3 Creative Ways to Turn Your HeartBreak Into Passive Income
By: Mia Fornes
Tags: Money, Creativity, Heartbreak, Startup, Business

3 Creative Ways to Turn Your HeartBreak Into Passive Income

Photo by Travis Essinger on Unsplash

I was eighteen the first time I made some money out of a painful break-up. I had just ended things with my very first boyfriend, and I did what any teenage girl does when facing heartbreak: I started a journal.

How did that transform into income? I transcribed my feeble and youngish feelings into a word.doc, gave them an edit, and sent it to a literary residency, which offered two paid weeks in a hotel by the sea for those selected.

Weeks later, facing the sea in a folding chair, I understood that there was a way to transform emotions to turn the intangible into tangible.

Here are three creative ways to turn your heartbreak into passive income.

#1 — Write a poetry book

Poetry has never been more accessible and popular than right now. If you don’t believe it, type “poetry book” in Amazon and brace yourself for results.

Famous poet Sharon Olds wrote her most acclaimed poetry collection, The Stag’s Leap, after a painful divorce from a long-time marriage. What happened next? She won the Pulitzer Prize ($15,000) for poetry the year of its publication.

Perhaps not everybody is a natural Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room left for more heartbroken words. The advantage you have over everybody is that there’s only one you in the world; that’s what I’ve been told every creative writing workshop I’ve been to. And trust me, I’ve been to a few.

Go pile those poems up and submit them around. If you aren’t sure where to begin, dive into submittable, and find the literary review that suits you best!

#2 — Work on self-love

When you work on trusting and loving yourself- especially during heartbreak — you’re working with a particular raw material: anxiety.

I decided if I was going to let anxiety coexist with me, at least we were going to slip the rent. So I started working on a personal project whose main topic was self-love.

In March, I opened an Instagram account in which I only uploaded drawings accompanied by inspiring phrases. At first, I wasn’t thinking about monetizing it. It was just a way to let a part of me out into the open world of social media. Until one day, I received a private message. They were inviting me to illustrate a couple of texts on a self-love blog. So far, I illustrate at least one article every month for them.

Loving ourselves is the endless journey we sail onto every day. And for better or for worse, the anxiety we work with is such a universal feeling that there’s always space for someone who wants to do something about it.

#3 — Start a blog for heartbreakers & heartbroken

Quality thinking comes from taking the emotions out of your broken heart and placing them on a blog. At first, nobody has to read it, but the process of writing your thoughts down is powerful. It’ll make you build up the courage you need to make your blog public.

I know one thing for sure about being heartbroken; it’s easier to care less about what other people think.

Dump your heart on a blog a few times a week. Be honest. Like a diary or a journal, a blog is a reflective practice, where you strive to be sincere to yourself. A blog showed me how to heal from heartbreak, and it can do the same for you.

Once you’ve posted many articles/thoughts on your blog, apply to Adsense, and get it monetized. You’ll probably get a couple of dollars at first, but if you keep going, perhaps you’ll earn three or four figures eventually, and then all your heartbreak will have paid off, literally.

Also, what better therapy than one that pays the sessions back!