Freelance upswing

Freelancing has been much more exciting and profitable this week. Yay!

I've managed to grab a few more jobs that have the exciting characteristics of being both profitable and interesting. Or at least more interesting than what I was doing before. My biggest so far has been an hourly transcription job that pays more than what I was getting at my last place of employment. It's been keeping me pretty busy the last couple of days, plus it's more physically demanding than I thought possible. My arms ache. Should probably look into a better working setup than lounging in an armchair with my laptop, huh?

Oh well.

It's been a crazy week, with the work and with other things, so I haven't gotten as much reading done as I'd like. That's okay, though, because the weekend is just about here. We'll start with the farmer's market and coffee with a friend, and then who knows where things will take us.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday, what fun!

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should Be Reading and sounds like a lot of fun. Here's what you do:

-Grab whatever you're currently reading
-Share two teaser sentences from a random page
-Make sure to add the name of the book and the author (great way to get recommendations)

So here goes:

"By the end of the week, Carlos and the matron were bossom friends. In spite of his notorious shyness, whenever she brought us hot tea he would sit up in bed with a shirt on and give opinions on the infertility of her eldest daughter and the lung ailment of her son-in-law who worked in the glassblowing trade."

-From Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

How To Save Money On Your Wedding

When my husband proposed to me we were both still in college. I was a senior English major while he was chipping away at the third year of his PhD. Suffice it to say, neither of use were really rolling in dough. A few months later, Matt got a job an hour away from where I was living that required him to live where he worked. As his job was in the back woods of Maine, I figured my chances of finding work would be better if I stayed near Bangor. We’d live apart for a year, raise money, and get married that summer. Of course, we forgot the fact that we have a hard time being apart for more than a few hours, much less a week at a time. It didn’t take long for us to decide to move the wedding up from July to December. Looking back from shortly after our sixth month anniversary, I am very sure we made the right decision.

Of course, that left us with a problem. We had between the two of us over $60,000 in school and consumer loans, one job, and four months to plan a wedding. Yeah…

It all turned out alright. I’m told the wedding was beautiful (I honestly can’t remember much of it), and the experience convinced me that there’s really no reason to spend tens of thousands of dollars on your wedding. If you’re getting married soon and are hoping to keep all your arms and legs attached to your torso, some of the things I learned might be helpful to you.

1. “Off season” should be called “half-off season:” I think the number one thing that kept my wedding costs down was getting married in December. My wedding was on the 27^th, and I mean, come one, who gets married then? Most of the people I did business with were offering discounts on their wedding services. The hall was cheaper. The decorations were cheaper. I was able to hit sales on my dress. The general ideas behind supply and demand definitely apply in this case: if no one else is buying, chances are good you’ll pay less.

(Can't say much for the weather, but the sales were great)

2. Put in time: The amount of time you’re able to put into planning your wedding is directly related to the amount you’ll spend. If you have the time to search sales, research vendors, and make contacts you will save hundreds of dollars.

3. Get crafty: Labor is not cheap. If you’re willing to put in your own labor you’ll save that much more. Search the internet for inspiration for homemade centerpieces, favors, and invitations. Shop sales and buy in bulk. I found that the Oriental Trading Company was a great resource for favor and centerpiece materials. If you’re good with laying out text in word documents, invitations made from kits can look as gorgeous as a professionally made invitation at a fraction of the cost. Invest in a glue gun. Make your bridesmaids earn their keep and have crafting parties. The more you can do on your own the less expensive your wedding will be.

(Our hand made wedding program)

4. Take a chance on a lesser known vendor: I really wanted to have some great pictures from my wedding, but I was appalled at how much photographers charged for their services. I was getting ready to suck it up and use a quarter of my budget on a well known photographer when through word of mouth I heard of a someone just out of college looking for work. I looked through the Facebook page she made for her company and was blown away by her creative take to wedding photography. The best part? She charged fraction of what the least expensive professional photographer was charging. The pictures she took were gorgeous and she was willing to spend much more time with the project than any of the high end studios would. If you’re willing to take a chance on someone who’s just starting to establish themselves you’ll save a lot of money and likely end up very pleased with the result.

(Sam was great - she even let us pull of this crap)

5. It’s all who you know: If you’re currently planning a wedding two things are true about the people in your life right now. One is they all have a variety of unlikely and useful talents. The other is (especially if they’re female) they all want a part of your wedding. Don’t be afraid to take people up on offers to help you out. I saved hundreds of dollars on my flowers because one of my bridesmaids had experience arranging bouquets. If you resist the urge to take all the pressures of your wedding onto your own shoulders you’ll find that there are a lot of people out there who would love to help make your day a success.

(My bridesmaid Monica pumps the the bouquet she arranged)

6. (And this is important now, so I’ll put it in all caps) BE FLEXIBLE: If you’ve had your wedding planned out since you were seven and you’ll be crushed if it’s not just so, chances are good you’ll be paying more than you’d like. It is crucial to be flexible and make the best of what is given to you without throwing money at every little detail. Are the candies you ordered for your favors not the right shade of blue? Who cares? Did the florist neglect to add enough baby’s breath with your order? No big deal! Does the caterer not offer the exact kind of pasta you wanted with your chicken parmesan? Don’t worry about it. If you present yourself as a calm and flexible bride, people will be much happier to work with you and more willing to negotiate on price. Keep your own stress level down will make you able to enjoy your special day, plus it can save you a lot money.

