I’ll admit it, I’m struggling.
Freelancing is not coming together as easily as I’d hoped. I realize now just how daunting it is to compete against hundreds of others whose ratings are better than yours. Well, I don’t even have ratings yet – you have to get the jobs to get the ratings.
Half of those people have just hired themselves and then rated themselves perfectly.
Yet, while I’m worried about paying off student loans, I do realize that I can probably walk out this door at any moment and get a job teaching English. Granted, it wouldn’t pay well and I may be shut in a room with 70 screaming 8-year-olds. After trying fruitlessly to teach them “How are you?”, I’ll probably just play Hangman with the first row.
I wouldn’t be happy there either, but then I’ve never thought your job should be about bringing you happiness. It’s about supporting yourself and others, even if you climb up into a garbage chute and get dizzy while covering the inside with oil-based paint – which I have done more than once.
But now I figure I have this chance, and this doesn’t happen often, to discover a few different opportunities. I’ve applied to editing jobs of several online publishers, and I’m considering several paths to get myself published. I could tutor English to kids from home, or I could take some “face-jobs” around the city, which are basically modeling jobs. Chinese business owners just like to stick a white face on their wall.
I’m not giving up on the loans or the freelance vision – I just spent three hours uploading a profile to a new website. But in the meantime, I think I’m going to see what else is out there.
