Freelancing, Facebook Fraud and Freedom

The word of the week is schadenfreude.

January 21 - TeeVee and Me

In December, I turned off the cable TV for our place.

Mainly, that was to save $$ every month that can be better spent on things like food and rent. I kept our internet however, despite what I consider a higher cost than it should be. There are alternative ISP's in town, like the Victoria FreeNet, but their wireless coverage and apartment-install policies mean that for now, I'm sticking with Shaw for internet service.

But back to cable. It's been surprisingly easy to do without, as the temptation to simply pop on the tube to see what's on is now gone. Sure, I have hundreds of hours of TV on DVD that I can watch, but you'd be surprised how much the 'effort' of picking a show, putting in the disc and tweaking the PC so things don't skip due to background tasks )really turns me off doing that. And don't get me started on Netflix Canada, with their lackluster library selection.

It comes down to what I want to do in a day: watch someone else's work, or make my own?

Keeping the internet on in my place is a given. Going back to cable?

Not until I've locked in my own channel and tuned it in crystal-clear.

January 22 - Yep. Still looking…

It's hard to stay the course, but I'm trying.

Close to 100 job applications later and no luck is a BIT disappointing.

Which is why I'm exploring other options. Like tonight, when I attended a nascent gathering of freelance writers right here in Victoria.

It was great! What an eye-opener!

I've looked at freelancing for a while now, but just like this time last year when I was considering putting my novel together, I knew very little about the process( and in the novel's case, I still need to learn a lot ). Freelancing has the potential to replace a traditional job for me, but all my research to date has done is to show me how ignorant I am of how to start and how to KEEP going successfully. 

Tonight's meeting showed me that there ARE people, locally, who are making a living at freelancing as writers and doing well. In addition, the meeting allowed me to network with a few of them and even opened up some job leads, all for FREE. I'm determined to work on learning what I need to know in the next few weeks to get off the ground as a freelance writer; the appeal of being my own boss is very, very tantalizing. Even if I don't make as much as my last job, I'll still be doing what I WANT to do, instead of working every day accepting that my hourly wage is the only measure of my worth.

Time for something new, where *I* am the one measuring my worth.

January 23 - Facebook Scams

This week, I saw that a friend of mine shared a giveaway contest on Facebook.

It was fake.

But that was the tip of the iceberg. Turns out some scumbags had created multiple FBook groups pretending that Disney was 'giving away' thousands of free tickets… all you had to do was click on their website links to give them your personal info. Unbelievably, the largest of the groups had over 13,000 people 'like' and presumably sign up in the course of ten days… with only a dozen or so people even questioning the validity of Disney supposedly just handing out money. Check out the images:

I did what I could, contacting Disney and also Victoria's Secret, but it's a slow, slow process. The criminals involved KNOW this and in that window of opportunity from startup to eventual shutdown, they'll have gathered TENS OF THOUSANDS of people's personal info. It's mind-bogglingly huge and to be honest, if it continues for more than a few days, I'm going to ring some media alarm bells if FBook won't. Their site policies make it VERY hard for ANY action to be taken quickly and people will suffer because of it. I can't stand ANY organization that makes it EASY for criminals to operate and as such, I won't mind giving FBook a black eye if it makes them smarten up about protecting their user base from predatory scum.

January 24 - Opportunity's Decade

You may have seen recently that a company is taking applications for a one-way colonization mission to Mars. While a fascinating development, I don't think I'll be applying.

Mainly because according to the Opportunity Rover, Mars isn't exactly a vacation spot.

It's hard to believe that Opportunity has been operating fora decade on Mars, especially since its design life was only 90 days and it's been going nearly 40 times that long! Talk about well-built technology and a good return on investment! I've always had a soft spot for Mars( John Carter, anyone? )and I've wondered what it'd be like to live there, Total Recall notwithstanding. Cold, dry and claustrophobic are all words that pop into my head when I think of Mars, so I'll think I'll leave it to Opportunity( the rover, not the recent call for colonists! )and let my imagination roam the red sands of that far planet, for now.