The most important thing to remember is that no matter what happens, the event itself is not what’s important. If you’re making the commitment to spend the rest of your life learning and growing with someone, your relationship is what’s important, not the ceremony celebrating it. Make sure that you don’t let the stress and chaos of wedding planning get in the way of the number one relationship in your life.

…And of course, if you can save money on your wedding, you’ll be able to put it towards an absolutely phenomenal honeymoon!

What You Will

So once I took a Shakespeare course.

Well, "took" is a strong word. More like "signed up for and skipped half of" a Shakespeare course. You could use that substitution for "took" with most of my college classes, but that's neither here nor there. What is both here and there is that I ALWAYS wanted to take a Shakespeare course. When I was in high school looking through the lists of classes the UMaine English department offered like the overachieving twit that I was the Shakespeare course made the biggest impression. "Imagine that," I thought. "A whole class dedicated just to Shakespeare! I bet anyone who is anything in the literary world has taken a class that's just about Shakespeare! I bet that class kicks so much butt! Sign me up!"

Of course, it took about two and half years of prerequisites until I was allowed to enter that hallowed 400 level course. By that time I had pretty much lost all will to study and had become entirely disenchanted with academia in general, so I didn't actually spend much time in the classroom itself, per say. I handed in some papers when the syllabus said to and somehow pulled a B. I loved professors who didn't take attendance.

ANYWAY what stuck out to me most from that class was how much I enjoyed the plays we read... until we had to talk about them. Man, talking about Shakespeare with a bunch of other twenty-something liberal art majors is probably the worst thing ever! They all seemed like they had something to prove, but I was never quite sure what it was. All I knew was that I certainly wasn't proving it. Every little detail of every play had to be talked over and some new facet of meaning had to be discovered. On days I'd show up for class I'd usually sit quietly in the back, avoiding the professor's eye contact and feeling completely intimidated. I mean, seriously guys, can't we just like the story?

No. No we can't.

So that's how I realized I was never meant to be an English major. I'm mostly just a person who likes a good story. Coincidentally enough, Shakespeare made some really good stories. Yes, I realize all his plots are borrowed from previously written plays, but he has so much fun with them that I don't even register it. I mean, have you guys read Othello? The whole thing's a total soap opera! Every bit of it is so over the top: how can you not love it? And don't even get me started on King Lear...

Well, all this Shakespeare love has given me a goal... a dream, if you will. My dad gave me this big fat Shakespeare anthology for my 21st birthday (it looked great on the shelf next to the bottle of Jose Cuervo a friend gave me the same day). It was more than two years afterwards that I first cracked it open, and holy cow! There's so much good stuff in there! I'm thinking that now that I don't have to try to compete with a bunch of my peers it might actually be kind of fun to read his plays and, y'know, try to think of something to say about them. Not something important, for goodness' sake, don't get worried. I just want to try to find the fun in them. Will's got such a reputation for being hard to access, but he's not! He's just fun!

Maybe I'll make a little project of this. See if I can't write a few posts about a few plays. I think first up I'll try to tackle some of the plays I was supposed to read for that class but didn't (sorry, Professor Brucher). One of the ones I most regret not reading was Twelfth Night. I like its other name better: What You Will.

We'll see what I will. We will.

Mmmmmmmmwah!

The Happy Virus

I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars
It is remarkably contagious -
So kiss me.

-Hafiz

Freelance Duldrums

I made the decision to freelance without thinking too much about it. There's this weird contradiction in me: I hate the idea of working but I feel a constant drive to earn money. Freelancing seemed like the answer. I could write from home, make money. No coworkers. No boss I have to talk to. Just me and a keyboard. I had romantic visions of me sitting in coffee houses with my (new, shiny) laptop, typing away without a care in the world. Buyers would love me, lining up to shower me with requests for articles at a dollar per word.

(insert record scratching sound here as the fantasy stops abruptly)

Sadly, what it's turned out to be so far is me sitting in my kitchen slurping down cream sodas and turning out the most insipid content imaginable for a pretty negligible salary. Last week I was writing copy for a site about shopping hauls. If you really are interested in knowing what these are, look it up. I applaud the idea to make the site, but I have a hard time finding 500 words to write about some teenager in Arkansas (or whatever) who thinks she knows best about hair products. I got through it. Five stars. On to the next thing.

Now I'm doing rewrites. I assumed I'd be rewriting an article once or twice and be done. No. 6 templates: "the Kindle has gone down in price! Find the best way to look up a cell phone number!" Over and over again. No finite number. Two a day until he changes his mind. But hey, $2.50 a pop and each one takes me less than ten minutes. That's more than they'd pay me to be librarian. I guess I can't complain. No coworkers. No boss I have to talk to.

Hey, did you know that the Amazon Kindle has gone down in price? It's only $189 now! That's less than its competitors!

In a dream land I'd have a blog (just like every other twenty-something in America). But this blog would be awesome! People would read it! People would comment on it! They'd have things to say! I'd have things to say! But there's so much to it. The more I read about it the less I think I can. You've gotta have a niche, you see. You've gotta network. No one reads a little blog all out there in cyberspace. Unless you find a way to attract people with the right combination of words (Amazon Kindle E-Reader! Justin Beiber! World Cup!) you're not going to get too much attention.

Not attracting too much attention. I think that's a talent of mine.

So do you want to learn more about reverse cell phone lookups? Because apparently that's something I know a lot about now.

Only $189.