Deviant Rambling

We’ve made it to February which means it’s only a couple of months before we get the hell out of this city and get back to the country. I am ready to leave this place and get back to where everything is quiet.

There are entirely too many people in this place, and having to be around them even in passing frays my nerves. Every trip out involves driving with these lunatics in traffic, who seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that every time they get behind the wheel the stakes can literally be life and death. Turn signals are a hilarious afterthought, they all follow way too close, and you’d think they were all in a race that has no finish line.

I may have officially become a persnickety old man, but all of you need to slow the fuck down. Nothing any of us is doing out here is important enough to be on someone’s ass when they are already doing 10 over the limit through a residential neighborhood.

Give me the peace and quiet of the woods, an unpolluted night sky full of stars, and sparsely populated miles of nothing.

The harsh weather typical of our geography has got me in a contemplative headspace. Winter doesn’t do many things right but it does have a way of forcing us into our own minds to work on things.

Turns out I have ample time for this kind of work, and ample time for any kind of work I might enjoy. That becomes a classic case of “too much of a good thing” pretty damn quick, though.

When I have gig work to do, I may take a begrudging moment or two when I start to mumble about how the content is meaningless. But then I get to work doing what I love. So what little grief I have about the content itself quickly melts away.

When there is no gig work to do, I feel the need we all do to keep my hands busy doing something. This incessant need is what is driving my current contemplation, and it’s been an undercurrent of my thoughts for months. If you’re doing stuff just to feel productive, should it be judged the same way you’d judge any kind of production? You know, does it actually produce anything?

The tasks I put in front of myself tend to be the kind I zone out of while I am doing them, so I’d argue they don’t produce much. Then the day passes into night, and I feel comfortable relenting this need to produce. The evenings feel like a time to relax but that could, and should, be any time for a person in my position.

Relaxation is a funny thing. If you try for it, you fail. If you’re able to accept the challenge of letting go of your endless to-do lists, side hustles, and irrational desire to stay busy, you succeed and can relax. The trick is that relaxation is a surrender of some sort, and we suck real bad at surrendering to our cherished ideals.

I have recently stumbled upon an effect of making a living off of writing.

The work I am doing is for subject matter I’m not necessarily into. After completing any given assignment, I can feel the need to reset. In this way, it is very much like a traditional job, where the time off between work hours is valuable. It is draining work, but I think that’s the price that has to be paid for any work.

It still doesn’t drain me nearly as much as the non-physical work I used to do for a living. I would run out of steam in that business in about 30 seconds. At least while I’m writing I don’t run out of energy, just afterward.

This pause does make me seriously consider the assignments I’m willing to take on, and the amount of clients I’m willing to engage with. I think for the sake of my sanity it can’t be more than a few.

There is also a double-edged sword quality to this drop in energy level. I find it a lot harder to come to this and other spaces to work on my personal projects. I am still in the process of trying to find the right balance because right now it is all in or all out and no in between.

The exponential expansion of technology has moved AI from the fringe. All of us in the creative space can’t help but notice the presence of AI across disciplines. This raises interesting philosophical and moral issues that I never dreamed I’d be concerned with.

Nevertheless, I find myself pondering this use of technology, because AI may have a direct impact on my chosen form of expression. Eventually, this technology might be capable of mimicking my exact flow and style. If and when that happens, I might begin to question the relevance of what I do and whether or not it should be considered art of any sort.

The result of this could be the death of my particular form of creativity. If it was deemed irrelevant and a machine can do it better, what is the point, right?

What AI is doing to reproduce human speech is in itself a form of creativity, though. A team of coding professionals have to create a program that takes basic user input and craft entire articles from nothing. This is the marriage of technology and creativity.

As this technology gets more and more prevalent, it becomes acceptable to the world at large. After all, if AI produces good enough work to get attention, and that attention can be used to produce sales, mission accomplished.

Even now as I type this, though, I realize the irony of my concerns. I have a popular browser plugin that tells me when I screw up grammar and spelling, and offers suggestions to improve my work. This is all being accomplished with AI.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I think it is too soon to really know. There is something fundamental about the overall concept of AI that concerns me.

I honestly believe if we surrender who we are and what we are capable of for the sake of convenience, we don’t deserve greatness. The slippery slope that AI creates can cost future generations this greatness. It’s impossible to imagine a world without art, but it might be wise to consider if AI will make it inevitable.

One of my writing clients has requested content that is packed with SEO keywords to attempt to rank their site better with Google. I assume they are trying to get more eyeballs to the site to push whatever they are trying to push.

