So I have taken a few baby steps towards getting back into freelance writing today.

The preliminary steps are done and I can get on to the real meat and potatoes (with sage and onion) of the endeavour : job hunting.

It’s very hard on me, emotionally speaking.

Every job posting has the potential to make me feel hopeless and inadequate and small. The risk of losing all confidence in myself is rampant, and the temptation to just give up and go back to playing video games all day is constant and strong.

Luckily for me, I am extremely stubborn and that means that once I start something, I see it to the end. So the actual odds of my giving up are low, barring some crazily unpredictable emotional blow or somesuch.

Not that I want to be giving the universe any ideas.

But looking through the job postings is like dragging myself over jagged rocks on my hands and knees. Unfortunately, I am not an enlightened being, and so deciding to do it does not end all internal resistance to doing it.

So it’s been a hard day. I found I could only job search for half an hour today. After that, my coping resources (or “spoons”) were all used up.

But I got six leads out of it, so it will do.

The one I am most interested in at the moment is this one.

It’s a call for a writer for a Youtube channel called Charisma On Command, and they make absolutely facsinating videos like this :

I love this kind of thing! Detailed and thoughtful, practical insights on a subject as fascinating and rewarding as human charisma.

And I could totally write scripts like that. From my writer’s point of view, it’s just a long voiceover script, and those are a lot easier to write than, say, a complex script with a lot of characters, stage direction, special effects, and so on.

My one problem is that I am not sure I have the knowledge I need. The people who makes those videos have clearly given the subject a lot of thought (as have I) as well as having done a ton of research (um, nope).

Hopefully, if I watch enough of their videos, I will pick up the style of their insights and be able to write in their style.

I mean, I could write about celebs I like and what I think makes them so likable, but I highly doubt my POV would match theirs and in a series like this one, you absolutely have to keep the editorial POV consistent.

That’s what allows people to just relax and enjoy the content as they let the knowledge wash over them, unimpeded by any thoughts about how it’s being presented.

So I will need to watch a ton of their vids in order to match their style. Luckily, their show is awesome, so it’s not that big a deal.

Now let’s talk about Writer’s Work.

Now that I have sampled the actual service, I must say I am deeply unimpressed. The first shock was to realize that they use other job search sites for their job listings.

That means nobody actually posts anything to Writer’s Work. They are not a place to go if you are looking to hire a writer. All their actual job content comes from somewhere else. And that makes me a lot less interested in them.

It also makes me wonder how they can possibly live up to all the wonderful things they promised in their videos, like jobs that pay a minimum of $100 and all the connections they said they had with people looking for writers.

So I would say I am about halfway convinced to cancel my account and get my $47 back. I mean, WTF do I need these people for again?

But they still offer services like a word processor that tracks how long I work on a project so that I can correctly bill the client on hourly jobs, and 24 hour support for technical questions, and so forth and so on.

So I am not leaving yet but boy am I unimpressed.

UpWork was never like that. Maybe I should just get over my aversion to going back due to how badly I flamed out on three different jobs, and go back there.

I will think about it.

Oh, life update : my money safely made it to my reloadable credit card. I currently have $460 sitting there waiting to be spent.

It’s a good feeling.

Having that cash there makes me feel more secure and safe, like it’s a shield against the toil and tribulations of life.

I have to make sure that I don’t fall into the Miser’s Paradox, though. That’s what I call it when having the money becomes more important than spending it.

It’s a form of hoarding, basically, and one I could easily see myself falling prey to. The feeling of security I get from having the money is very seductive, and if I don’t watch myself carefully, I could end up in the absurd position of having a sizable amount of money that I am psychologically incapable of spending.

So, no Scrooge I. That money will get spent. I will, of course, do my best to spend it wisely on things that will actually make my life better, but Mammon as my witness, it will get spent on stuff.

Possibly on a new computer chair, like I mentioned before.

Where was I? Baby steps, right. I originally planned to apply for that job I’ve been talking about today, but it turns out that they want both a resume and a portfolio, and I don’t have either.

Well, I have my portfolio on Writer’s Work’s website. I am not happy with it, but it’s there. That might be enough.

But I sure as shit don’t have a resume. The very word sends chills through me because that is always where I fail because I don’t have job experience and there are huge time gaps I can’t explain except my saying I’ve been suffering from depression, and why would anyone want to hire someone who gets sick for that long?

I much prefer the world of UpWork, where all that matters is the quality of your work. The only important question is whether or not I can do the work, and I can.

So maybe I will end up back on UpWork after all.

Then I will just have to explain why I haven’t done any work there for years.

It never ends.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.