K.P. Webster's Blog, page 12

Day Nine :: Not Enough Hours in a Day

Greeting of the day!

I got a job application that opened with that. Imagine.

Greeting of the day! I have a years of experience. I am committed to provide grammatical error-free and unique content! I excel in writing!

But pity not those poor blighters. Neither pity the poor blighters who hire them. Instead, pity me, for I am out of time. Despite the fact that I am hungry like the proverbial wolf and champing at the proverbial bit, I must leave this land of easy proverb and head into the grey day to teach. Which is fine. I love this student and the lessons are a pleasure but frankly, I’d rather get on here at the moment.

But just look at the time! Again! Even in the past few minutes. It never rests. Even when you’re talking about it, loudly, it couldn’t care less. It just rushes past you like you’re nothing. Shameless.

Time. Seriously though. You think you’d get used to it after 17,000 days or so, but apparently not.

So. All I did today was read and listen and make notes. I say ‘all’, like that’s not the foundation of all human progress but that’s me all over. Gloriously, powerfully, outrageously humble.

Oh, my brain has gone awry. It’s the concentration. I’m sure it’s actually a very good thing to get away from the screen after seven hours. I’m sure there’s ample research to back that statement up, but I don’t have the time to look for it.

Anyway, to sum up, I am making progress. I feel it. But now it’s got the point where I kind of want to stop with the training and start devoting my time to finding good work. But I must be patient. There is much more to learn.

I will be patient.

I am patient.

Until tomorrow, which will be with us in a matter of seconds.

 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Gomez, time

Day Eight :: A Little Bit Wild

So this morning I finished work on the first incarnation of my Upwork profile. Have a gander if you’ve a mind to. Thoughts and thinly-veiled condemnation welcome as always. The title needs work. And you can hire me if you like. I also do haiku.

And I spent an hour this morning applying for a job. But it was a total pleasure. It was one of those off-piste moments that could go either way. You feel me? It was a concept proposal. It was the Sergeant Pepper of job proposals, the kind of thing that could make or break a man. We’ll see. It came very naturally, and it’s always best to go with your gut, I guess. Within reason.

I wanted to say, about this course. It’s reminding me of other periods of my life when I’ve submitted to a regime of sorts, such as Vipassana (which was obviously much more extreme than a measly five hours’ work before noon) and when I practised Nichiren Buddhism for a while. With the Buddhism particularly, as well as the ritual of the chanting, which I did get into for a while, there was the reading and the learning and the being excited by that new knowledge, as well as the feeling that you kind of always knew anyway, deep down inside yourself.

I also keep thinking of the most important thing I’ve learned from twenty years of teaching English, which is that teachers are not teachers at all, but facilitators of learning. It’s particularly true I think when you’re teaching adults. If they’re not genuinely keen to learn, no amount of teaching will have any effect at all. But if they’re passionate to learn, the teacher’s role is primarily to feed them, and to guide them and to give them order. And I feel well fed with those things.

That’s what I have always lacked. Order. Discipline. Doing this course and sticking to the timetable I’ve imposed upon myself, I can feel myself responding to it. To ordered learning. And the course is very well ordered, which is to say, sequenced. That’s another thing I’ve always lacked. Sequence. Thus far then, I am pleased to report, the course is providing the precise guidance I need to be able to give my best to all the stuff that I’ve always previously recoiled from.

So, a part of the upside of all this, the response to the order and the efforts I’m making, is that you just start to feel more alive. You have lots of ideas. My mind becomes alive to new possibilities and you have to force yourself to try and focus. Make a note and focus. And because you’re doing more and opening more doors and practising certain techniques that facilitate a more positive outlook generally, you start to get a bit manic. Coincidences fizz into life! Serendipity abounds! It’s like being stoned, but without the cotton-mouth!

Or maybe I’m just a bit manic.

Either way, it feels good.

As does the shirt I put on for the profile pic photo. I have grown attached to it. It’s my work shirt. I may even buy a second. The whole idea of making a proper job of it. It’s coming together in my head. My horror of business and finance and personal responsibility is, I feel, on the wane. You can be serious, it seems, and still a little bit wild.

Now I must go to Canary Wharf and facilitate some learning.

Anon! 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Buddhism, discipline, routine, Vipassana

Day Seven :: Getting Better

Today was very interesting. Most of it was spent analysing the competition. The other writers, all over the world, hungry hordes of them, glued to the internet, eyes peeled, homing in on the relatively small number of decent online jobs like a gang of modern-day zombies all sprinting after the same brain.

There is something that is quite commonly advised if you’re looking for work online, especially if you’re using an online platform such as Upwork, Freelancer or Guru, and that is to put yourself in the position of the client. Literally. 

It makes sense, they say, to post a job offer on these sites and monitor the responses you get. I personally think that unless you’re going to follow through and actually hire someone, then posting a bogus job offer is pretty unethical. You know? A little bit shitty.

But I did it anyway*.

And the results have proved absolutely fascinating.

The first thing you notice is that the vast majority of people applying for writing jobs actually find it difficult to string a word together, let alone a sentence. What’s even more interesting, however, is that the best applicants you get – the ones with the best reputations and the highest hourly rates – are really not that great.

