You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2009.
Due to the inquiries created by my “Working the New Way” masterpiece, it’s time to share the secrets that are going to make me rich. I should charge three easy payments of $19.99 to tell you all this, but we’ll just say this one’s on me; I might need a favor someday anyway. Work, no matter what uniform you wear or where you do it, is work. Yes there are the Paris Hiltons out there who are rich for being born, but the other 99.9% of us will only get rich, whatever that means to each of us, with work.
Freelance: what a musical word. I’ve never actually used a lance, but that word “free” is so uplifting, so inspiring. While a mason is doing side-jobs, I’m doing freelance work. I float on the clouds, I roam fields of daisies and lilacs, I sleep and eat and make money. It’s not freelance work, it’s freelance fun. But, for some reason, I still went to my day-job with very heavy eyes today.
I got to wear my pajamas to work again this weekend, it was awesome, but I still worked. I was working from the comfort of my own home, but for 20 hours in 2 days I worked, and I did it for beans. My back was sore, my arms were twitching, and my eyes were very tired. I’m not working from home because it provides a larger ROI, I’m doing it because I have a skill and there are people who need the services of one so skilled. The fact that the Information Age has given us the ability to develop this working relationship remotely is just a money-saving bonus, plus I get to listen to the radio at an unreasonable volume.
There is not any magical way to make a million dollars; there is no work-free method of turning out a six-figure year. There is only work. Work is diligence, work is patience, work is planning. Work is work. If I had carpentry skills instead of writing skills, I would be doing side jobs in that field, and honestly I’d be making about the same amount of money. The only difference between the two is I have the ability to reach worldwide to look for a job. The problem is that there are many, many thousands of other people looking too. So, to stand out from all of the others, I still have to have a well-developed ability to do the work I’m bidding on. I have to go to school. I have to get experience. I have to work crap, low-paying jobs to build notoriety and good standing. I work from home; there aren’t any play at home job opportunities.
I’m going to be a millionaire by the time I am 60: that is my goal. I only have to make $1,000,000.01 to be a millionaire, and with 33 years until I’m 60, that means I only have to average $30,303.03 per year. Granted, it will have to start out much smaller than that, getting bigger as my money makes money, but it is possible.
I don’t need a six-figure year every year. Honestly I don’t even want that. People who make six-figures don’t do it on five-hour work-weeks, Donald Trump doesn’t even have that luxury. Their passion is the money, I just don’t care about it enough to give up the rest of my life to get that. I want to be comfortable. I want the option of spending a summer fishing. I figure I’ll need at least a million dollars to do that, and if I want to make it there I have to work hard now. We all can do that, we just have to work hard and save. Work at home if you wish, have some freelance fun if you have the skills to do it, but work and save.
The point? If you want to work from home, don’t waste money on those silly programs that will teach you how to do it. The only people making money off of those programs are the people who made them up and suckered everyone into buying them. If you want to work from home, you need a skill that can be done there, and it has to be a skill you love.
There is no “get rich quick watching movies and eating popcorn.” Even all of that money-making-survey junk takes extensive time and effort. Passion makes dollars, along with elbow grease and shrewdness. If I hated writing, I’d just hate being at home. I’d be suddenly looking forward to the work away from home opportunities. I love writing, though, and I’m not scared of working, so I work from home.
As a final note, if you do want some actual advice and how to get started doing freelance work, I’m really not your guy. My pal Nathan is a good vector, though. There are many other real people out there, too. If you get some good advice for free you’ve found the right source….someone who is led by passion, not by stealing your money.
Harrowing: that’s how I would describe the last couple of months. The waiting has been harrowing, I’ve been anxious. Fearful, uncertain, stressed, tired, and even a little depressed are the adjectives to describe what I’ve been feeling, the anxiety an effect of the accumulation of those words. The multitude of possible outcomes have worried me, the possible scenes and witty things I’ll say have run through my mind, keeping me awake all night more nights than not.
And then there are the scenes, the memories I’ve been bringing up in my writing. I’m surrounded by them, curled tightly in their suffocating embrace while I’m lying awake; lying with my cheek against a wet spot on my pillow, lying scared, lying empty and alone, lying paralyzed. Maybe I’m just lying; lying to myself, lying to my past, lying to my faith and friends and God. Lying while I lie.