As you might suspect, the content comes across as terrible. It is the kind of content I don’t think I’d want my name attached to. This is ghostwriting so there is no real fear of that but there is a feeling of attachment to this garbage that I can’t shake.

I wrote what was requested and I put a little time in to make sure it fit all of the guidelines. This all takes loads of extra effort. For that effort, I created a piece that was obvious and hollow and will serve no real purpose.

After I submitted this turd for review, I was asked to make it sound more conversational and less mechanical. Apparently, my perfectly human hands created a piece that flagged as AI. I already know what flagged it and it originates from the guidelines set forth by the client.

It isn’t for me to say what a client needs. In fact I can’t fault them for presenting exactly what they were looking for. But it is for me to say what I need from a client, and I think I’ll have to politely decline further work from this one.

It obviously sucks to have to turn any client away when you are trying to get some momentum but my gut tells me this is a dead end.

I currently have two writing assignments and I am struggling to find any kind of motivation to work on them. Yesterday I was in the zone for hours and able to get some serious work done but it feels like a different world entirely today.

This is when the effective pay rate of writing is hilariously low but I am under little pressure other than the self-imposed kind. I’d also like to work on my own stuff and this lack of motivation has had an effect there as well.

Tomorrow should be a better day but today I’m just not feeling much of anything.

Today marked the first time I’ve received royalties from the proceeds of my short story about dad. It was a strange mix of feelings when I saw the modest deposit in my account.

Does my interpretation and reimagining of events warrant a price, however small, from anyone? Can any story really do a man who was so loved justice? Does it make me greedy to monetize this experience? I’m not honestly sure how to answer these questions but I’m also sure I’m the only one posing them in the first place.

The underlying motivation behind releasing the story in the first place shifts for me. It was certainly a way to share my version of grief, but it was also an attempt to test myself. I needed to know I could commit something of substance to the page and submit it to the world for their judgment. It was the culmination of years of saying I was something and proving it.

But it was only a starting point. If I really hope to become what I’m meant to be, I’ll have to keep writing no matter the cost.

Submitted my first assignment to a new client this morning and now I just need to wait for their feedback. It can be hard to know when to inquire about payment if the client never brings up the subject. I don’t like to discuss it at all until I have submitted my work and that’s where I’m at now.

There is always an air of doubt to every new client. You submit your work and you basically hope that they pay you after you’ve requested. You have the right to refuse to do any other work until they do pay you, which is a handy feature of any form of freelancing. Right to refuse is a powerful tool for the freelancer and client alike.

So much misunderstanding can be fixed by communication, though. I always seek to avoid misunderstandings in the first place by maintaining constant communication with my clients.

Now I need to search for more to do. The successes I’ve gathered feel good and that’s a feeling worth adding to.

After applying to several different job listings, I had a second client reach out to me for a test. I submitted the test and the client approved and assigned me with work straight away.

This could provide nearly full-time writing opportunities with just one client, and definitely does with both of them I now work with. It’s more uncharted territory for me to explore and it’s also a new area of content that I’m not entirely familiar with. While it is cool to learn about new things, it is also easy to get bogged down researching a topic and have a tough time distilling the research into any kind of cohesive writing.

Another new wrinkle in the process has presented and that is a huge time zone difference between me and the client. That makes communication take longer than it should and I am in a holding pattern waiting for information on how best to proceed. I want to provide the best possible product so I have to wait for the info, but I want to be writing.

Time will tell if this client works out as expected and I’ll know within a few days if this is a good working relationship. Fingers crossed because it seems like a decent opportunity.

After a few months trying to find repeat business from a client I managed to land one that has given me several assignments and a little momentum. I’ve tested for a few but haven’t been the right fit for one reason or another. (My favorite was a client who said I write like an author, but essentially the content needed to be dumbed down. Part compliment, part constructive criticism.)

I’m writing about things that I don’t always have a lot to say about but I can at least compel people to action and potentially guide them to where the article intends to. As with so much work in the freelance writing game, it is all about directing people to places to spend their money. I have a decent handle on how to make that happen but it does still feel a little strange to be doing it.

To be clear, the work I am being assigned will not make me rich. If I get bogged down too long on any given piece, the effective hourly rate plummets, but it allows me to do what I love and get paid for it. This makes the work better than any job I’ve ever had.

I’ve never experienced this kind of win-streak and I’m trying to line up opportunities to fill my entire calendar. The work makes me feel good and I think I’m good at it. It is worth trying, I genuinely have nothing standing in my way.