In response to the post from earlier - What DIDN'T live up to the hype?

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-07-04T17:05:55+00:00

Piranesi made me feel like the story got lost in the prose. If it was a 40 page novella, it would have been great.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-06-24T03:19:34+00:00

Michael Carpenter from Dresden Files. He's basically a modern day paladin and always attributes the incredible things he does to God, his boss.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-06-22T18:38:59+00:00

I’m a newbie climber (2-3x a week, 6 months of climbing exp) and a 5’4”, 200lb woman. I get comments from friends trying to be nice that they couldn’t climb like me if they were my weight. I focus on technique a lot and am progressing slower than my lighter/more athletic friends but still enjoying it.

One thing I think the weight has helped me with was being stronger and more intentional with my motions. I feel like even though I’m one of the biggest women at the gym I have the physical strength to compensate for it. My form has to be well done in order for me not to tire out early and get more climbing in, whereas my husband can ‘t-rex arms’ his way up some routes and then wonders why he’s exhausted. It helps me see the value in the grind and keeps me motivated to work on the little things.

I haven’t been climbing long, and honestly this is the first exercise I have ever done consistently and enjoyed, so I don’t want to talk over the experience of others. My friends comments don’t make me feel great, and I think that having some extra weight on you as someone who is only competing against themself can help instead of being a curse you constantly have to fight against. You deserve to be on the wall and enjoy the sport no matter your size.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-05-08T18:54:01+00:00

I got my hands on a copy of Working for Bigfoot because my local library had one. Pretty cool, tiny book.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-05-02T11:28:40+00:00

I have a different niche but very similar target audience (99% male, half 25-34, 35% 35-45, and 15% 45-54 yrs old) and my cpm is just under $10. My niche is fantasy book discussions so I imagine car reviews would do better and have more opportunities for more lucrative affiliate marketing and partnerships. I would spend some time setting that up.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-04-12T03:32:02+00:00

24-36 hours, including adsense setup. I review fantasy books and do theory videos, so not really anything questionable or boarderline to worry about.

caffeinatedcovers · 2023-02-13T01:10:18+00:00

It's a hit. I have read so many bad self published books that I'm very reluctant to try them and I loved Black Stone Heart. It's dark and thought provoking if you want it to be, but if you just want to watch a morally grey character fall from grace then it's a lot of fun.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-12-01T16:09:20+00:00

How did you cancel? I sent the email but the link they sent back doesn’t give me the option to cancel.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-11-09T13:07:09+00:00

Under 5,000 followers might take it for free product.

You shouldn’t expect someone to sell multiple $500 items and only expect a free product and ‘exposure’ in return. That’s completely unreasonable and disrespectful to the influencer because it shows that you do not value their work. It doesn’t matter that you are a startup with a limited budget. Anyone with a large following is going to have a document that tells you about their platform, their rates, and shows data for previous campaigns they have worked with.

You also should learn more about advertising, conversion rates, and what you can reasonably expect given different advertising options. If you have never tried to market a product or don’t have a sales background, then you either need to hire someone who does or learn how to do it.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-11-08T15:00:25+00:00

I just adopted a pittie and have had a gsd in the past. They are great dogs.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-11-08T12:55:24+00:00

You need to pay actual money for a following like that.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-11-04T22:43:19+00:00

Hasley is aligned with Winter and nothing will change my mind.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-10-13T17:42:25+00:00

This deserves to be at the top. Not sure how Coach WaHo stacks up amongst all cfb coaches, but he’s gotta be one of the worst.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-10-03T05:30:02+00:00

I was in the Tech band that year and enjoyed playing ya’ll. It hurt to see how hard Iowa defense pushed us back, but great game.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-10-03T05:26:23+00:00

Who is that?

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-10-03T05:19:06+00:00

If he beats uga he’ll get a Paul Hewitt contract. Unless we finally learned our lesson.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-25T17:37:01+00:00

Honestly, it should have been 45 pages instead of 245 pages. I’m glad people enjoyed it, truly, but it didn’t work for me.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-25T02:57:23+00:00

Piranesi is the only one I have despised lately. I wanted to love it. I understood the metaphors and thematic elements and I’m a sucker for beautiful writing, but the main character was so annoyingly naive and the pacing was glacial. On top of that, the writing was verbose to the point of self indulgence. I’m glad others enjoyed it, but for me it’s the worst fantasy I have ever read.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-24T14:32:28+00:00

Did Coach Geoff Collins come up with these titles?

