I am poor and need work.
I’m opening myself up to doing commissions. Make me an offer and I’ll do whatever you need done so long as I’m able to. Web work, WordPress themes or upgrades, banners, proof reading, formatting that ebook into a nice PDF, whatever else you can think of that I can do.
Until I can find something, though, my brain is going into job-related-depression autopilot. Namely, I’m going to keep sending out resumes to every web job I can find and hope that something gets back to me.
Now, for the overly long back story of this. Yesterday, my contract with one job ran out. There’s still a little bit to take care of, but it will all be done by February 1st. That second job I have doing PHP and web design? That hasn’t given me a shift since November. I’m not holding out hope for more shifts any time soon, even if two shifts a week would essentially solve all my money problems.
Oh yeah, money problems. Due to various things, I don’t have much saved up. My mom’s in another country and not paying for my student loan right now. I was living paycheck to paycheck, but that option just ran out. Dad can’t supplement my income due to various reasons with his own job and, well, everything sucks.
My producer at that just-ran-out job has suggested I update my portfolio and brand myself for the jobs I really want. I’ve got a few problems with this suggestion myself.
Firstly, branding is incredibly disingenuous. Pick one thing and don’t deviate from that one image of yourself. It becomes a bit of a problem for me because I am a web developer and am perfectly happy in that role. I’d like to be a transmedia storyteller and work on that stuff, but I don’t know yet whether I’d actually enjoy doing that professionally or not.
The second is that I’m far more likely to get a job in web design than I am working for these few companies in town that claim that they’re doing the stuff I want to do. Do I really want to risk not getting the job I may or may not want?
Third, she seemed to suggest that I should take a month off. I cannot AFFORD to take a month off. I have too many bills to pay to take any time off to work on research of the industry and fixing up my portfolio to make it perfectly tailored to the potential industry.
And that’s not even bringing into account what transmedia is to the majority of the industry. Marketing and marketing only. There are so many games for the show or comics of the movie that do nothing to add to the narrative, making it just multi-platform and not any sort of narrative experience. It’s not a matter of what else can we do with this story in another medium, but a matter of what are the kids into these days and we can make it that too. The narrative is rarely extended and the experience is almost always hollow. But it gets them money, so who cares?!
Yeah, I don’t really like the marketing first approach.
Still, I was going to redo the portfolio anyway. Branding is going to go right out the window, though. I’m going to be a writer so long as PaperBox Books likes my stories. I am still a web designer first because that has done a better job of paying the bills than anything. I’m still interested in transmedia storytelling, fandom and media specificity.
I’m going back to applying for jobs and wondering why there was so much emphasis on getting an education if it does nothing to actually help me get a job to pay back said education.
Also, yes, I know I should have made this a lot more upbeat if I wanted commissions, but I’m not honestly feeling all that peppy just now.
