Wanting to make money from your hobby isn’t wrong if you remember these 4 tips.

Imagine if you could do exactly what you love and be paid for it.

As someone who’s been consistently making more money from my hobby than my day job for the past few months, I can safely say that this feels like a dream come true.

• Getting paid for doing what you love is like another level of gamification — a feeling of progress as if you’ve “levelled up” in the pursuit of your passion.
• Better rewards act as further inspiration to create more. …

They are barely an hour long and available for FREE!

What’s better for some quick weekend reading than an amazing novella with a well-detailed world and fully-fleshed-out characters?

Fortunately for the readers all over the world, there are some truly amazing, yet underrated novellas available for free. In this post, I’ve listed three of my absolute favourites. They span different genres and each has its unique taste. You can pick them up and read them in less than an hour.

Trust me, these novellas are so good, they will leave you smiling and wanting more. The one hour spent in reading will be the highlight of your day.

Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson

Genre: Science fiction
Number of pages…

How convenient to it is to hide your own atrocities and make sure your children never learn of them

This is the story of Kamala Bhattacharya — a 16-year-old girl from the Indian state of Assam, who died protecting her mother tongue, Bengali. A story I was shielded from all through my life; her history and legacy hushed up and pushed behind a facade of perfection.

I was born in Guwahati, the largest city of Northeastern India, a land fed and watered by the mighty Brahmaputra river. I always prided myself in the history of my state: how my ancestors had cleverly thwarted all attempts by the Mughals to conquer the land, how Assam had remained fiercely independent when most of South East Asia was under the Mughal rule. …

Yet-to-be-released books I can’t wait to get my hands on

2020 is about to draw to a close. Like I mentioned in my article about the best books I read this year, I’ve been fortunate to discover some amazing reads. I’ve never felt as inspired and this much in love with characters in a book before.

That being said, 2021 has some pretty exciting new releases lined up and I can’t wait to dig right into these amazing reads. This article compiles seven of the most intriguing books to be released the next year. The books are listed in the order of how much I’m excited, why, and their release dates. …

Stop expecting big wins with minimal effort.

As an independent content creator, I often find myself getting super impatient. I put in hours of hard work writing an article or editing a video for my YouTube channel, and then get disappointed when it doesn’t reach the number of likes or views I’d hoped it would.

There was a time when I used to obsessively check my stats, often deleting lower-performing pieces, and re-publishing them after a while. With time, I’ve realised that obsessing over stats is futile. No matter how much effort you put into crafting the perfect piece, the audience might not resonate with it right then. …

Heart-warming novels that embody the holiday spirit of love, family, and friendship

It’s that time of the year again. The weather is getting steadily chilly, the fires have started crackling, and the smell of freshly-baked cakes is wafting through the air in gay abandon.

However, 2020 has been a stressful year for most, and it might be difficult to get into the holiday mood to say goodbye to a year filled with such tumultuous highs and lows. To combat that, this article lists three warm and uplifting books to get you into those feelings of comfort and joy in no time.

After all, the spirit of Christmas and Thanksgiving is represented by three emotions: love, family, and friendship. The books listed here embody these emotions perfectly. The stories don’t necessarily have a Christmas setting, but they will get you feeling warm, happy, and all set for the holiday season up ahead. These books are also relatively short, so you can read them in a few days and have all the right emotions in the days leading up to Christmas. …

Science-backed ways of not falling into the trap of needing to be productive all the time.

If you feel the need to be productive all the time, you’re not alone. But is it necessary to be productive 100% of the time to be successful? Working too hard for too long can lead to burnout, which, as researchers have established, can erode your values, dignity, spirit and will. According to studies, burnout impairs both personal and social functioning, thus contributing to a decline in the quality of work and interpersonal relationships. It’s characterised by three elements:

• Exhaustion: When you feel like you can no longer keep working, no matter how hard you try.
• Cynicism: When you experience a state of fatigue or frustration because your way of life or relationship failed to produce the expected reward. …

Not all friends are good for your mental health. But you can decide on your boundaries.

When I moved to a new city, Niyati was my only friend. She helped me set up my place and provided company on evenings I’d otherwise have spent alone. On the surface, everything was great and I had a wonderful friend. But deep down, I felt depleted, as if I had to spend a lot of energy trying to stay happy while spending time with her.

She liked to talk a lot about herself, which was fine. But the moment I started sharing my story, she would cut me off, changing the topic as if my words weren’t important. She made casual remarks about my weight, saying I needed to start working out. …