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.