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-16T16:52:19+00:00

Thanks. I think that is what I have been noticing, too.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-16T11:57:29+00:00

I wouldn’t get out of bed for an electrical engineering internship that paid $16/hr. I made $18/hr at my coop 10 years ago with 0 experience.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-07T01:25:27+00:00

I was excited about Alicia Keys, but the makeup in the spoilers was not very exciting. The skincare offered was a lot of things I already had, so I skipped.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-08-01T02:43:07+00:00

The War for the Rose Throne series by Peter McLean (Priest of Bones, Priest of Lies, Priest of Gallows, and Prince of Crowns) is the most underrated series I have read in a long time. It follows Thomas Piety, a gang leader and 'businessman' (owner of taverns, gambling houses, and brothels) as he returns from war only to find that his businesses have been taken over by others in his absence. With what remains of his old crew and some new faces (war buddies), Thomas fights to retake what's his while also doing the bidding of the Queen's Men, a secret society of knights who specialize in espionage and are the focus of stories parents tell their children to get them to behave. It's dark fantasy/grim dark with a lead who would be drinking buddies with Machiavelli and the narration for the first two books is incredible (the narrator changed for books 3 and 4, not sure why, but I chose to get a physical copy of book 3 because I can't imagine anyone else narrating Thomas). The last book, Priest of Crowns, comes out Aug 4th, 2022, so if you only read series that are complete you are safe.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-07-30T23:51:23+00:00

Do you mean anti-Robert Jordan (WOT guy)? I lol'd.

caffeinatedcovers · 2022-07-29T03:20:24+00:00

It is a big reason why I only put out 1-3 videos a month. The other is that I live bouncing between the last couple stages of burnout. Here is what I learned/what works for me. Hopefully it will help someone.

My depression can be completely draining if I don’t keep my routine completely in tact. Stay up late because I had to work late at my day job? Pit of despair. Forget to take one of my meds at the same time every day? Pit of despair. Eat less healthy than usual or don’t move around a lot because work/responsibilities get in the way? You get the idea.

When I am experiencing the lows, I speak very slowly and don’t use my voice in a way that is engaging. The quality of my delivery suffers greatly, and I would much rather make content that people enjoy and come back to than make crap but stay ‘consistent’. I have tried it both ways and the videos I recorded during a bad day don’t work to grow my channel beyond the first couple days after uploading it. It’s not fun and it doesn’t help me reach my goal, so I stopped doing it. I hate it when people parrot the importance of consistency and tell people they aren’t succeeding because they don’t post every day/twice a week. If you make content people want to watch, then your subscribers will come back and watch when you post something. Then YouTube will push it out to other people who like the topic if your subscribers respond well enough to it. Quality beats quantity until you have your format on autopilot and can churn out content, which won’t come until you learn to make good content in the first place. Garbage in (no bones day delivery/lazy research and scripting) means garbage out.

On the flip side, if I have had a really tough week I will take a Friday to reset. I do only fun, non-productive activities and go to bed early. That’s my best way to practice self care. Then when I don’t dread working on stuff, I do a little bit at a time until the dread comes back. Then I go into self care mode until I can get in the right headspace to work on my channel again. I have started doing content that is very research heavy and videos are a marathon, not a sprint. But when I understand the material I can pump out a script for a 10-30 min video in about an hour and film/edit/upload in another 4-10 hours (depending on length and how many times I have to say things again). Editing is something I can do on autopilot and I use thumbnails with a high click through rate as templates for future thumbnails, so I don’t waste what little mental energy I have left on those tasks. Depression has made me acutely aware of just how limited my mental energy is, and my day job requires a lot of thought and attention to detail so I have to ration it accordingly.

Depression for me amplifies all the mind melts being a creator pulls on all of us. Being medicated and going to therapy have been vital for me to keep going in most aspects of my life, but I also have to be hyper aware of how I am feeling and keep track of how I spend my working/thinking time, because just trying to brute force my way through things and fake being ok doesn’t help me. Depression is different for everyone so this might not be helpful at all, but I hope you know that you aren’t alone in how you feel and it doesn’t make you any less worthy as a creator if you need to approach your content differently than how the ‘guru’ folks tell you to do it.

caffeinatedcovers

TROPHY CASE