I probably sound terribly arrogant saying that, but I have to be honest. I feel I could do a better job than everyone who’s so far applied for my job. I also think I have a clearer idea of how best to get someone’s attention.

But of course, the taste of that particular pudding remains to be proven. For now I’m still focussed on learning, so I’m not really applying for jobs with the discipline I’ll bring to the task when I’m all trained up. Like a ninja.

The important thing though, is that I’m feeling increasingly confident about my ability to make a living writing online. I feel, very strongly and without bullshitting myself even a tiny bit, that I’m getting better. All the time.

Now, before I run round the common, I’m going to attempt to persuade someone at the Evening Standard to recognise my existence.

Wish me luck.

Until tomorrow.

 

*I guess it’s not *that* unethical in the grand scheme of things. I mean, I don’t think anyone has lost anything more than 15 minutes applying for my non-existent job. Most of them much less than that. But it still doesn’t sit well. It’s still a deception. I’ll figure out a way to make amends. 

 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Freelance, Guru, The Beatles, Upwork

Day Six :: Bold!

I spent the weekend reworking my website so that it says ‘hire me’ a little more convincingly than it currently does. The results of this work, however, are still in my back-end. (Tenterhooks are available.) But it was whilst bimbling away in my back-end that I realised that the typeface on this blog, being a soft greyish black, was rather nondescript and weak. Pathetic even. And flimsy. So much so that my words – even when at their most scintillating – might still strike the reader as rather feeble. Like the words of a man with no gumption. Or spine. So I’ve fixed that. Did you notice?

Doesn’t matter. I noticed. And now, even when my words are at their most sluggish or half-arsed, they still sizzle. They’re vivacious, persuasive and bold. It feels almost like if you look at them the wrong way, they might leap straight off the screen and thrash you. Consequently, now that my words appear bolder, I feel bolder.

Bold! You feel me? I’m indestructible. Always believing.

Actually, maybe they were better grey. Maybe less piercing. I really don’t know. My eyes have gone. Please let me know if you have an opinion.

So. Day Six.

Today I spent most of my allotted five hours working on my profile for an online employment agency that’s predominantly populated by penny-pinching vultures out to exploit a desperate workforce. It features a proliferation of ludicrous, insulting job offers, including writing work that pays less than a tenth of a penny per word. Imagine! But there are also interesting, well-paid jobs on there. It’s just a matter of digging them out and pouncing on them. Like a leopard. On a dove.

Until tomorrow.

 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: CV, Spandau Ballet

Feedback Friday :: Focus

editors pitched :: 4

commissions :: 2

hours of training :: 30

ongoing commissions/projects :: 4

English lessons taught :: 4

new students gained :: 1

weight to shed :: 11 pounds

physical exercise :: 2 runs around the common

metaphysical exercise :: 2 very short spells of meditation, but it’s a start

week 8/52 overall rating :: 7.5/10

…

It’s been a busy week. I’ve been getting up at 6 every day and going to bed around 10. Some primitive, ignorant part of my brain tells me I’m missing out on something by going to bed so early, but I know that I’m not. On the contrary, I’ve got much more done this week than I have for a very long time. I admit, I kind of want to go on a two-day bender now and drown myself in booze and drugs and illicit flesh. But instead I shall go for a run, eat lots of salad and learn to touch-type.

A couple of months of hard work and focus is not a lot to ask. I’m trying to turn my life around. I’m trying to get responsible. Get off my back. Monkey.

I’ve also decided (I think) to move to Amsterdam in June. I say ‘I think’ because it’s difficult to know when an idea turns from a vague desire to a nagging desire to a confirmed decision. I know that I’ve wanted to live in Amsterdam since I first went there around 20 years ago.

So far, I’ve been to Amsterdam three times. One with a paranoid schizophrenic (my diagnosis), once with a girlfriend in the first flush of infatuation, and once by myself on a day trip from Antwerp during the ill-fated festival project. And I know that every time I go, I think how much I would like to live there.

Now that it’s come into my head again, I can think of absolutely no reason not to try and make it happen.

It’s also something else to focus on. And focus is good. Focus is what I need.

So.

On I get.

Good weekend to you.

Filed under: FEEDBACK, REAL LIFE Tagged: Amsterdam, focus

Day Five :: Don’t Look Back

Today I did a lot of reading and a lot of listening. A lot, you might say, of learning. All of which has made me realise how much more I have to learn.

Amongst the new skills I need to learn is touch-typing. After 20 years of typing vast numbers of words, I really do need to learn how to do it to the best of my ability. So I’ve set aside some time this weekend to get started. Because it’s never too late.

Today also came with moments of aggravated peevishness. As part of the lesson I worked through, I found myself looking at the websites of people who are doing what I want to do – writing for a living – and doing it much more successfully. As well as distracting me rather more than it should have, this also frustrated me and made me feel like a bit of a jerk. It made me remember the wasted years. They weren’t even wild years, the ones I’m thinking of. They were just wasted, as was I, and that’s such a sin.

