![]() I started getting real clients, for real pay. I scoured Craigslist and job sites and gig auctions and sent applications to all sorts of people.Īnd it worked. So I started looking for better gigs and clients, now that I knew there was writing work to be had. I quickly learned not to mention I worked from my kitchen table. I quickly learned not to mention I had kids. Bossed around, degraded, condescended to, with jibes made about my having to work from home. When I did manage to grab a job before someone else could, I worked hard and wrote well. I struggled to get gigs - there was tough competition from more experienced hustlers. I signed up with the company, thinking I was so lucky to have this chance to pull myself out of the mess. I was a good writer.Īnd sure enough, there was writing work for me on the ‘net, work I could do from home that paid quickly. My older daughter told me she could look for work to help pay the bills.Īs a last-ditch resort, I turned to the internet. I had formal education, diplomas, brains, and skills, and life had been good. I’d had the nice salary, the paid vacations, the opportunity for advancement. I’d once had a respectable, safe job in a corporate office. I had been looking for a better job, but there were none to be had in the low-income/high-unemployment area where I lived.Īnd I couldn’t get a full-time job anyway - I was still on the waiting list for a spot in daycare. I’d used up my savings trying to make ends meet, supplementing as best I could with the money I earned from a dangerous part-time job that gave me all of 4 hours pay a week at minimum wage. I was single and alone, having left an unhealthy relationship, and I was living in a crappy, tiny apartment. I had two young daughters to take care of. I’d thought that when you start over, make a clean break, life was supposed to get better, right?īut here I was, out of money and out of choices. It was filled out and signed, waiting for me to bring it to the people who would decide whether I’d be able to make rent next month or put food on the table. The welfare application was on my kitchen table. Once upon a time, I found myself having to make some hard decisions. This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy - I’m literally a woman. You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.
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