The Ups and Downs of Mondays

I watched the Grammys last night and I'm pretty sure I'll never make that mistake again. I could go on for hours, but I'll just say these two things: when Jeff Lynne is on stage, YOU STAND UP. And no one turns off Paul's mic. NO ONE. And these weren't even the issues that anyone thought were controversies... I mean really. This made me regret not switching the channel to Sister Wives.

Five versions of the same song--this is love.

At least my mail carrier loves to brighten my day. Three packages came, all of which have contents that were totally free or paid for with gift cards (don't want anyone to think I'm just pretending to be poor!).


Seriously, the highlight of my Monday. I've been able to add to my vinyl collection and I received another Influenster VoxBox. As always, if you want to read more about the products from this box, please visit Showered in Beauty over the coming days and weeks for reviews, photos and other fun stuff.

Products provided free from Influenster for testing.

In terms of writing, I found another social media site that may be worth checking out. It's called Biosgraphy and is looks like a great place for personal essays and photo essays. In fact, I'm currently working on something to post into my Thank You/It's All Your Fault biog. Stayed tuned for that.

I think I may be giving up on Tsu--because of the potential to earn money, no one on that site is interested in making a genuine connection. Pity, because there are some great people over there. They just need to stop concentrating on the pennies that the site divvies out.

Aside from hanging out on social media, I have been working on that grant application I mentioned last week and revising the heck out of a few pieces so I can get them out by the end of February. Still looking for gainful employment as well, but I'm not to the point where I'm lowering my standards. I have to believe that I'll be my authentic self in my job, and nothing that's quick or easy to get has been the right fit yet. Although, if you talk to me again in a week that may change. ;-)

Into the Second Phase

Life has slowed down a bit here. Actually, it's more like a standstill. There's the huge dump of snow that we got yesterday, but there's also a lack of work. I actually haven't had a single job 2014, though not for lack of trying. That's what I get for raising my standards. If I don't work for chump change, I apparently don't get to work.

For now, I'm still smiling. But by the end of the week, I may be in pre-launch for panic mode. Even though I'm snowed in, I'm probably staying afloat emotionally simply because I have big dreams. The dreams themselves won't get me anywhere, but if I find the right next step to take, the world's mine. Right??

But I'm not down and out completely yet. I still have my current writing project. I tried to drum up some mystery around it with last week's Instagram post, but I'm ready to reveal what it all means. These seemingly random numbers correspond to haiku. Lots of haiku. In fact, last's year's goal was to write one haiku each day for the year. I managed to write about 345 before my time was up. Out of all those, I narrowed it down to 100 to put into a manuscript.

These 100 (I deleted one so it may only be 99 now) are going to be published as a collection. I plan to self publish through Kindle Direct Publishing because I have never heard of a single publisher that buys haiku-only manuscripts. But if you exist, come talk to me. ;-) KDP also gives me a lot of publishing flexibility without any cost. Soon, it will be available through Amazon as an ebook. And remember, 'soon' is a relative term.

At this point, all of the poems are edited. I just need to complete the formatting, draw (or have someone else draw) a few of them to break up the monotony and then figure out what I want to do with the cover art. I'm a little nervous because I've tried to publish a poetry collection before, and cover art/artwork is where I got stuck last time. We'll see what I can do.

The Working World

Having what everyone considers a 'regular' job isn't bad at all. I'm tired only because I'm not used to the hours, and these jobs don't have nap hours that can be worked into the schedule like writing does. Anyway, since it has only been a week, I'm still not sure about where I can schedule my writing in, but I'm getting bits and pieces of it written. Hopefully I'll be able to get it together soon, because my novel has definitely stalled.

Being Me is the Only Thing That Works

You may have noticed my slight absence from the blog. Let me update you on what's been going on around here.

Finding a job wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. At this point, the freelance writing landscape is so dry that I was looking for full time work instead of part time work. Though at this moment is doesn't matter--I don't have part time or full time employment. I'm not being super picky either. I put warehouse/factory work on the bottom of the list, but it was still an option until I found out that the one position I was interested in required using heavy machinery (not for me, thanks). I tried retail, and apparently they were all filled up, even after the great back to school exodus. I don't want to get into a commission only deal, which is 100% of the emails that CareerBuilder sends to me. Office work really hasn't panned out either. So... I'm back to the drawing board. A job will pop up eventually, but it's getting harder and harder to even bother in this location. I still believe relocation is the answer for me, even though it's probably not feasible.

