inspiration:
Posted by paul novak on June 8, 2011 at 2:01 am
After over twenty years, I’ve seen a firefly. Big deal you say. Well, for me it is indeed a big deal. The last time I recall seeing fireflies was around 1984 when an amiable old B movie actor was in the White House making Russians nervous, and Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” was educating the masses as to the finer points of politics. Bill and Opus, Two For America!! The Beak and Saliva Ticket!!!
It was a rough time as well as a glorious time considering that during the eighties I was in the midst of full blown teen angst fueled by the high octane hormones that come with the appearance of puberty. While I sure as hell wouldn’t want to relive such a period of my life, and maturity has made certain such naïve but fun antics as jumping through campfires never happens again, advancing age has softened the blow by allowing me to fondly reminisce without having to recall all the bitter pieces.
What’s really strange, however, is how something so simple as a smell, a taste, words, or in this case a firefly, can trigger a complete change in our thought processes. It’s as if our minds are a record player and someone has come along and bumped the needle to another track in mid song. Whatever we were thinking, whatever we were feeling, is somehow pushed aside as a flood of feelings and memories wash over us, taking us on a ride we have little control over and little inclination to stop if we wanted to.
What this lone firefly managed to do, was instantly transport my mind to another time and place and invoke feelings and memories long forgotten simply by flashing his little light in the hopes of attracting a mate.
It occurs to me that this is something many good writers do to us and that what really makes them good, is that they can do it almost at will.
Continue Reading
Posted by paul novak on September 3, 2010 at 7:40 pm
<?php } elseif (!(‘open’ == $post-> comment_status) && !(
Oops. Sorry. After 12 hours of reading code and playing with changes, then enjoying that wonderful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the system decides my changes are not what it wants to do, I’m having a time getting my brain back into the world of the living. One of these days I am going to remember to save original copies of files before I muck them up. Organizational skills why have you shunned me?
Since I am running pell mell into yet another quixotic endeavor I haven’t done much writing. I’m lucky in that my current clients are on a regular two week schedule that allows me some flexibility, but as anyone who knows web development can tell you, two weeks is NOTHING when it comes to bringing an online idea to life. I’m working towards a three week development period, but to be honest, that’s not very realistic. Judging from the answers to my last post, there is a great deal that folks want out of working online, and they aren’t getting it. Well, maybe to an extent, but it’s clear it could be a whole lot better. This of course means I have a lot of things to cover if I’m going to have a chance at knocking this windmill over.
On top of that, who the hell am I to think I can make a difference in something as huge, important, and complex as online employment? That one I can answer. I’m one of those looking for that difference. I’ve been hitting that wall of disappointment and frustration and frankly, as thick as my skull is, it can’t take the pounding. It shouldn’t be that hard. It shouldn’t cost a ton of money. It should be fair. But right now it’s a ridiculous morass of inconsistency and throat cutting idiocy. $5.00 an article Charlie, I’m gunning for you!
Don’t worry, I’m not going to design a cutesy button to look like a wound on your website and ask you to join any ridiculous movement. I wouldn’t even know what to name it. Arlo Guthrie I am not. I’ve gotten a ton of help just from you the readers willingness to slog through my last posts questions and humor me as I ride headlong towards stomach churning, inevitable, flaming balls of predestined disaster my date with success. I’ll beg for help later when I’m ready to bare my soul and new project to the world.
I will say though that I can’t remember a time where I worked so much. In all seriousness, we are talking an average of 10-12 hours a day spent sitting in front of the computer doing three things at the same time. I’ve watched the sun come up at least three times in the last two weeks and the cat is going neurotic from the screwy hours I’m keeping. Which leads me to softball this post and simply ask, how many hours a week do you spend on your online work? Do you keep track and average your time out to an hourly income rate? Does it even matter?
And with that I’ll take my leave and open up this new batch of code I just got. An innocuous looking file, it’s sitting on my desktop containing within its folder a couple thousand lines of script just begging me to screw it up. How could I possibly pass up such an opportunity to boost my blood pressure?
