State Of The Blog: SNAFU

The old saying about "when it rains, it pours," has never been truer over the course of the last year.  In some respects, it's been the worst year of my life, and that's saying quite a bit compared to some previous title holders.  For the couple dozen people who've been reading the blog, I figured it was worth explaining why things have been so...quiet lately.

The Blog

Yeah, I know, I haven't been keeping up on my original schedule of three times a week.  Hell, I've felt lucky if I can get it done three times in a month.  I'm certainly going to be trying to reapply myself to keeping it maintained, but it will almost certainly be less often than when I had originally intended.

Work Beyond The Blog

Hah, that's funny.  One of the things that perversely impacted my schedule on this blog was writing for other blogs as a copy writer.  This is important to keep in mind, since these blogs are more along the lines of marketing organs than they are publications of a media organization.  Basically, I was writing up a storm for other people and not doing much for myself.  What's worse, it started to wear me down.  It was very much like burning out a machine gun barrel by putting too many rounds through it.  I'm no longer writing for that marketing company.  This is good and bad.  Good, because it takes a strain off my mind.  Bad, because I'm not making any money.  This is compounded by sites offering opportunities for freelancers who cannot seem to find any opportunities which they feel they can present to me.  What few do come up and which I express interest in are not formally offered.

Some of you might be wondering, "Don't you have a day job?"  The marketing company pieces were my day job, and they were not paying well.  I recently took and lost an office position (roughly 60 days) which paid more steadily, but still not well by any means, and was apparently far more sensitive to seasonal trends than I feel I was led to believe.  So, yeah, no day job.

Bright Spots

It's not all doom and gloom (though it sure as hell feels like it at times).  As part of a job application, I was required to provide a writing sample created through Twine.  While I'm familiar with Twine, I've not had much occasion to use it previously.  Nevertheless, I whipped up a sample and sent it off.  We'll see how that works out.  It's workmanlike, in my opinion, smooth, flows well, but not Hemingway-caliber work.  Probably not even Elmore Leonard quality.  But that may just be me being my own worst critic.

I'm still alive.  That may not count for much, all things considered, but it beats being dead.

It's going to be a very rough fall, I think.  I don't even want to consider what happens when winter comes around.