To get my mind off of things and to get back into the business side of life (and get this blog rolling again), I started reading about different types of blog posts, what you should and shouldn't write about, etc. Then I realized that on the Don't list, I'm doing everything I shouldn't do. Some of the top Don'ts for professional blogs is starting off with a mention of a long absence (check), whining about your personal life (check) and then talking about your work-in-progress (check -- see below).

I felt utterly defeated until I realized that no one is policing my blog. If I want to whine, that's perfectly fine to do. If I want to tell my readers every little detail about a work-in-progress, I will. I have to be me, and I can't be anyone else. Even a professional version of me, if it just doesn't feel right. There's no point in using this only as a launchpad for shameless self-promotion if I don't already have an audience to talk to. And although I do feel sometimes it's necessary to discuss a current topic in the writing industry or give advice, I don't think it's appropriate for every post, especially if I have ignored my own advice (which, unfortunately, I do have a tendency to do). So, I'm going to keep doing what I do best, being open about what I want, mainly because I think new writers could get just as much or more out of reading my experiences that aren't about writing than the ones that are about writing.

Speaking of writing, not much has been going on. I thought that it would be much more liberating to spend less time writing for money and more time writing whatever I want to write, but when real world problems get in the way, I freeze. It goes way beyond writer's block. I could sit at the computer for an hour. Stare at a blank piece of paper for two hours. Then when I hit on an idea, I get it out in five minutes, then I'm frozen again. I'm trying to find more ways to get motivated instead of clamming up, but nothing much has worked so far. So it's all coming back to bite me. Even when I have plenty of time to write because I haven't got a job, I squander the writing time swimming in fear. So, for this week, it's off to find some coping mechanisms for all of this. I need take a step, whatever or wherever that happens to be.

One More Week in Limbo

I'm giving all of the leads I had one more week to see whether they are sustainable writing jobs or not. Hearing back at all from those in the decision seat would be good too. Then, I'm applying for a 'real job' (yes, I'm cringing at that phrase). I don't mind the idea of it anymore. I think it might help me to have a more consistent writing schedule. And hey, if they throw in an option for health insurance, I'll be living better than I have been since I graduated from college.  It could also provide more fodder for my writing ideas--as you all know, people are crazy.

Speaking of writing...

I really want to finish the first draft of my novel as quickly as possible, but when I sit in front of that flashing cursor, I somehow feel like I'm rushing it. So I open a second document and start an outline for a new novel. Then I open another one. Two new ideas for short stories. Once I finally get back to the novel, I write three sentences and call it a day. This week, the process is changing. Goals are being set. Writing time is being scheduled. My world is going to fall into place, even if I have to bend the pieces to make it fit.  :-)

Back from my Staycation

While a vacation would have done wonders for my attitude, a staycation was a close second. I took most of last week off, except for some social media work I had to do. My vacation mostly consisted of staying on the other side of the room from the computer, reading a good book for hours on end. It was a lovely time.

I also ventured out of my little world to go do the normal July Fourth things: festivals, food, fireworks. Your basic American holiday staples.

July 4th Fireworks

My birthday was over the weekend too. Very quiet, no fuss--I'm beginning to like it that way. It also got me thinking of photography more (don't ask me how I made that leap) so if you see on my Instagram account a lot of pictures tagged with #almost30, you'll know why. 

The birthday cupcake.

I slacked significantly on the Camp Nanowrimo stuff, but I'm getting back on track today. The goal of 25,000 words should not be hard to meet, as long as I don't skip out on any more days the rest of the month. Then, all I need to do if find an editor and get the ball rolling towards a book release. I'm excited, but there's still quite a lot to do. Organization will be my best friend these next couple of months.

Work? Eh... still a sore subject. I've picked up a few articles, but everyone else needs to get out of their Monday slump before I can really get back on track with that one.

Where I Stand Today

I'm really trying to avoid throwing my hands up in the air and screaming. The reason I was in such a mood yesterday (if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you definitely saw it) was because the last significant writing client has left me. This client praised me on my work and always gave me good feedback, so the ending of the relationship so abruptly came out of nowhere. It also took 98% of my weekly income away.

Technically, this client and I only know each other as seven digit numbers through a job brokering service, though I am well aware of what website I was writing for, but still -- it's a shock to log in one day and see that you are suddenly blacklisted by the client (the broker company actually uses that word) and you get the dreaded "this client does not accept articles from you" message. Only last week I was promised by this client that I would be getting some more work soon. This is why it just doesn't make sense. And I cannot get an explanation even if I wanted one -- blacklisting prevents messages from being sent or received.