Continue Reading
Posted by paul novak on September 2, 2010 at 1:44 am
I’ve been busy. Really busy. Normally that’s a good thing, and it means money is coming in and jobs are in plentiful supply. As is usually the case with me, nothing is ever normal. I’ve been working, but the things I am doing won’t see any ROI right away. If you’re a freelancer or independent marketer I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Although I am a freelance writer, I also do a fair bit of web development and dabble occasionally in online commerce. To that end I am restructuring a commerce site which really, is unrelated in any way to my freelance work, but if I don’t get it done I could very well end up single in short order. So of course that one’s a priority job. Love you too honey… Ahem.
Next on the list is something that to tell the truth, I am somewhat excited and optimistic about. This really worries me because any time one of my ideas gets me excited and optimistic, I start having those visions of Lucy and the football. Despite this, I am rushing headlong into a new venture. Although I’m not ready to present it or even let Google find it yet, (those damn bots are persistent little buggers), I can say that it’s very much related to freelancing and online employment.
I’ve heard a consistent complaint lately that work and clients are hard to come by, no one wants to pay decent rates, and all the job sites like E-lance are overrun with fly by night operations that are driving down the rates. I know from my own experience that these complaints are all too true. In fact, they are worse than they appear because on top of all this, finding the work often costs money on top of it all.
I’ve also been asked frequently about how I find work, how I get paid, and what can people do to improve their own efforts.
So, with these complaints and questions for inspiration, I am working on a new endeavor that I hope will address these complaints and more. Much more.
To that end, I’d like to use this post to ask some questions. You don’t have to go into detail although I’m very much interested if you are willing to. I just want some candid feedback which will help me to narrow my focus and put together something truly useful and of benefit to the freelance and professional online entrepreneur. Thanks in advance for helping me out here. I’ll toss out a little bit of intrigue before listing my questions and say that I have some of you in mind specifically, and how you reply may have some unexpected results.
Without further ado, here we go.
1. What has been the biggest challenge when it comes to working online?
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how difficult would you say finding work as a freelancer or independent business person is?
3. Do you hold a paid membership, free membership, or subscription to any job services like E-Lance, Demand Studios, I-Freelance, Guru and other similar job outlets?
4. If yes to number 3, what is your biggest disappointment with them, and what do you like most about them?
5. What do look for in a business resource? Advice? Leads? Free programs? Network capabilities?
6. What is your biggest disappointment with working online?
7. Do you believe that online job services should be free like free classifieds, or do you believe that job services are justified in charging fees and taking commissions from the work their patrons perform?
8. Have you made substantive connections and found work through any social platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter in the last 3 months?
9. This one is probably a bit difficult and I’ll understand if folks decide to skip it. What do you think needs the most improvement in the world of freelance employment and online business?
10. Do you think the independent online worker is going to become increasingly in demand in the near future, or do you see them finding the market for their services becoming smaller as commercial business continues to increase its online presence?
That’s it folks. I appreciate your taking the time to answer these for me, and I hope to have something to show for your effort within the next three weeks. I’ll be attempting to post regularly now that I have an actual agenda and schedule figured out. Of course, I could end up operating out of a Frigidaire box come next year instead so I can’t make any promises. I’m keeping all my landscape equipment in operating condition just in case.
Continue Reading
Posted by paul novak on August 27, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Before I freed myself from a life of slave labor I worked in the landscaping industry. For fifteen years I worked my way up from lowly hired laborer to foreman and manager positions. During ten years of this hardscrabble existence I was brain damaged. I must have been. You see, how else can you explain believing for ten years that hard work and good work ethics will be enough to eventually land you in a good position with a fat salary and benefits? I chalk it up to inhaled carbon monoxide from weedwhackers and tractors and the daily baking of my skull in the hot sun.
I should have gotten a clue after about the tenth time I was told what a great job I did while being given still more responsibilities and yet no similar increases in salaries. I should have, but my parboiled and oxygen starved brain apparently wasn’t quite up to the task of deductive reasoning.
Luckily though, even the weakest neurons receive a signal now and then and my beleaguered gray matter eventually began forming some rebellious suspicions. A big part of this began to happen when I got my first crew chiefs position.
“Yay! I got a promotion! Oh boy, now I get to start making some money instead of killing myself for nothing”, I naively thought as I left the bosses office. Nope. What I got was a pitiful pay raise that was just enough to bump my tax bracket and result in a net weekly increase of $15.00 in pay. In return I got to be the fall guy for several alcoholics who ran mowers over expensive exotic plants and stoners who were experts in finding secluded shade-trees for afternoon siestas. Now I got the opportunity to not only pick up slack, but take the blame as well when my crew got drunk enough or hid well enough to keep me from getting any work out of them. This was an improvement? Now I understand the half assed grins on my bosses faces when they gave me the position.
