollars and increase my professional footprint while saying my name with my whole chest. It's not like I can scrub it from the internet , and I wouldn't want to if I could. Hell, maybe I'll find an audience right here at Substack and you, a new set of readers not chained to the country music space, will become my new employer.
I would love to know what tokens you keep in your creative space and why?
Reading: “From Here To The Great Unknown” (By Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough).
Drinking: Homemade sweet tea
Listening to: “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me” by Terri Clark
Some housekeeping…
I’m still going to be sharing news from the music business, but I will also be sharing personal essays and behind the scenes updates all tucked into a once-weekly newsletter. If that’s not your jam, I totally understand. But if you want to see a little more about country music, building tiny cabins, or the life behind the writer, then I’m glad you’re here.
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Thanks again, and cheers!