It’s 7am here in Memphis and surprisingly cool. According to weather underground it’s 73 degrees and feels like 73 degrees. It’s overcast – just a wall of gray. The forecasts have been way off the last few days. The promised torrential rains and floods never happened. Well, we got rain overnight a couple of times, but not the daily washouts that were predicted. It’s not supposed to get out of the 70s today – I should find a way to spend some time outside. My friend Stacy invited me to go paddle boarding, but I’m not sure I’m up for it. This is the type of day where I can be overwhelmed by choice: paddle board, hike, long walks, farmer’s market, outside coffee shop, outside bar, etc. etc. Last night as I walked home, one of the bars had a band playing outside. They weren’t anything special, but man do I miss live music.
I know the other day I was complaining about what feels like a lack of time. Applying for jobs, interviewing, prepping for interviews, and chasing down freelance gigs have all shifted my attention away from the reading and writing I was enjoying a few weeks ago. I have a second round interview this week, and I’m hoping to make it to the next round on the other two jobs. This, of course, has me looking at moving options and thinking about these potential near-term life changes. Helping a friend think and feel through some relationship challenges and hours twiddled away reading the news and twitter and Facebook have also taken a bite out of my time. On top of those things, I haven’t slept well the last three or four nights, so I’m just feeling a little more tired than usual. I guess I’m feeling a little guilty for neglecting some things I’ve tried to make space for.
Projects
Last week, I signed up for a freelance marketplace to see if I could get some side gigs – though I suppose if I don’t have a main gig, these can’t really be called side gigs. I’ve bid on 22 jobs. My bid was not the winning bid on 12 of them. I’m being considered for 2, and last night, I got hired for one. This will also factor in to my “what should I do today” decision-making process. I’m doing a beta read of someone’s inspirational memoir. Basically I’m reading through it and answering a bunch of questions about pace and where the narrative slows or picks up, does it have enough humor, etc. etc. I won’t make a lot of money off of the project, but getting paid to read a book isn’t such a bad gig. It turns out the author was one of the producers of the movie Dolphin Tale – he was the CEO of the aquarium that rescued the dolphin. I suppose that makes him mildly famous.
One of the projects I’m a candidate for is a book of poems. It’s been described as short snippets and lines from letters. The author has published other stuff, and is an actress and co-wrote a tv series. So also, mildly famous. At least more famous than I am. I should know today whether or not I got that gig. It seems like it would be an interesting project to work on.
I’ve also been kicking around my own project – something that I think I hinted at the other day. It’s still in the hinting at phase. Yesterday at lunch, I ran my idea by Stacy. I gave her the origin story and a few directions in which the project could go. She thought it was both funny and worth pursuing. It’s the type of thing that could be completely ridiculous and a waste of time or could be just quirky enough to be an interesting endeavor. Either way, it would be a low-risk way for me to play with some things that I know very little about (e-commerce, advertising, crowd-sourcing of content, different types of writing, content marketing, and how to actually build out a web property and brand).
I’ll be the first to say, I pretty much hate marketing and branding. Ok, hate is a strong word. I just dislike the car salesman dishonesty about some of it and the constant hustle for the sake of self. As I read through some of these projects on the freelance board, I see quite a few that are looking for help with LinkedIn articles and building their personal brand. Everyone is competing for attention in an attention economy and much of it seems and feels superficial. I have never liked self-promotion. In fact, if I get the one poetry editing project, the author says my name will go inside the book. I’m inclined to decline that part of the offer – I don’t need my name in a book. However, what I do like doing is playing with ideas and testing out some of my own capabilities – as a writer, as an entrepreneur, as a person who brings different ideas together. In some respects, I still like to play. Which is partially why I dislike financial inequality. Money allows people to play and for most of my life I, and most of the world, have had limited resources with which we can play. This side project, if I pursue it, will be another place to play. It will be an attempt at being something all-encompassing and definitive – at taking taking one ridiculous concept and seeing it from a lot of different angles.
… and writing about and thinking about the side project has made me lose my train of thought, or more accurately has hijacked that train of thought, hit the railroad switch sending me down a different set of tracks. With that, I’m off to play.