Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

In the past month or so, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a job.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m definitely not bored.  I love my routine of writing in the morning, working out, and writing in some cafe for the rest of the afternoon.  I get home between five and six, just like a regular job, and practice piano till MB comes home.

But I do miss having a paycheck and some social interaction, even with coworkers I hate.

I applied for a position recently, as a marketing content writer for a local university, and was surprised to get a call last week.

I used to work in marketing, except it wasn’t really marketing.  I don’t even know how to describe it.  Basically I worked on educational programs for organizational health care customers.  I did some content and strategy, but mostly implementation.  I also managed our internal website.

I liked those aspects of my job, but various bosses didn’t think it was enough.  They thought I should do “more,” ie, strategic platform bullshit.  I wasn’t interested, hence my library science degree.

So why did I bother applying for a job in marketing?  Because of the writing side of it.  If all I had to do was write marketing copy, that’d be fine.

But no.  It seemed they wanted someone who was really into marketing, not who answered when asked why I decided to pursue my library science degree, “Well, I knew that marketing really wasn’t for me. . .except the writing part of it of course.”

That’s the incredibly annoying thing about marketing.  It’s not enough to be a hard worker and to have skills and experience – you have to drink the marketing Kool-Aid, shave your head and chant marketing mantras at the airport, aspire to marketing Operating Thetan Level 8.

The girl said she’d call by 5 PM on Friday if I got an in-person interview.  Five PM on Friday came and went.  No call.  In fact, maybe no one got a call because I saw the same position posted on Craig’s List at 5:01.  Well, maybe not 5:01 exactly, but you get the picture.

It was really a blessing in disguise.  When she asked what I ultimately wanted to do, I said, “Write.  Write anything,” which I thought would fit with a marketing content writer position, but I guess not.  Still, that made me realize, I want to write!  Write anything!  Well, duh.  Any of you could have told me that.

That realization solidified my desire to freelance.  Right now I’m doing little things here and there, but I want to be a full-fledged FREELANCE WRITER, which means I need to bust my ass to get jobs.

Over the weekend, I applied for a couple of positions on Craig’s List, one as a beauty journalist on skincare, the other writing about local events, restaurants, etc.  We’ll see what happens.

Also, I need to be more active in terms of submitting.  Sure, I’m doing my itty bitty articles for eHow.com, and my essays for The Nervous Breakdown, but there are other online magazines and tons of contests.

I’m used to writing short 2,000 or less word essays, but the contests call for 5,000 to 8,000, or around 25 double-spaced pages.  I haven’t written an essay that long in a while.  The contests will give me the opportunity to do so, which may the germ for my next memoir.  I just have to figure out what I want to write about.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 1:01 pm and is filed under awareness, work, writing. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.