Haha, that’s just silly. But seriously, what is truth and what is lie when the dreams when I lie become inextricable from those when I stand? Where does reality lie in the lie? Kerouac, kooky Jack Kerouac, said memories are inseparable from dreams. But what does he know? Jack don’t know jack.
4:00 on the clock in the dark, time to wake, time to rise. Sasha outside, Sasha inside, feed Sasha, coffee on, wash my face. Washing the tears from my cheek and the blood from my soul . . . okay, time to stop staring at myself. Shave, comb, dress pack. Pack my gym bag, pack my backpack, pack my lunch box. Shoes on, lights off, door locked, bag and pack and box in truck, drive.
Refuge: oddly enough this is the word that has described being at work the past few weeks. Busy bee, bumblebee, rumbling and bumbling round and round, work work work work work work work. It eases the mind. The last few weeks work has been school, and my school teacher says people are freakin’ funny. He says it every day so we don’t forget. “Don’t forget,” says he, “people are freakin’ funny.”
Limbeck Bolttightener is a geg, a geg is a dwarf but the dwarves think they’re gegs. Limbeck is stuck on a rock that floats, but is sinking downward through the air. Limbeck wears glasses, but he can’t wear them in the rain, they become impossible to see through. It rains a lot where the gegs live, and Limbeck is stuck. But everything about Limbeck is funny, I laugh at his plight. He is definitely a freakin’ funny people.
“Mr. Card?” Her name is My Lawyer, and she was standing in the doorway to the courtroom I went to today. Other people were sitting in the hall with me, some looking at me with the people-are-freakin’-funny look on their faces. I mark my place in the book with my bookmark. It’s not really a bookmark, it’s a receipt. Really is not real, either. Whatever really really is, these people think I’m really silly, laughing at my book. It’s too bad people don’t read anymore, they’re missing out.
My Wife was there, so was Her Dad, but Her Lawyer was not. Her Lawyer came late, $500 at $200-per-hour late. When she got there she was disheveled, though too solipsistic to notice. Her Lawyer gave My Lawyer a paper with a name on it. There were other words, but the words I saw said “Iain Wise, Born August 2, 2009.” He was supposed to be Aiden, but I knew it would change, so for almost two months I’ve wondered what it would be. My Lawyer thinks Her Lawyer is a goof. I agree: Her Lawyer is freakin’ funny.
Popinjay: that’s what Her Lawyer was. I was back in middle school, whispering with My Lawyer, giggling at the silliness of it all. Her Lawyer was whining because My Lawyer told the judge, his name was Y’onor, Her Lawyer was lazy, though My Lawyer used more words to say it. Her Lawyer said I’m trying to stall things for some crazy plan to get My Wife back. Her Lawyer thought her statement was a sockdolager; that she had won the case with her cogent opening, big words and big ideas majestically delivered, eloquently described. My Lawyer looked at me and I looked at My Lawyer, we snorted trying not to laugh. Y’onor snorted too, then he told Her Lawyer nothing she said made sense. He told her she was freakin’ funny people.
My Lawyer said get the test, finish the test, have another hearing, go go go go go, get it done. Her Lawyer said wait, wait, wait! Y’onor said go and Her Lawyer said wait, because I’m trying to stall things, but Y’onor still said go, get it done quickly. Meanwhile, My Wife is standing on the stand, right next to the chair. My Lawyer had called her to stand, and Her Lawyer sent her up before Y’onor said to. So there she stood, both me and My Wife looking at everyone talk like we weren’t there. I wanted to interrupt, wanted to remind them we were there and that maybe if My Wife wasn’t going to stand they could let her sit, but didn’t know if I was allowed to talk. The whole thing was just silly and awkward, so yeah, Court and Lawyers, and Y’onor’s, they’re all freakin’ funny.
Today is a better day. All I know is we are suddenly moving faster, but knowing that one little thing makes all the difference. Today is a better day because today I laughed, felt the worries falling away bit by bit. There’s magic in laughter, magic like the magic in the world where the gegs live. I chuckled to the truck, chuckled while I buckled up. I chuckled down the road, and then I chuckled harder. There was a disturbance in the traffic, speeding cars trying to get around a man floating magically down the middle of the freeway. He floated because he was bloated, at least that’s the way it seemed from afar. Closer he wasn’t floating at all, his magic was illusory, like card-trick magic not like geg magic. He had hidden a motorcycle somewhere beneath his mass, but the floes of fat kept the bike hidden until I could see the front wheel and handlebars extending from beneath his stomach. So the chuckling turned into LOLing, and today is better because people are freakin’ funny.
