A Penny for Your Thoughts?

Written by: Andrea Angileri

I’ve always enjoyed writing on some level or another.  Whether it was a persuasive speech, a poem making fun of an ex-boyfriend, a desperate journal entry, whatever…writing has been enjoyable for me.  I did well in English class and even enjoyed a short stint as a writing tutor.  I am not always stellar with all aspects of academic writing, however.  I tend to do things very MLAPA (MLA and APA lovechild).  I never use a semi colon.  I go on tangents away from my thesis.  I want to put in something sarcastically funny.  I still have this theory that if I ever did opt to finish my project study it would have been the first comedic dissertation.  “According to the 2010 statistics of retention rates…blah blah..come on let’s just get real college ain’t for everybody”.  It dawned on me one day in a fast food wi-fi hell…”I don’t want to do this anymore!  I’m sitting at a McDonald’s listening to everybody else talk trying to research attrition rates.  This is my only 3 hour window away from my ankle clinging kiddos…I should be wandering around a Shopko or watching Netflix at Starbuck’s….or blogging.

I enjoy blogging because it can be about any topic of my choosing.  I don’t have to be tied into something I’ll dread.  Though I have before.  O.k. every person who discovers they are decent at something thinks about how they might make a buck off of it.  Oh, let’s say about five years ago or so I attempted to freelance.  Here’s my freelance story.  I joined a freelance site and began trolling.  There were a variety of jobs, so I attempted to look through anything related to motherhood or children.  I bid $50 on one assignment.  I was the lowest bidder.  I moved on to other things and forgot about it.  When I got the email of interest, I was ecstatic.  Yay! A writing gig!  Sure, sort of like my talk show gig…I didn’t even care what it was about…I was game for some excitement.  The topic was ‘Marketing Tips for Maternity Photographers’.  No expert on marketing, but plenty versed on maternity and pictures I pushed on.  So, the topic was ’50 Marketing Tips for Maternity Photographers’……at 300 words a tip.  That is 15,000 words.  I am no math genius, but thanks to my iPhone I have calculated that I would be making $.003 per word.  Seriously…not even a penny for your thoughts.  This is where the phrase ‘starving artist’ comes from.  By tip #20 I was like….”I don’t know…go hang out at a library during tot story time or something”.  I emailed my contractor and confessed that there was no way I would make it to 50, I was good with 25.  Because that was not the agreed upon content, and some of my tips were pose ideas, I would be pro-rated for $25.  The freelance site takes $7, so I made $18.  Wait…let me get the iPhone…$.0024 per word.  I don’t know…maybe my math is off…I did bomb my math placement test for community college…but don’t be sad I pushed on just short of the doctorate.  Anyways, somewhere is cyberspace is a very desperate attempt to be a freelance writer.  I just spent $18 at Starbuck’s blogging.  I am not making money…I am spending it.

Anyways, I’ve only been blogging for a couple months, but have really enjoyed surfing the web (do people still even say that?) for other blogs.  There is so much out there!  Lots of funny, lots of artistically beautiful, aesthetically pleasing blogs.  People know what they are doing.  There’s a lot of links and support and advertising.  It’s a bit over my head and time consuming.  I start reading blogs and then I’m remembering that Ana has only just started getting into Christian’s sadistic love contract or that my Netflix movie has been sitting on my dresser for a month, or maybe that there is a child staring at me breathing on my shoulder.  This blog was 669 words…I should have gotten $2 for it.