Dream Jobs and Nightmares

To be fair, what I am talking about was neither a “dream” or a “nightmare”, but it was an interesting learning.

When I took a break from the Corporate life, I was interested to see if I could secure some paid freelance writing work.

Such work could be stand alone projects, one off assignments and/or ideally, an agreement regular to provide content.

I have secured work mainly of a technical writing nature such as writing risk management strategies, disaster recovery plans, promotional material and the like but it took over 12 months to secure an agreement for regular writing work for a website/publication.

This opportunity came up in October 2018 when I expressed interest in submitting content for a publication concentrating on stories and matters of interest for a very specific and quite small region.

Or to put it another way, here was a chance to write an article a week and be paid for each article. There was to be no by-line or formal acknowledgement but hey, I write and they pay so it doesn’t get much better than that. Let’s call it a small dream.

Six months later, I have decided to withdraw from this arrangement. While it has definitely been no nightmare, it has been a less than satisfying experience and one that has been most revealing.

I discovered that working within such a limited scope of subject matter was very difficult and not suited to my temperament or skills. I discovered that I do not have the natural descriptive prose necessary for writing articles of this nature.

Concerning descriptive prose, I certainly worked very hard to come up with the words needed however never felt the words I used were authentically mine and often felt fake.

I also had no say in the photographs accompanying an article. I had a very clear idea in my mind of the appropriate image to accompanying an article I had written and it was frustrating to have no say in this.

I enjoy writing and tend not to fuss about whether I am any good or not. I compare it too the 24-handicap golfer who simply loves playing each week. I love to write even if only for my own enjoyment

I enjoyed the technical writing assignments and would happily do more work of this type.

I enjoyed the research this often involved discovered and learning new things. For example, I previously had no idea of the cultural sensitivities to be aware of when travelling through Sweden.

As far as other writing is concerned, if anyone wants to pay someone to write articles about whatever is on their mind that day, takes their fancy or prompts their interest about any subject what-so-ever, I am available.

I suspect I will have to indulge myself in blogging and the satisfaction that brings. Income aside, I guess that is the dream job.

And also, get a real job.

Thanks for reading