The Gypsy Freelance Life

The word Freelance is taking over my LIFE! Being a writer, I've come all too familiar with the ways of the gypsy freelance world, but I never thought it would creep on over to my personal life too. Let me break down:

Gypsy = someone who moves around a lot, not stable, nomad. Also another word for crazy.

Freelance = Anything unstable, non-committal, not the real deal or full package

ME: All the above.

When I left the lucrative world of sales and followed my passion for writing, I left behind job security and 401K as well. Now I spend my days as a “full time freelancer” which is the hugest oxymoron of all time. What this means is a company entices you to work for them from 9-5 with the promise that one day you will be added to their full time staff. So you slave away just like a regular employee with no benefits, no overtime, and no stability. This will go on until the employee realizes the company never had the intention of hiring them on in the first place.

It’s fine I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a gypsy company anyway that I don’t really want to dedicate myself to. One example is the completely dysfunctional meetings they attempt to organize. Being that our main office is located in Los Angeles every few months the CEO insists on having a company wide meeting, where we have to be present via web conferencing...which never works right. They bribed us with lunch and we all piled into an office, strategically sitting out of the web camera’s view. The CEO commences to talk and we cannot hear a damn thing he says clearly for the entire hour and forty-five minutes. Instead we make fun of other office mates like school children. The people on the screen look like they are part of the matrix; they appear as huge unrecognizable blur of motion. The entire thing was a joke and waste of time. Admittedly I was amused at the end when certificates were handed out to people who managed to keep their job here for a year. That is just great, no don’t give us pay raises or bonus or 401 K, I want a certificate! What are we in kindergarten????? So now I spend most of my day here blogging to you and going on other interviews… hey I am just a freelancer right?

Freelance has also creeped over to my personal life as I find more and more of the guys I date want this similar type of arrangement. Meaning they don’t really want a “commitment” but would like all the perks of one. They don’t want the work that goes into being in a relationship but want me to cook, entertain, and be available when they want it. HA! All the work and none of the benefits…. It’s bad enough my career has fallen into this trap… sorry guys; there is no chance of it happening in my love life too. You missed the boat on that one!

Today is...

the beginning of the rest of your life! At least that's what the CEO of my previous job told me as he was letting me go. It was his way of easing the blow. He was a cool guy for a 50-something year old hippie/ ex-manager of Sugar Ray, now raising a seven-year-old. Ah, what a piece of work, but in any case that line always stuck with me. I found it applies in just about any situation, even here in blog world.

So here I am, my virtual new beginning thanks to the inspiration of my home girl Kim who told me ever so sweetly to "Just blog already and send me the link!!!!" Yeah Kim rocks... quite literally: www.myspace.com/kimgarrison

In an attempt to make sense of everything from dating to finding a decent job in journalism and anything in-between I will write here. You will read - and IF you are lucky, you might just be entertained....

Signing off till next time,

Curly sue