Sunday, February 26, 2012

Extremely Loud & Way Too Close

Started a sunny, fairly warm (and windless) day off with Brunch With the Beatles.  The animated film Yellow Submarine was in the spotlight today. The Beatles dove headfirst into their catalog and came up with a rather odd grab-bag of songs from all over the place - the title number, "With a Little Help From My Friends," and "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" from Sgt. Pepper, the film's title song, "All Together Now," "Blue Jay Way," "Baby You're a Rich Man," "Eleanor Rigby," and the only song written directly for the film, "Hey Bulldog."

Called Mom while the second half of the Beatles show was running. I am feeling a little bit better right now than I did last week. I think I just really needed to get some errands done. I'm also under a lot of stress right now, thanks to a lot of hours and all the remodeling going on at work.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing classwork. The next part is going to be more complicated. My web site exists as an archive for mine and my friend Lauren's stories, not to sell anything. The assignment says to "evaluate your web site to see if it sells"...but it's not intended to sell. It's just a place to put stories so people can read them for free. I'm going to have to create a web site from scratch, and probably buy a domain name, too. I don't know if venture capital firms would be much  help for copywriting or freelance writing, but the autoresponders might. I don't even know how one would design a website for a copywriting or freelance writing business, which the class doesn't go into. I don't really know what I want to do for a business.

To be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if this was a bad idea. I'm not good at selling things, least of all myself. Not to mention, I really and truly do not have the experience required to be a copywriter or a freelance writer or any kind of writer. They require portfolios and editing experience, which I don't have. I haven't done any real writing in ages. And the final assignments require you to send press releases to TV and radio stations or magazines, ads to AOL or Yahoo, and find a business to partner with? I can't even decide what kind of business I want to do! I haven't done enough of the things I'm good at to be able to sell them.

Work didn't help me feel better. It was on-and-off busy through most of the night. They're still working on the back room, which means the employees are still eating in the cafe area and I still had to park my bike in the inventory area. I had some very rude people in the Express lane, including one older man who said he had hearing problems and shouted everything. He certainly didn't have problems giving me trouble. I just gave up talking to him all together and pointed to his payment. Another man criticized me for bagging too many cereal boxes in one bag. I was trying to make things easier on him! He could have been nicer about it. I don't know why I bother helping anyone at work half the time.

4 comments:

Linda said...

Sheesh. Our problem with our grocery baggers is that they never put enough in each bag. Or they put the cans on top of the bread. Too many cereal boxes in one bag? Cereal weighs nearly nothing; what's the problem.

I was afraid you might run into this problem. You do need some type of portfolio to freelance. Are there any colleges or schools nearby where you might post an ad offering to edit term papers for a fee?

Any online business requires its own domain. You really can't compete working off your ISP address, even if they allow subdomains. If you do decide to go for this, try 1and1.com. Their prices are good, they will get the domain name for you, and the price pays for web development software.

The hardest part is picking a name for yourself. How about "Proof Perfect"?

Unknown said...

You're a super big movie fan. Did you watch the Oscars?

Emma said...

He was afraid the cereal boxes would rip the plastic bags open. I could have doubled them. :P

Mom's suggested the thing with editing term papers a while back. I even made an ad...then got nervous and didn't post it. I thought it might be better to learn how to run a business or even if I wanted to do that first.

I didn't watch the Oscars, but did follow them online. I badly want to see "The Artist." ;)

Unknown said...

I think you'll like the artist -- it's an homage to all those wonderful old silent movies. And Jean Dujardin is super swoon-worthy.