This is what I ran into all weekend:

To be fair, I still have royalties from past work plus a few great clients who are easy to work with and I work hard to do a good job for them. I just can't pay everything with those jobs.

So I spent yesterday looking for the usual writing jobs online only run into a wall of scams. These scammers are not even trying to be subtle anymore. What frustrates me the most is that it's been less that 48 hours since I stopped getting any work and everyone around me is jumping to the "quit and get a real job" speech. Usually they hold off a couple of weeks before that comes up. Not this time. I'm not taking it lightly either. I know that if I take what they consider to be a stable, decent job that I will never pick up my pen again. I would be done with writing permanently because it would be a waste of time. I would have real work to do. Which means I would constantly be frustrated because I would have all these stories that need to get out. If they thought I was unpleasant before... I don't think they would like the full-time employed me.

This situation is putting a damper on working with Camp Nanowrimo for the second half of the novel. I'm not inspired, even though I have an outline to follow. I don't really feel like it's a priority anymore, which I guess is proving a lot of people right that I need something more than what I have now. I just don't know how to get it.

What does this all mean? All of the stuff above was just ranting to get it all out. I'm NOT giving up on writing (I don't realistically think I ever could), I may have to move up my release date for the novel, and I am open to part-time work that's not writing related -- it just can't consume my life. It would also be great if that part-time work didn't involve pets or people. I'm allergic to both. ☺

Changing Directions

The work load from daily freelance jobs has not changed much over the week, however, I have been looking into a number of new writing opportunities. Only one of them seems to be a possibility right now, but it could be a great one-time gig that gives me something amazing for my portfolio. Let's hope I get it.

I have been trying to come up with articles on my own that I can sell to various outlets, but whenever I match a great idea to a publication where I would love to see my byline, I start researching only to find a very similar article already published by them. Then it's back to the writer's equivalent of a drawing board.

Speaking of drawing, I finally had the time to draw another comic this weekend. After months of not touching a sketchpad or pen, I was definitely out of practice, so I will not be posting my efforts until I can redraw it two or three times to get it right.

The novel is still going well. I'm not quite half done, but I'm very close to the halfway point. I'm hoping Camp Nanowrimo can get me over the edge. As far as the marketing goes, I'm a little behind on that stuff, but I'm hoping to catch up this week while I'm waiting for all that sweet sweet freelance work to come rolling in (I'm not holding my breath on that one).

Where did you go?

It's a startling thing to wake up on a Monday morning and find a freelancing landscape drier than the Sahara. Usually, the work droughts come in around December and last until the middle of January. When it comes to freelance work, I don't want to have a Christmas in July special. No thanks. Bring the work back.

Hoping that this only lasts a couple of days, but whether its a couple of days or more, I do have the novel and its marketing to work on. At least I'm not sitting around with idle hands. I'm just not getting the instant gratification of payment. And of course, I'm still spending way more time than I need to playing around on my new phone. But, that can come in handy when I'm ready to launch some more of my advertising and other good stuff for the novel. 

Snow, Anyone?

It's snowing a little today. Not much, but noticeable. Winter is surely here in the Midwest. Unfortunately, dull days lead to a little lethargy in this household. Usually I'm fast at work on Monday mornings, but I'm working a little slower today. Nanowrimo is still on my mind, though I haven't written a word for it since Day 2. I may be able to get back into the groove, but don' hold your breath. My to-do list is a mile long and it just keeps getting longer. Speaking of to-do lists, I better get back to checking tasks off.

Invading Thoughts

I have too much time to think on the weekends. When I am immersed in work, I don't worry as much. Give me an afternoon with nothing to do and I run the gamut of emotions from sweet and smiley to down right depressed. I will be working on this micro-focus on my problems, because I need to keep reminding myself that my problems are nothing compared to a lot of people in this world.

The one thing this weekend that didn't trigger an emotional reaction was a rejection letter. It came within a week of submission, but I secretly thought it wouldn't be accepted anyway. That tells me that somewhere in my brain I knew that it wasn't quite ready for submission. That story will definitely be going back to the revision pile for a second (or eighth) look. 

I did also have some success at the end of the week building my Elance profile up a little. Someone finally decided to take a chance on me with a quick rewrite job, so now I have a great rating, a little money and a lot of invitations to submit proposals on new jobs.

Problems? Those can wait for another day.

