From Bunny Slippers to Business Plans
Quite some time ago, I signed up for Brazen Careerist, a network for young professionals that allowed me to share my blog feed and connect with other awesome people like myself. (You may have noticed the little bookmarklet at the bottom righthand corner of my blog.)
Today, Brazen Careerist has launched itself in a whole new way.
I did not make life easy for my parents.
During my toddler years, they worried over my introversion. During my junior high/high school years, they worried over my fiery temper. During my college years, they worried throughout the course of an abusive relationship I couldn’t bring myself to leave, and then worried some more when I fell into a deep depression and dropped out of college. (I eventually went back to [a different] school and earned my degree.) Post-college, they passed me onto a possibly masochistic husband with a sigh of relief, but still couldn’t help but worry over all my ups, downs, and interminable plateaus.
Throughout the duration, they’ve (for some wild reason) continued to support me in everything I do.
Back when I was working in book publishing full-time, trying desperately to establish myself within the NYC media world, I felt stuck: tied to the area in which I was living, unable to move even the slightest bit west, due to the extent to which my daily commute already exhausted me.
Now, with my office a mere few feet from my bed, a world of possibilities has opened up to me, and I daydream about walking amongst the streets of Boston as a native…driving to the supermarket in Bucks County, PA…pushing a Bugaboo through the family-heavy streets of western NJ.
Last weekend, my husband and I even took a drive to Warren County, NJ to check out some open houses, and I fell in love with a four-bedroom house with muted purple shutters and a sunny front office: the type of house you could grow with.
What do I, as a freelancer, look for in a future home? (aside from expansive kitchen counter space, walk-in closets, and a decent school district…) [Read more…]
I’m a bit obsessed with the Twittersphere. I’m logged on 24/7 and use the site to promote my work, seek out sources, and network with other freelance writers. Plus, it helps me to maintain my sanity when I’m desperate for some small bit of human contact.
Why not use the site as a virtual business card as well?
[Photo via]
This past weekend, I traveled to Boston to see my father-in-law run in the marathon. It was my first marathon ever, and I wasn’t quite sure what it would be like watching a group of people run by.
My husband, my mother-in-law, and I set up shop about 100 yards from the finish line, right outside the Prudential Center and a block or two away from the library. We were lucky enough to get a spot right at the barrier, where I stood poised with my camera, waiting for our runner.
Next to us was a woman with…um…a loud mouth. I wasn’t sure if she was there to see anyone in particular, but she cheered on just about every runner who went past us, referring to the names on the fronts of their shirts.
“Yeah Jan! Whooo! Almost there! Yeah Pam and Steve! Whooo! Doing great!” Nonstop. It was a wonder she still had a voice.
Some of the people around us gave her dirty looks, but I just loved the way she broke through to those runners on the last leg of their journey, giving them the strength to make it those last 100 yards. I was alost overcome by emotion every time one of them broke out of their running reverie and smiled, or gave her a thumbs up. It seemed to me that she was doing those marathoners a great service.
Sometimes, my work day feels like a marathon — one filled with endless blog posts, pitches, interviews, rewrites, edits, and the like — and I wish I had someone to drag me those last few yards to the end. This is where my own personal freelance support group comes in handy.
I can’t believe I haven’t posted about Twitter before. After all, I’ve been using it to promote my writing and connect with other freelancers for quite some time now, and even did a guest post over at TwiTip on taking your Twitter networking from online to in-the-flesh.
I think it warrants a mention here at Freelancedom, no?
After the jump, 4 ways to use Twitter as a means of building your personal business:
I’ve been missing my old writing group.
We met several years ago, in Cris Beam’s From Pitch to Publish Class at New School. For at least a year, the four of us workshopped each others’ pieces, shared contacts, suggested paying markets, and basically gave each other the kicks in the ass we needed.
Eventually, life got busy. One of us moved to Brooklyn. One of us moved abroad. One of us had a baby. And I kept getting promoted at work, a development that forced me to travel more often on business.
I’d love to start a new group. But how? And who?
In My So-Called Freelance Life, Michelle Goodman wrote that a good way of controlling your overwork tendencies is to “have somewhere to be ‘after work.'” It was this suggestion that made me think about starting up a regular happy hour for freelancers in my nabe.
Being a bit clueless about who actually lives near me, however (and by “near me,” I mean NJ rather than NY), I began to consider another means of connecting with my fellow freelancers: community bulletin boards.
My husband and I are completely incompatible…when it comes to vacations.
He’s content to relax for hours on the beach, or stare at the walruses with the rest of the tourists. I’m antsy and on-the-go, and am always eager for hands-on-type activities (ahem…hands-on also includes shopping…).
On our honeymoon, I teased my husband over the fact that he brought his laptop along. By the second or third day, I was on it all the time, doing work-related research and sending IM SOSs to my friends.
After going through some of the sites in the resource section of My So-Called Freelance Life, a phrase leapt out at me, and I had an epiphany.
Anyone in the NY/NJ area and into this whole blogging thing? You should join the NY Bloggers Meetup Group! We’re having a meetup next week.
