First Job as a Freelancer

A month or so ago I applied to a freelance site called http://www.elance.com I had been out of school for about half a year and out of work for even longer. After applying and failing to get any jobs for the past 6 months I couldn’t take it any longer and decided to look for “something” online. My girlfriend suggested http://www.snagajob.com, which seemed good at the time, until no one ever called me back. I filled out every single position I could: Manager, Assistant Manager, Cashier, Server, Dishwasher, Cook, Bathroom Cleaner and when I never got hired in one of these jobs, I realized that the lack of jobs in this country really is bad.

So I looked online, and call it greedy but this blog is also one of the works in progress. Don’t get me wrong I love writing, but I also want to make a living out of it. My dad has always told me throughout my life “Whatever you do chino (I’ll tell you the story of my nickname another time), do what you like. There’s nothing worse than a man going to work and do something he doesn’t love. If you do what you love, you’ll be successful”. It was until lately that I had really started to do what I like, because I wasn’t quite sure of what it was.

But because it’s little hard to get recognized by writing, there’s just so many people that do it because its right there, in your room, you just need to get the will to do it, a will I lacked the last couple of days.

It’s not unexcused though, I frankly had no time to write. Last Wednesday I started my work at the bank, and Monday I went back to work. When I first started this blog I was out of a job. I started strong, with so many words. The everyday practice of journals and stories were keeping me together in writing, and then I also got my first freelancer job.

For those of you who don’t know how some of these freelancing websites work I’ll tell you. A client posts a job they need done. A contractor “bids” on the job and submits his proposal, completion time, and price. But wait, it’s not just one contractor… IT’S MANY. Any freelancer will tell you the mean competition there’s for online jobs nowadays just like regular jobs. So I offer my services as a translator, I speak Spanish perfectly and can write it well. I thought it was the best chance. However it’s not a guaranteed job, English-Spanish-English translations are one of the most bids jobs on freelancing websites. There’s literally people, refreshing the page waiting for a translating job to be posted, after a while you know who are going to be your main competition.

Signing on this site wasn’t easy though. Its not like I signed up and applied right away, no sir. There was a procedure to go through, I had to edit my profile, create sample work, confirm my telephone number, add where my funds would go, take a test understanding the terms of agreements in the jobs, i had to take a translating test! And on top of that I didn’t have the job guaranteed, it really was a long process.

So after a month of bidding for jobs I finally got one, my first online job as a freelance translator. $80.00 for a simple job that would take a day or so. It’s not so bad, to do it from the comfort of your home, taking breaks when you want, working on Microsoft Word. It’s as close to writing to get paid as it gets. The problem was, The job was due on Thursday, and I only had Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday to do it. Any other day this would’ve been fine, but I had just got my job. So I had to work from 7-4p.m. get home at 5p.m. then work for about 4 hours on my translating job.

I ended sleeping at 12 a.m. and getting up at 6a.m. to get ready for the bank again. This was really affecting my health. Lack of sleep, headaches, the turnaround was a little too brisk for me. I went from not working for months to working nonstop for days… No good. AND on top of that I got a cold on Tuesday morning. I felt like lightheaded, cold, with a runny nose which wouldn’t stop running. And I still had to get home and work, there was no break. During this time many things happened, ideas for stories came, from real life too. Things like a drunk man on drugs yelling outside in the neighborhood at 12.a.m. saying how he was going to kill himself and reciting the Declaration of independence word for word. The cold also gave me awesome new ideas for my Zombie story, which I’m editing, which is a mess at the moment but I’ll get around to it. I also got to hear how surgeons talk, what a hospital cafeteria is like, I imagined the hospital empty and I sitting by myself and I got another idea…

Oh another reason why I haven’t been writing much on here is that I have a little project going on writing the quest line for a videogame someone is in the process of making, however since it’s top secret I can’t let loose of them on public, not like many would read it anyway. But it’s cool, I like that part, I want to write this text and look back someday at this game, if it ever makes it on the market, and say: “Hey, I wrote the quest line for that game” That would be awesome.

However back to the freelancing job. Thursday morning came, when my client sent their review and loved my job and I got my $80.00, oh man did that feel good. I felt like doing it all over again. I guess the lesson is after trying hard enough things will come to you. And sometimes they will come out altogether at you, and this tests you if you can take the pressure or if you’re going to break out and fail. But you don’t want to fail, you want to succeed and you do everything in your hands, give away your sanity, your sleep, your time in order to do so… Sometimes it’s the only way.

Anyways I wrote this because I feel to let out of somethings, to let my writing flow because I need my practice back, to be able to move on with my stories and quests and jobs. I shall get back to this blog good this weekend, of course unless I get another job, which I hope I will, because I’m really into the whole freelancing too. So many things it’s very exciting, the only thing that’s not so much is this cold, I can’t wait for that one to go away.

– Zogyark

January 18, 2012 – First Day as a Teller

I woke up at 6.a.m.  I washed my face ,I dressed, and I washed my face some more. I helped my 7yr-old brother with his sentence structure homework, something like… El Matador taunted the bull with his red cape. Lately his homework has been doubled by his teacher so he ends up not doing half of it until the morning. Some people would be nervous at their first day of work as a teller. But I’ve done enough to know better than to show lack of confidence at a job, or at anything for that fact. Doubt is a mean enemy that you don’t want on your side. 

To be honest, I didn’t do much for my training. I tried to do as much as I could and offered my help. My first jobs were something like: put this there, cut and print these papers, put these papers in envelopes, put those envelopes in that box, etc. etc. Pretty much a helper boy, it was my first day of training. at 11:30 we played some jeopardy about Christmas (awesome huh?)  and i got 2 out of 10 right, almost three but I don’t know why I picked octopus instead of oysters. What would any of those two things have to do with Christmas you wonder? Take a good guess.

at 12:00 we had lunch break, so I got some exploring to do. You see I work inside a hospital, and my bank is the smallest bank unit I’ve ever seen. It’s a little smaller than a double mobile home. I found the cafeteria and asked my way around on how things are done there, I used to be shy of asking such things, but not anymore. Go figure if you don’t ask and just stand around you’ll look even like a bigger fool. I took my hour and a half break (ehem, I mean hour break) and returned to the office at 1:30. I went inside and my co-worker started teaching me the basics of the computer system that I’d be using. After a few easy jobs, I would watch as they took customers in at 2:00p.m. Yes the bank opened at 2 and closed at 5. So I watched how they did stuff, but these guys were fast. I mean fast as like the skill of a Piano Player when he knows how to read sheet music like if it’s nothing and may place any piece at any time, or the skill of a call of duty player that’s been playing since the first game came out. These guys have had over 7 years of experience and it will be a while until I start catching up with their speed.

Once we were done, I said my farewells and went home. I won’t have work until Monday so I’ll have time to continue on my projects or start a new one since I tend to jump from topic to topic. I noticed the change though. I was busy all day, I came home hungry, tired, with a headache and time went by just like that. I still want to do a lot, I want to write (or do i mean type?), I want to continue searching for online jobs, but I also want to give in and lay down and fall asleep like normal people for once. The average person is said to fall asleep in 7 minutes, bullshit I thought. But today, just for today, maybe they’re right.

– Zogyark