When I told my friend and mentor Jeff Goins that I was going to stop blogging and start ghost hunting, he responded in a way I can only describe as shock.
Honestly, I understood why.
After all, we had just spent years building our blogs. I was one of his pioneer students in Tribe Writers, building Positive Writer from scratch. Then suddenly, almost out of nowhere, I stopped blogging and started creating ghost hunting videos.
Here’s the thing: I’m not the youngest anymore, and I’ve always been an explorer.
I love to travel. I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal. So I created a YouTube channel called Bryan’s Paranormal Travels.
As is typical when starting something new, you start at the bottom, and it’s not all that great.
I realize Jeff must have thought I was crazy.
But over time, my videos got better. The locations got better. The adventures became more ambitious. Before long, I found myself following Joan of Arc’s footsteps across France, from Domrémy-la-Pucelle where she was born, to Chinon, to Orléans, to Reims, and finally to the exact spot where she was executed in Rouen.
All on video.
Are my videos the best? Are they great? Are they groundbreaking?
No. I can’t honestly say that.
But what they are is honest.
And by that I mean I’m doing something I genuinely love. I couldn’t be happier doing it.
I’d do it for free.
Actually, I do it for free.
Well, not entirely.
I don’t like sharing numbers online, but I will tell you this: through my videos, I have sold more books than I ever sold through blog posts.
My videos have incredible reach, and many of them continue to be watched years after they were published.
I’ve built an enthusiastic fan base, and I’ve built enthusiastic haters.
What more could you ask for?
So what’s my message here?
A lot of writers I know work incredibly hard to promote their writing. I know because I was one of them.
Sometimes it feels like a tremendous amount of effort for very little payoff.
I can’t tell you how many writers I’ve known who created blogs like mine to promote their books, only to feel as though they were doing it in vain.
When I stopped blogging here on Positive Writer, people thought I had completely lost my ever-loving mind.
And honestly, I understood that reaction too.
I was walking away from one of the most well-known writing blogs online.
The truth is, I didn’t want to stop blogging.
What happened was that I started doing something I loved so much more that I simply didn’t have time for it anymore. Even stranger, I found myself becoming more successful at promoting my books without trying to promote them at all.
That was never the goal.
At first, I just felt like I needed to retire from trying so damn hard. I was tired of always chasing more, doing more, and forcing more.
“At first, I just felt like I needed to retire from trying so damn hard.”
I wanted to spend my time doing something that felt right.
Somewhere along the way, I reached an age where I stopped caring so much about what other people thought and started paying attention to what actually made me happy.
And that’s really my message.
I wish I had stopped giving a shit earlier.
I wish I had started doing the thing that made no sense to anyone else but made perfect sense to me.
It seemed crazy then.
Hell, it still seems crazy.
But maybe that’s one of the secrets to a good life.
Stop giving so much weight to everyone else’s expectations and start living your own life.
That doesn’t mean stop working.
It doesn’t mean stop doing the things you have to do.
What it means is that sometimes we become so focused on doing what we’re told is the right path that we stop paying attention to what we actually love.
Writers hear the same advice all the time. Create a blog. Build an email list. Write books. Self-promote. Follow the proven path.
And look, there’s nothing wrong with any of those things. Positive Writer was built on those ideas, and they helped me tremendously.
But somewhere along the way, I realized I was spending more time trying to promote my work than actually enjoying my life.
Then I started doing something completely different. Something that made no sense to most people. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with writing advice, blogging, or book marketing.
I started exploring haunted locations and filming paranormal investigations.
And the funny thing is that this completely irrational decision ended up selling more books than all the years I spent trying to sell books.
Today, I sell books without trying to sell books.
In fact, my videos are never about my books.
Seems strange, right?
Until it doesn’t.
I could have been home in front of my screen, pumping out more and more blog posts, or I could have been filming in the Paris Catacombs, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Montmartre Cemetery, the tunnels and forts of Verdun, Bois-le-Prêtre, Hürtgenwald, Fort Souville, Fort Froideterre, Tavannes Tunnel, Chinon Castle, Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, Domrémy-la-Pucelle, Orléans, Reims, Rouen, Auvers-sur-Oise, Wieuwerd’s mummy crypt, Huis te Vraag Cemetery in Amsterdam, abandoned churches hidden in German forests, East German sanatoriums, forgotten WW2 bunkers, haunted castles, abandoned villages, Cold War command centers, and countless places rich with history, mystery, and ghost stories waiting to be told.
Filming for people who may never have the opportunity to see them for themselves and sharing them through the eyes of someone who is genuinely curious and grateful to be there.
Looking back, it doesn’t seem like much of a choice at all.
