So whether I wanted to or not, I took a big leap last night. I was expecting that 2024 was going to be a notable life change for me.  Of course, what I have learned over the years is that when there’s a life change it never quite happens in a predictable fashion. More often than not it comes out of left field.

After a decade or so of freelance writing for a given service, I pretty much told my recently engaged employer to go pound sand. It wasn’t that much of a surprise in the sense that I could see it coming for months. What was a very lucrative part-time income path was degrading into something that was even less than minimum wage for the hours and the time I was putting into the jobs but, because I like writing and I’m good at it I still did it anyways and kept it even though many of my peers had dropped off and threw in the towel much earlier. Unfortunately, this last month I’m now at the point where even the futility of that is so shocking that I can’t put up with it anymore. On my last project I literally put in 70 hours at what was mathematically less than a McDonald's job per hour only to have stupidity thrown back in my face. There’s a certain point where you can only take so much and then you say enough is enough.

It’s one thing as a writer to put together material, and then a client says. "You know it didn’t hit the target. Here’s what I need changed." Great. Lay out the details with what the new specs are or that need to be revised, and we can take care of that. However, when a client comes back after they’ve given you assignment on something that is literally factual there’s not a whole lot of debate in the matter. It goes along something like this - a client assigns you a job to write about how a car moves. A car moves with wheels. It doesn’t fly. It doesn’t float. It travels from point A to point B with wheels. So that’s what you write up, and then the client comes back telling you, "Rewrite the article about the way a car moves and spell out that the car flies." Now, you know that’s flat out impossible. Some folks would argue with me and just say, "Screw it, take the money and give the client what they want!" But when you know the material is going to go up on the Internet for public consumption and will be used for marketing to basically convince people to buy a product, and you know the material is flat out wrong, you have to ask yourself, "Is the money worth your ethics?"

Now, I’ve done a lot of writing for a lot of marketing, and there’s no question that marketing bends the rules and pushes the envelope of the truth extensively. However, when you’re told to revise something that is an outright lie, and then you’re expected to put your name to it, it's a step too far for me. The client didn’t want to hear anything further on it either. It was, "Just shut up and just write it." So, in response, my attitude last night was, "Shut up and go to hell."

And that’s pretty much how I am now an unemployed writer.

So, I am, after a decade back in the same place of having to reinvent myself and figure out what to do next. I’ve talked about this before. Like I said, I could see this was coming. The writing was on the wall months ago, and now I’m here. I’ve taken that big leap. I’m on the other side, and now I have to figure out what the other side is supposed to be in detail.

I’ve got some additional skills, and I’m trying to learn more since freelance writing has pretty much gone the way of the buggy wagon, but I am literally starting over from scratch and trying to reestablish myself again. I could do web design. I can do a little bit of programming , and I can do an extensive amount of database work. But the hardest part is just figuring out where to start again. While I could throw my name out there, one more time, and pretty much try to be a freelancer, having learned my lessons over this last decade, it’s time for something different.

What is going to be? I am not sure at all. I suspect for the most part what I’m going to have to do for a while is basically just build up a lot of free content. On the other hand, I was smart enough to save all of my writing over the last decade, which totals up to something in the neighborhood of 20,000 articles. I do have some ideas as to what I can do with that content, at least in terms of static data, which may I could leverage with some affiliate marketing options. But again, I've got to put some details to the idea and flush it out.

I think the most interesting aspect of this new spot I find myself in 24 hours later is really the sense of freedom I have from the grind, the burden of what that last job was. I get it - getting rid of that albatross around my neck is probably one of the best feelings I’ve had with literally reducing my stress 1000 times. Of course, I’ve replaced it with new stress as well. What the hell am I gonna do next to replace my lost income source? That said, I would trade creative stress any day for the utter mindless grind of what my work was becoming.

There’s a lot of employers out there who are complaining about how people don’t have a will to work, and you just can’t find good help anymore. Well being on the other side of the fence, the help is there we’re, just sick and tired of being treated like shit and earning nothing for hours and hours of work. So, maybe it’s time to treat people better and stop penny-pinching for the sake of pure profits because, I can guarantee you, that AI computer you’re expecting to do all your writing for you is a piece of shit; even the programmers know it.