Spell Check Fail, and a Part Time Job

My dad mentioned I'd made a spell-check-proof spelling error, so I did a quick edit and republished last week's post. Hopefully Blogger doesn't send it again, to those of you who get the emails.

This week; great news! I got that writing job and am now employed part time working for somewhere around minimum wage doing (semi) creative writing! Living the dream!

Well, OK, maybe the dream involves getting more than minimum wage. But I have no conceit about my current writing level. I'm still fairly early on in the whole process of learning to write well. I need practice, and lots of it. The fact that I'm getting paid to practice writing is excellent. Mwahahaha! It's like school except they're paying me! So the fact that they are not paying well is OK, for the time being.

Also, what I'm writing is pretty awesome. I'm basically writing up pithy descriptions of travel destinations, with some factoids thrown in. It's informal and playful in tone, which is perfect, and I get to research a whole bunch of cool places. Some of them are boring, but most are really cool, and it's making me realize, because I've done several cities, that I really need to take better advantage of living in New York City. There must be hundreds of awesome things to do here, discoverable in a few seconds of web search. As a creator, as a storyteller, it's my duty to do cool things so I can share the stories. It is in fact lucrative to do so!

Right now I'm working for a specific company who gives me assignments, but one of my writing hero's, Neil Gaiman, got good at writing doing freelance work and journalism. That seems like a good idea. It is like getting paid to go to school. You've got the accountability of deadlines, a reward for completion, and feedback from your employer.

So, that's all exciting. I owe a big thank you to the friend who connected me to the people at this company. Though they were in desperate need of writers, so it's not exactly a favor. Lucky me, since I previously had almost nil professional writing experience. Now I will have...some!

In other news, I'm slowly spinning up the gears to look for a school I can go to for Life Coaching/Counseling/Whatever it is I do. I'm not quite ready to look for a school because I'm still getting info on what kind of schooling would fit me best. It would be awesome if I could take people's insurance to help pay for some of it. I want something hands on rather than theoretical, and it should be able to accommodate my style of working, which is...unusual, though practical.

In the past, I've flitted a bit, trying to get a lock on what I actually want to do. It got a lot easier when I stopped demanding it be one single thing, and when I realized I could actually be paid well to do what I loved.

Well, it's hard to tell how long this is as I'm writing it on my magical little travel keyboard and iPhone combination (I discovered this worked very well for writing on the go) and the small screen makes it hard to judge. It feels like I've probably gone on too long for the current average attention span. Which is scary.

You realise in the past, people had attention spans that could go for hours, right? our access to fast limitless media is atrophying our brain's concentration abilities and it's frightening to think of the consequences for future generations. Here's a video on that subject I found immensely entertaining, though one of the people I showed it to vehemently hated it. It's only three minutes long, so give it a try... }:-D
https://youtu.be/Edx9D2yaOGs

Also, if I remember I'll post a second thing I wrote some time in the middle of the week. I'm starting to write more, and this is something that's been kicking around in my brain for a long time that finally came out.

That's all for this week. Sending love from a joyful heart,

-I