Perhaps being a foreman would be better? Not a chance. The carbon monoxide was still taking its toll on my synapses although a couple of them were trying like mad to send a signal across.
Becoming foreman was no better than being a crew chief, but it was the beginning of real revelations. I was somebody now according to my title although you’d never know it by looking at paychecks. A job title can be heady stuff, especially when you’re operating at 50% of mental capacity, and I stupidly accepted it as though I was actually being given something of value. More responsibilities, more demands, and more blame for others screw-ups yet still being without so much as a cut rate dental plan wasn’t exactly progress, but I still wasn’t getting it.
When I made foreman however, I began getting glimpses into the reality of how many businesses operate. I was getting to see the numbers on job estimates and employee data sheets now and then. Other foremen were confiding their own decade’s long experiences with me. Property managers were talking with me about budgets and my company’s yearly contract costs. Even MY medium rare brain couldn’t miss the facts.
I was being exploited. I was damn good at my job, and I did deserve a hell of a lot more for my efforts. But as long as I allowed myself to be used, my situation would never change. When the realization hit me, it was like the clichéd thunderclap. From that moment on, I knew without reservation that I couldn’t continue working as someone’s employee. It took one small annoyance after this realization took hold and I did something I had only done once before in my life; I walked off the job. I haven’t gone back since.
I immediately started my own business, and in my first year almost tripled my income doing the same thing I had been doing for over 10 years. Talk about a duh moment when I did my first round of taxes! I felt like slapping myself for not doing it sooner, but I was enjoying having food on a regular basis too much to worry about self recriminations. Eating regularly can be heady stuff too if you’re not used to it.
Eventually though, earning my living through sweat and labor began to lose its appeal. Although I greatly enjoy working outdoors and with my hands, the enjoyment began to fade as 20 years of labor made itself known to my knees and back. I didn’t like what this way of living meant for the future either. I realized that if I didn’t get away from inhaling small engine exhaust every day, in another ten years I’d be lucky if I could remember my own name. I would spend my golden years connected to an oxygen tank while nurses congratulated me on making it from my bed to the bathroom by myself and remembering how to get there.
By this time the brain damage had mostly reversed itself and I was actually having some novel and halfway ambitious thoughts. Chief among these new thoughts was the idea that I could do something else besides planting someone’s petunias and azalea bushes.
Over the years I had been producing an endless stream of online gibberish interspersed with occasional flashes of coherency. These occasional flashes brought some very generous reviews now and then from very forgiving readers. It was those folks who led me to believe I could make a living online, and with my first sold article, my freelancing career was born. Now I write for a living and although it’s been less than a year and my income is not what it once was, I’m hooked. C’mon, carbon monoxide poisoning, 90 degree heat, and a daily dose of physical exhaustion just can’t compete with air conditioning, iced tea and a keyboard. And I don’t even have to deal with unexpected hordes of hornets exploding out of a bush when I cut through their nest with a set of trimmers. I’ll have to tell the story of how I got stung 28 times and looked like a carnival balloon for three days sometime now that I think about it. Imagine a guy in a hard hat streaking past you at 3o mph, gibbering like a lunatic and stripping clothing as he goes by.
Anyways…
Working online as a freelancer has opened more doors than I imagined possible, and the flexibility and possibilities exceed anything I had considered doing with a traditional career. I’m finally doing something I actually enjoy, that I can really put myself into, and I can even get paid to do it.
It’s no wonder the internet has become such a huge and diverse marketplace. No wonder there are so many entrepreneurs and freelancers. Some of the most coveted types of jobs are those that allow you to set your own hours, work from home, and really use your own talents and abilities how you see fit. And just about every person with a computer and an internet connection has that job just sitting there waiting for them to fill the position. But they never do it, because it just never occurs to them, or they think it’s too hard, or they don’t see how anyone could pay them to use the internet. It’s a shame really. I fell into this opportunity through a combination of dumb luck, basic abilities, and a serious aversion to hornet venom. I’m sure everyone else has their own story to tell, mine’s just a little more ludicrous than most. I’m just happy to be here and still coherent.
Continue Reading
