I’ve had the flu for the past few days, so my office move has been stalled because of it. I am hoping that today is the last day of feeling like I was drug backward through a flooded rat hole, but not sure if I am going to feel much better tomorrow or not.
Even though my gut hurts like hell today, I have decided to dedicate most of this morning to getting my office move finished off so I can get things set up and organized in the other room. I have been working toward the goal of having my office set up at the head of the basement stairs and leading down into the library part of the office at the base of the stairs.
So, today will be spent getting the room where the basement stairs is at emptied out and moving things to get ready to do any painting touch-ups that may be needed before I start working on building the desks for my office in there.
I went and got a dual monitor video card for my computer, but the poor thing won’t work in my computer. The little HP Pavilion Slimline that I have is too narrow, making the end of the card too long to fit into the single slot I have on this computer. Really frustrating, but not sure what to do about it other than check the HP site and see if they sell cards that will work in there.
I am going to see if I can use the card on my dad’s old computer to make a multi-monitor machine out of my dad’s old computer. Then I can network the computers all together with the networking deal I have and still, in effect, have multiple monitors on this computer. ;-D
“Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing and it becomes chronic in their sick minds” — Juvenal (AD 60-130)
Being a freelancer is not like working in a normal 9-5 job. Here it is 6:37 a.m. and I have been at work for a little over an hour. I expect to work until I sleep tonight, somewhere between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. for a total work day of roughly 14 to 16 hours - give or take a little time because of pausing to eat and other necessities.
I probably put between 10 and 12 hours into working in given day, and some days I end up working straight through to the next day for more in the line of 20 to 24 hours of work. It is not the life for anyone that wants to have a life.
But, I do love my work, and I know that I could as easily stop breathing as I could stop writing. Sure I can give writing up for a little while, but I start to turn funny colors and go all sweaty, lunging for the nearest pencil and notebook like a drowning man lunging for a life preserver.
If you are not as addicted to writing, then the career of a freelance writer might not be something you would want to pursue. I write not because I have to, not because I want to, not even because I love to, I write for all of those reasons and more.
It’s raining today, and here I am in the office working away on my websites and trying to decide what the best layout for my office is. It seems like the more work I get done the more there is to be done. At least I finally got my coffee, was too busy for most of the morning to pause and go get that simple and very necessary luxury.
And now here I sit, the radio on low since I have found I can work better when I have a low radio deadening the sounds from the main house, and I work on getting sites like Freelancer’s Office up to speed and looking how they should.
I have some ads to write this afternoon, so I will be putting all of the websites aside soon to work on some advertisements. The ads are my bread and butter winners, they are where I make enough money to keep me going on the rest of my writing work. Thankfully they are also something that I find infinitely fascinating and fun to work with. Each one is a mini exploration into new things that I may not have known about before, a small excursion into research that often leads me to fascinating insights and discoveries. I had never considered writing advertisements to be something that I would enjoy doing, had always seen them as something that would be drudge work, but I love it. It is fun to contemplate a company and decide what they have to offer and how they would best be directed toward the market the advertisement is directed toward.
Best of all? I can be 100% honest when writing the advertisements. If I find a company that I think is not worth visiting I can warn my readership away, if I find one I think is a scam I can warn people to avoid it, if I find one that ripped me off I can tell people what happened. And still get paid.
Well, best might not be the honesty, because I also really like being able to pick and choose who I write for and about. There is nothing quite like being able to look at a list of advertisers wanting their product/service/whatever advertised and declining anyone that I don’t like. I have a sister that publishes a magazine and they have a resource guide with it. Her husband has always hand picked the advertisers he will allow to advertise in there based on their reputation for being the best and how well they fit into the needs of the people that use their resource guide. Now I have that freedom on my websites. I can select the advertisements that I think my readership might have an interest in and then present it in a manner that the readers will find informative, entertaining and 100% honest in review and opinion on what the advertiser is offering them.
So, yeah, I like being a freelance Internet advertising copywriter. It gives me control over my newsletters and blogs and lets me explore my writing how I want to with time to work on my novels.