Hecticness

It's been crazy around here. I barely packed the clothes in one dresser before I got a sudden spike in work, so there's still quite a lot to do before Friday. Plus, somehow this week also had a few important fiction decisions scheduled, so I tried not to rush through those, but I may have to glance at them again tomorrow to see if I still want them to stick. Rushed writing is a lot like drunk writing--the next morning always reveals the truth.


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To Pack or Not to Pack

Although the daily writing assignments have picked up a bit, the packing is slow-going. It's not that I don't have the motivation for it--if it were up to me, I would be living out of a suitcase and have everything else put away. But, I'm restricted in what I can do since my current place of residence is up for sale. I have to make sure that it looks good, which translates to not having boxes laying around all over the floor. So I've changed my attitude a bit. I'm focusing 110% on work for the next 10 days, then the two days after that will be devoted to whirlwind packing and moving. Hopefully, it all comes together.

It's also an exciting time, because at the end of every month I pick two new publications to submit my work. It's getting close to that time, so I'm dragging out the external hard drive and sifting through work that fits particular publications, or vice versa, depending on the mood I'm in tomorrow. However, my personal opinion is that it's easier to choose a piece for a publication than a publication for a piece. They are a lot more specific in what they look for than I am in what I write.

An Emerging Pattern of Chaos

Since yesterday, I started to double my workload. If I want a dream, the sad truth is I'm gonna have to pay for it, whether with time, money or both. But still, it's what I like to do. I love being my own boss, taking the jobs I want -- and about 80% of the time, it's really fun. To get through each day now, I just have to take a deep breath, dive into work and hope I didn't forget to put it all on my to-do list that I'm increasingly dependent on. Organized chaos... the perfect phrase to describe this moment in my life.

The doubled workload consists mostly of quick turnaround web content. Low paying, but a wide variety of jobs available. The one odd thing about it? I had a look at my browsing/searching history. You can definitely tell what searches were for work research: wholesale shoes, hair restoration, equestrian groups, employment law, bathroom vanities... Yeah. I like to keep my work interesting and very, very broad in topic.

Larger projects are also on the task list, so this weekend I joined Elance to see about getting more leads. I already use Guru, which has turned out some pretty good work over the years.

Hope for bigger success in the near future and lottery tickets -- that's what I'm leaning on now. : )

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Busy Bee

Over the weekend I submitted a few more poems, letting my babies out into the world. I also acquired a few new babies of the plant kind. I started a container garden on the back deck to see if 1) I could actually grow something and 2) so I could have a little more knowledge and control over the types of foods I eat. We'll see what happens with these later in the summer.

On the work front, I finally have a few new leads for work. I'll find out soon whether I get to add some new jobs to my daily to-do list. I'm cautiously excited about these since they would add something to the resume. I also feel guilty about spending more money than I intended to this weekend, so a new source of income would be welcome. 

Strange Days Indeed

Today has just been an off day. Don't know why it started like that, but it keeps going on. Work is slim pickin' at the end of the month, but for some reason I didn't think the end of the month was here yet. It definitely is! So I split my work time this morning between hunting new projects and genealogy. Genealogy got interesting and eventually crushed the new project hunting. I was sick all last week and managed to get my daily tasks done, but now that I'm better, I guess I just needed a little break.

But tomorrow is another day, and of course I still have all afternoon and evening to do something productive. I just hope the whole week isn't off because of this! I don't like living in these temporary alternate universes of time-sucking doldrums. Or something like that. :)

Poem of the Day: No

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Marching into March

I knew once I was settled into my tiny little room, I would feel a lot better about my current and future situations. The trick for me is to have a solid plan going forth. I have just that. Although my plans still do not guarantee any type of success, I'm more optimistic than I was just a few days ago.

I also have some exciting news for upcoming features to this blog. Anyone who is a dedicated writer will know that April is an extremely busy month for writers. Not only does ScriptFrenzy take place, but it is also National Poetry Month. I have some very exciting posts and events planned for April--and you can participate too! Once I put the final touches on everything, I will let you all know how to can join in on the festivities.

I also managed to finally publish a new article today: Resources for Vintage Photographs. A great article if you are into family history/genealogy. 

Motivated on Monday

I didn't wake up with the alarm clock... but it was close today. As soon I as I put on the tea kettle to boil for my morning coffee (I'm from a 1940's noir--I drink instant) I got right to work. 150-word article out of the way before the kettle started screaming. I lined up a couple more similar articles for later in the day. While this won't make a huge dent in anything, I do feel like I'm finally back to work full swing.