*Limbeck Bolttightener – with his fellow gegs, humans, and elves – is a character from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s book Dragon Wing, book one of the “Deathgate” cycle.
My boss said it is Hawaiian Shirt Day! But wait, I said, I don’t have a Hawaiian shirt. That’s okay, said he, instead it can be Mix ‘n’ Match Day! Much better, said me, and so I came to work with a flip-flop on my left foot matching the tennis shoe on my right. Red-and-blue plaid pajama bottoms matched my see-me-at-night yellow running singlet. I wore a black hat, blue shades with the right lens removed, and a workout glove (on the left hand of course). In short, I was stylin’, I don’t care what anyone else says. Besides, who wants to go to a job where you spend 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen and putting words on page after page after page in a dorky shirt and tie? Andre doesn’t see me ghost-writing his ebook, Dr. Karla doesn’t see me transcribing the audio from her seminars, and Jack doesn’t see me editing his latest web content; content that will make him $4,000 in a month and me $100 for a day’s work. The only person who sees me working is my boss, and he said it is Mix ‘n’ Match Day.
My boss said I have ADD. Apparently taking five-minute breaks every fifteen minutes of work means I can’t sit still. Oh, and don’t forget the fact that I have to work on a different writing project every fifteen-minute interval. Blah blah blah, I said, don’t judge me, ‘slong as I get it done who cares? He looked at me with eyes of hellfire, or maybe it was just a reflection, his eyes are dark brown after all. I do like having the hearth in the office. It’s just too bad that the flames are fake; I miss the sound of fire. Or maybe it’s good; my boss does have to pay for the A/C to be on. . .
My boss said I need to write an article about the New Way To Work, he said it might earn him $10,000. Well if anyone knows about the new way to work it’s him. It’s easy to be the boss in the New Workplace. He writes like I write, we write whatever other people need us to write. I write in the voice of Andre and Dr. Karla and Jack, and no one knows it’s me that wrote what they wrote, no one except my boss of course. He writes like me, and I write like him, and together we write for people in California and New York, Texas and Minnesota. Once we even wrote something for a guy in Italy, apparently he can’t write in plain English. We write articles, books, blogs and web-content. Sometimes we stop writing to read, proofreading and editing we call it. Take this comma out, spell that word correctly, change sternutation to sneeze (seriously, sternutation? Word didn’t even know that was a word). Dangling anything can be dangerous, so we undangle the modifiers and participles. The New Workplace has a couch, a stability ball, a messy floor, Sasha the hyper dog, and blaring music. It doesn’t have cubicles. It’s just me and my boss, we do what we want.
My boss said to focus. I told him to write his own New Way article. I can’t, he said, I need to get John in Denver to design our website and have Miriam in Iraq translate a document into Arabic. Oh, said he, by the way, we’re having a team meeting at 8:07. My boss likes to use odd numbers on the clock. He said there’re so many why waste them. Besides, people remember the odd times better. There are five people on our team, but only the boss and I are working the New Way at the New Workplace. The others are working from their own workplaces in their own areas. When we meet at 8:07 we will do it online. Nothing fancy, just a group session on Yahoo! Messenger. My boss told me not to be so hard on Dan today; it’s not his fault that the New Way To Work doesn’t require people to have a degree, only patience as they build notoriety. I said it’s not my fault that I don’t have college debt to pay back, that all of my income is expendable. I pay for college as I go, and so does my boss.
My boss didn’t say anything; he just stared at me, brown eyes below brown hair reflecting sternly from my computer screen. Fine, I said, I’ll write your article. The New Way To Work means I come to work dressed as I wish, it means that I get to work in the environment that I choose. Only my own drive and time available limit the amount of money I make, but the job is always one of my choosing. When I’m hungry I eat, when I want to go for a run I tie on my running shoes. The New Way To Work connects me with partners around the globe doing jobs for customers equally scattered. For me, The New Way To Work started, like with thousands of other freelance writers and web-designers, on Elance.com, a community of service providers (my profile there is also gurujesse if you want to hire me or email me at gurujesse@yahoo.com if you need help or advice getting started), and has branched from there. The New Way To Work means I, Jesse W. Card, am my own boss. I guess it also means I’ve been talking to myself all day. . .
Who needs a suit and tie to do meaningful work?
