Vocal™ helped me find my voice

I'm an old disabled dude that up until about five years ago, was a happy, go-lucky, outgoing kind of sap. I enjoyed being with people and I especially loved to travel. I would start my days between 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning and go until the late hours of the night. I wasn't a partier. I never drank alcoholic beverages or engaged in any of those vices that have a tendency to shorten your life. I was comfortable and I guess you could say I loved living.

This doesn't mean I didn't have my fair share of tragedy. I did. I lost people I loved. I lost jobs I enjoyed doing. I went through some pretty severe health issues. But I always managed to pull through and get on with my life. Then something happened. I'm not sure what it was because I've never been able to pinpoint for certainty one singular event. Whatever it was, it happened, I awakened one morning and I was no longer happy. I stopped traveling. I stopped hanging out with friends, some of who were lifelong friends. I stayed at home and when I say I stayed at home, I stayed inside. I refused to answer the door. I stopped taking phone calls. I depended on my immediate family to take care of things like grocery shopping, etc. It was as if I turned off a switch and stopped living. So much so, there are rooms in my home and in my office building that look just like the day I stopped going into them more than five years ago.

Was I depressed? Probably. I just couldn't figure out why. I wasn't sad or unhappy. I was just blasé. I had no opinion about anything one way or the other. Nothing interested me anymore. I had invested more than $200k in tools for a shop that I used to love using every day, then all of a sudden, I turned the lights off and never went inside the shop again. I even stopped attending church, although, I still continued to pray and read my Bible sporadically. With the pandemic, I found myself sleeping later during the day, waking up around 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. I would get up and bum around the house for a few hours, then take an afternoon nap, waiting for the sun to go down. Shortly after dark, I would get online and read the newspapers, watch a movie on Netflix or HULU, surf Instagram or Twitter, and then fall asleep. Rinse and repeat seven days a week.

About six months ago, I watched a video advertisement on Instagram from Vocal. They were holding a contest for writing. The grand prize was $20,000. That's a lot of cash and it caught my attention. Now, I'm not a great writer. I'm not a bad writer, but I doubt I'm in the class of writers that would ever win $20,000. But I bookmarked the advertisement and told myself I would check it out later. About a month passed, I saw another advertisement, then another so I decided to go to their website and see what all the hullabaloo was about. I regret not doing this much sooner.

I read a few of the articles and skimmed through the different communities on the website and decided to join. I signed up for Vocal+ with the intent of writing articles and meeting like-minded folks in the communities. I believe I wrote one article shortly after signing up, then I parked it and went back to my old pitiful routine. About a month or so ago, my granddaughter was over for a visit and as was our custom, I told her a bedtime story before bed. After she fell asleep, I kept thinking about Vocal+ about my yearning to write more. Maybe this was the fix I needed to break out of this rut I had been in for so long. So I sat down that night and started writing.

Here I am about 4 weeks later and I believe I've already published 25 stories on Vocal, I've built myself a simple blog on the Internet at www.loweco.com, and I have two or three more stories in the draft phase here on Vocal. I've also started writing my first novella. I checked around and discovered there's a small club for aspiring writers that meets twice a month in my little town and I've signed up with them and already attended one meeting. And believe it or not, I'm actually venturing back outside and doing my own grocery shopping and taking the occasional leisurely trip to the park.

For whatever it may be worth to anyone reading this, I owe these accomplishments of mine to the Vocal platform and the way they administer to their customers. I enjoy how there is a separate community for different types of subjects and different types of writing. This encourages me to broaden my horizons and try something new. For example, I wrote and submitted my first poem just the other day. I would have never done that had it not been for Vocal. Likewise, I prefer how they approve every article before it is submitted. That really cuts down on the noise and the commercialization. I also prefer how readers have the ability to ignore your articles, or they can leave a "like" or even tip you if they want to encourage you to write more. Not having to wade through critical or insulting comments, especially when getting started has encouraged me to really put myself out there for the world to see.

So as I said at the onset of this story, I believe Vocal helped me find my voice. I'm not sure how I lost it, but I did lose it and I'm sure I was headed for even darker days had Instagram not served me your advertisement. So for that, I will say thank you!

I'm still learning to ask for likes and tips, so if you liked what you read, don't hesitate to click the heart button. If you want to make sure I get my daily cup of coffee, a small tip is most appreciated. And you can always send me a DM on Instagram @realjoeylowe Thank you!