I'm still looking for a job outside the home because things are getting a little desperate in the money category. My bank had the nerve to charge me a $5 service charge because I didn't have enough transactions. When you don't have a lot of money, there probably won't be enough transactions!

I also wrote two poems last week that I wanted to debut today, but since I sent them to the Yahoo Contributor Network, I guess I have to wait until both are approved. And of course I also have a complaint about YCN... I guess I didn't log in for 90 days, which is strange because Yahoo keeps me logged in automatically. But, I'll take their word for it that I didn't visit the page for that long. Anyway, they have cut of my performance views to count for the overall performance payments. From what I understand, these should have resume as soon as I started visiting the site again, but I don't think they have. I have zeros across the board and it upsets me because I would have never promoted the articles last week if I knew I wasn't going to get paid for them. But I have my queries into the forum, so we will see what I can find out about that.

What free time I do have left in the day I spend on promotion. Most of what I do is drops on Entrecard (which is also on my list--they tell me my book review blog doesn't have a widget--and it's right there for all to see) and I'm back to the traffic exchange game. I never realized before how truly sad traffic exchanges are. 99% of the pages I view are people advertising other traffic exchanges, MLM schemes or other get-rich-quick junk. I like to think I class up the joint a bit by promoting my blogs. I would love to promote my articles directly, but that's against every terms of service at every article website, so I have to hope that people will engage my blog after they see it. It's usually a statistic of one in a million, but it's still relatively free advertising, so I'll stick to it for now.

2012

Yeah, it's the new year. Things look about the same as they did a few days ago. All my life I have been in the habit of over-hyping this two-second holiday. I think just because we all shout and the date flips forward on the calendar, my whole life will change. It doesn't, so I'm constantly disappointing myself.

At the very least, I thought the work situation would get a little better. The company I'm currently getting job from isn't supplied with thousands of articles as I thought it would be today. In fact, there's less than 100 right at this very moment, most of which I have no interest in writing. Of course, interest is not the only issue. I'm working for extremely small wages so I have to be careful when I choose jobs. My basic criteria are that the length of the instructions cannot be longer than the finished article itself, the minimum I will take is 500 words/$5 (which is STILL too low) and no insults at the end of the instructions. It happens. Some will say "I will reject anything that does not meet the high quality we expect and are paying for." Um... you expect quality when you pay $5 for more than 750 words? No, no my dears. That's just fantasy there.

So, on January 3rd I'm officially declaring that 2012 is surpassing 2011 in being the worst year of my life so far. And to be honest, I have probably had some pretty bad ones. I'm not all Negative Nelly at this point, but once my bills are paid for the month and I cannot see a way to pay those same bills the next time around, you can be sure that this semi-positive outlook will change. Drastically. Happy New Year.

Back To Business

I'm through with whining and sulking. Since this is technically a holiday week (all of you with regular 9-5's know that you're mind probably isn't 100% into your work today through Wednesday) I'm relaxing a little on finding that elusive job outside of the home office, but I'm still actively looking at freelance gigs. I went back to my standard sources, such as Guru. The only problem with that website is that it has changed so much since the last time I accepted a freelance project there. I'm sure that I can still find a job without paying the membership fee, but with only 10 bids a month I'm going to have to be careful about what I choose to bid on.

I'm also looking for new opportunities, but I don't seem to be finding that many. The reason is that after working as a freelancer for nearly four years now, I know what I decent, wage-earning rate per article looks like. And 90% of the job offers out there are well below that rate. If I get desperate, I know I'll want to take them, but I'm not sure that is time well spent, even if it does keep food in my mouth for another week. I'm not really in the habit of encouraging these people to pay so low. That's the #1 reason these people can still get their work produced at super low rates--somebody is always willing to take them.

After all of this, I'm still working on getting down the backlog of books I have to read and writing reviews for all of them. If I got paid to write book reviews (besides being paid in free books, which I'm not complaining about!) I think I would be in heaven. Anyone know of any paying review gigs? I've also done product reviews for a variety of websites, so I'm pretty familiar with the general format. Anyway... I can only hope that kind of a project comes my way.

And of course, since I want to fill my time with as much to do as possible, I'm digging out one of the novels and diving back in. This is the one that I have been working on for about 10 years now, off and on. I got off track dozens of times with this one because of research. I get buried in facts and figures and can't tunnel my way back out. This time I'm going to just lay the story out and put the facts in later, as needed. Maybe that will get everything back on track to produce something worthwhile.