Bitmob.com

Northern Virginia

When I got into this line of work, I didn't have a clue. I've always had a knack for formulating thoughts and formatting said thoughts into comprehensible and, for the most part, easily accessible narratives most readers enjoyed, or at the very least vehemently hated. But the focus was missing. In the early fall of '07, I sold a research paper I wrote in college on Stephen Crane and the Red Badge Of Courage to oboulo.com, and thought I was a published writer. So, naturally I sought more opportunities in this strange Internet land where people would pay me for what I've been doing in school all my life, free of charge. That didn't pan out so well. My first gig, fresh off a firing from Bloom, was writing for Gosuarena. I picked Gosu, because honestly, they were the first ones I found on Craigslist that would pay. And pay they did, but not nearly enough to earn a living. Hell, it was hardly enough to afford a weeks worth of lunch. School lunch. But I wrote regardless, because I loved writing, and Gosu rekindled a lost childhood love affair with videogames. Around the summer of '08, I went on to write for moresay.com, working closely with Brigador Stamback doing cartoon and entertainment blog posts. She didn't pay me, but it wasn't about the money. Not that I would've turned down an offer, mind you. It was about doing what I wanted, because that was the story of my life, and switching stories mid-narrative is just plain silly. I kept writing, but the site screeched to a halt. (Though I hear it's back up, good for you Brigador!) My newly-appointed girlfriend at the time, though, didn't appreciate my noble rebellion against the retail coal mines in favor of doing what I loved. Being the sucker for love that I am, I again wanted more. In D.C., during the second month of '09, I discovered a political research firm willing to bring me aboard for an intern position. So I interviewed, accepted the position, and began work on a project intended to better educate high school and college students on how congress works. (Which, ironically, doesn't work). I spent a few months at Federal Network, Inc. before realizing the mere promise of possibly being offered a paid position was not worth doing something my heart wasn't in. During the summer of '09, I started writing for Spiteful Critic under editor Brandon Root. Here I was free to write about whatever I wanted, so long it was one of three things: a list, social commentary or humorous insight. I'm not particularly proud of my work there, even though my article on the Top Ten Rappers of The Decade got over 1,000 Facebook shares and over 100,000 hits. Most of it was the kind of snarky and amateurish "Look At Me, I'm Writing On The Interwebz" gibberish. It was a learning experience. I learned that 100,000 hits translates into about twenty bucks. Around the time me and my girlfriend broke it off (A Very Special Christmas '09), I had started my own website. Much like me, the site didn't have focus. I blogged about hip hop, videogames and women, in no particular order. The women aspect was the biggest traffic draw, and I soon found myself a sort of Internet image pimp. This wasn't what I wanted. As if by a stroke of destiny, or stroke of a disgruntled employee's hammer to a GoDaddy server, every story I ever blogged vanished from the site. But I'm getting ahead of myself. During the three months I actively blogged for Artisin City, my ex-girlfriend and I had our backslide. The next morning, I tagged along with her to look at a house, because that's what people who backslide do to prove their not just sluts, right? The house was magnificent; much more than I could afford, or she for that matter. While looking around the basement, an older and much wealthier dressed couple were giving me the stink-eye. Probably wondering what a poor, wannabe writer like me was doing looking at their new home. I vowed at that moment to find some better gigs and further my freelance career. I applied ferociously to online publications and gigs of all sorts, but before anyone could reply, my I-Don't-Know-What-To-Call-Her-At-This-Point lady friend decidedly stopped talking to me, in mid-text at that. To this day, I don't know what set this off. Perhaps it was the lack of a high paying job, or job at all for that matter. Or maybe it was my lack of interest in her marriage advancements. But, more than likely, it was going out of my way to text her frenemy, who coincidently started working with her that very day. Hmm. Anyway, I got a gig as an SEO marketer for Matt Brooks, writing tons of SEO articles for his company's model ships blogs (handcraftedmodelships.com, handcraftednauticaldecor.com), and rewriting copy for his many online stores. Then came the clients. I started rationing off my skill set to several companies, each wanting a piece of the almighty first page on Google. My name wasn't attached to most of these, and more often than not, it was replaced with another person's byline. My time as an SEO writer earned me a lot of work on sites such as TV Store Online, Wii Weight Loss, My Higher Education, Nasal Sinus Irrigation, Find A Muralist, Insurance Auto Info and IRS Tax Attorneys Info. If it sounds boring to read, it was even more boring to write. Except for a few notable gigs, such as writing Alexx Thompson's bio and Central Elements "About" page. There was also Eduardo Xavier, this fashion designer who hired me to write the descriptions of his formal wear on the aptly titled site eduardo-xavier.com.That was pretty cool, and I wasn't bothered too much when my site vanished into the ethernet. I was finally paid to write, but it still wasn't what I wanted to do. Examiner dot com would be my next destination, where I was (and still am when I feel like it) the DC Console Games Examiner. I weened myself off the SEO, and even burnt some bridges in the process, but I found steady work writing for Demand Media a full year after my mutual breakup. I also applied, and was accepted to Break Studios, Suite 101 and Bright Hub, of which I have wrote the upper end of one article. And here I am, almost a year later, a new girlfriend who loves me for who I am, a child whose life I am responsible for not fucking up, and a waning amount of content left to claim from Demand Studios. Where do I go from here? I refuse to hustle backwards, and so I'm feverishly pitching articles to videogame publications faster than they can reject them. This is the hardest part, trying to get a foot in that goddamned door. But now that I have experience under my belt, a reason to build a career out of these freelance scraps I got, and a goddamned clue at what the hell it is I'm doing, I know that the future won't be such a shitty place after all.