January 25 - Small Wonders

A few blog entries ago, I talked about my discovering I lacked joy in my life.

What I didn’t mention is that I don't lack wonder.

Not the same thing, by any stretch. Since my first days as a toddler, I've never lost the sense of wonder I have in viewing the world. It informs what I see every day and inspires me on the best days to comment on my observations with the words that I, at times, write well enough to capture some of that wonder.

It's not perfect, but it's definitely there and I treasure it.

Just as an example, I loved the story that came out this week about a 'Bottle Garden' that has been living quite happily sealed off from the world for decades.

As you can see from the image, it's a BIG bottle, and well-corked.

In such things, I find many worthy thoughts, alongside my sense of wonder that such a thing exists, CAN exist, in our world. It's a world of its own, needing nothing beyond simple light to power its lifecycle, alone inside its jar. So simple, yet so complex.

That's life.

January 26 - Ouch, again?

After typing a LOT of things this week, my wrists filed a formal protest today.

They asked why I hadn't been using Dragon Dictate to 'type' my work, instead of the old-fashioned QUERTY keyboard method. Practice makes perfect, you know, and I've been lax on keeping Dragon running daily to sharpen my dictation skills. And talk to myself, of course.

The short answer is: neither typing up cover letters and editing resumes lend themselves well to voice dictation.

I suspect that writing articles for freelancing will be a different thing altogether, which is fine. Not having to constantly send out applications means I can use that time to focus on bidding for jobs on sites, which means money coming in the door. Good thing, that. I can turn the experience of writing my novel towards making a living with my voice, in addition to getting into some voice-work , though that's still really fuzzy on the part where I don't have to pay out up front for access( more research needed ).

For now, it's back to icing / heating my wrists a few times a day. No video games for me, sadly, as that's how the whole problem started last year. But that's fine for now, as I can't begrudge myself hours a day 'goofing off' when I KNOW that I need to be using the time to bring an income in. Makes sense to me and to that nagging little voice inside my head that's pals with the other voice doing the budget.

Their voices have been REAL loud lately. Jerks.

January 27 - Stress and Success

I'll admit it, I'm really stressed most of these last few weeks.

Not to the point of losing( much )sleep or paralyzing me, but the vast uncertainty of my future post-2012 is daunting without a job. I've never been unemployed and quite frankly, the prospect of remaining that way for the near future really, really bothers me. I've always had a job and an income, no matter WHAT else was going on in my life - even in school or when my parents had their financial woes years ago. I was the rock, as I've said before, and now that I'm no longer in that role I'm feeling lost… and stressed.

Fortunately, I've had a lot of experience dealing with stress. Everyone does it in their own way, some with more success and others less( I'm using that word a lot today ). If you're not sure how to get a handle on some of the stress in your own life, here's a series of 9 things you can do to manage whatever stress factors are bothering you at the present:

1. Have self-compassion.
2. Remember the "Big Picture."
3. Rely on routines.
4. Take five (or ten) minutes to do something you find interesting.
5. Add where and when to your to-do list.
6. Use 'If-Thens' for positive self-talk.
7. See your work in terms of progress, not perfection
8. Think about the progress that you've already made.
9. Know whether optimism or defensive pessimism works for you.

Looking at the list above, I'm sure I can do more each day to fit in some things. I enjoy not having TOO much time to throw around, oddly. The idea of having many, many hours of funemployment each day of each week still hasn't sunk in. I'd rather spend most of that time earning a living, to be honest. 

Ironically, I have all the time in the world right now to figure out how, if I can manage the stress and see the positive in my situation.

While I was writing the blog tonight, I smelled something burning. The light behind me flickered and went out, with the smell intensifying. I quickly tossed the keyboard aside, unplugged the lamp and pulled the scorching-hot CFL from the socket to rest on the stone chessboard beneath while I tried not to breathe in the fried-electrical smell. It was an introspective moment, if you will: I was writing about feeling stressed, burned out and feeling left in the dark… then those words on the screen became immediate things as the bulb died with exactly that description. Think the universe is trying to tell me something? If so, I'm going to go sleep on it.