But of course, it’s not massively healthy to dwell on the fact that it took me so long to get going. Much better instead to concentrate on all of the experience I gained whilst pissing around wasting my life and squandering my talents.

Hmm.

I admit I’ve still not quite mastered this positive thinking lark. It’s probably best not to consider the past at all. But if I insist on comparing myself to other people, I have to remember that as well as the ones blessed enough to know where they were going from the get-go, a great many people never manage to figure it out at all. At least I know what I want.

Well done me.

More generally, five days and around 30 hours into this course, I have to say I’m enjoying the forward thrust. The sequencing. It’s very well devised. Lessons lead naturally from one to the next and I’ll often find something on which I have begun to dwell addressed soon after I have begun to dwell on it. This is something I noticed with the Vipassana course too. It’s always gratifying to feel that the person to whom you have turned for help has a good idea of what you’re going through.

Now I really feel like getting away from this bastard computer. But I can’t. Feedback Friday awaits.

Onwards!

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Oasis, Tom Waits

Day Four :: Empty Lives Waiting to Be Filled

A lot of the course today was about marketing, which is my Achilles’ heel. And it’s a horrible heel, covered in thick layers of hideous hard skin, broken only by a rash of outrageous verrucas. Which is to say, even the thought of marketing makes me feel terribly uncomfortable.

Tellingly, this was the first time I baulked at a couple of the exercises, but I will prevail. I have prevailed in fact. Almost totally.

Also, I’m excited by a couple of ideas I’ve had over the past couple of days that are quickly becoming established in my head. Indeed, if I were to get nothing out of this course, I am already very grateful to it for inspiring me to come up with these. I’ll tell you what they are too.

One is a writing project – a big one, and I had sworn off big writing projects because of the poor money-to-time ratio. But there’s no hurry with this one and it’ll be fun and useful to research and compile. Essentially, I want to write a funny self-help book.

I know, I know. I can already feel your excitement.

This has been fermenting for a while. I’ve been thinking about the life coach trend, and such a trend definitely exists. Not sure what to do with your life? Easy. Start teaching others what to do with theirs. And so people do courses that teach them how to do courses that teach other people how to do courses, and at the heart of every course is the message that you can do anything you want to do, especially if it’s teach a course based around the message that you can do anything you want to do. I’m being glib, yes, because it’s fun. But I’ve been thinking about how this trend and this – shudder – market could be exploited. (Shudder.) And being funny about it is I think the way forward.

So there’s that.

The other thing is much bigger and is still very much in the early stages of consideration, but the idea excites me and I think I’m going to make a go of it. Ready? Drumroll.

I’m looking into moving to Amsterdam.

I’ve wanted to live in Amsterdam since I first visited in, I think, 1995. It occurred to me again recently, and I’m at the point where I’m going to have to lay down a root or two somewhere, so why not there?

I’m thinking, June 1st would be a pretty good day to aim for relocating. One, because it’s the day after my next birthday. Two, because I’ve never moved anywhere in the summer before and that sounds like a good idea. And three, because that gives me three months to organise myself.

That might not seem that long – suddenly it doesn’t to me – but there’s no point hanging around. (Thoughts of which got me thinking about the passing of time, and all of its sickening crimes….)

Oh, and I have another happy thing to report. There was a woman handing out leaflets outside Peckham Rye station yesterday about something called a Bike Train, organised by Southwark Cyclists. I talked to her for a minute, got home and pitched Peckham Peculiar, who want me to write a little news piece about it. They’ll even pay me a little money.

I’m kind of cockahoop. You know why? Because it makes me feel like a proper writer.

Until tomorrow.

Have another song. You deserve it.

x

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Amsterdam, marketing, Peckham, Peckham Peculiar, self-help, Southwark Cyclists, The Smiths, The Temper Trap

Day Three :: I Have Confidence

I just realised this morning (or rather, remembered, for I’d realised before) that I didn’t finish reading Getting Things Done. Which is kind of ironic. I need to add that to a to-do list.

Done it.

Today I covered a lot of material on Productivity, Focus and Organisation, which – like many people – are all areas in which I struggle. Particularly focus.

And it continues to go well. I am learning, and consolidating. Actually, the consolidating is proving particularly useful, as it’s reminding me how far I’ve come, how confident I am in my abilities and how much I have to offer a wide range of potential clients.

And I’m enjoying it.

I was listening to an interview with an Irish golfer about an hour and a half ago. He was talking about the importance of enjoying your … your thing, whatever it is. In his case, it’s golf. In mine it’s writing. In your case, I don’t know. But in all our cases, the thing that fulfils us and gives us meaning, no matter how important, is still merely a part of the whole. And really, you have to enjoy the whole.

Life. If you’re going to get the most out of it, you have to really love it. And – I’m happy to report – I really do. Over the past few years, I’ve become more and more aware of how much I do love my life and how grateful I am for so much of it.

So I was listening to this golfer fella when the interviewer mentioned something about a great day, when everything is going really well. I was looking out of the window at the time, watching the vicious rain pummelling the back yard, and it occurred to me that today might be one of those days for me.

Even though it was only 11am at the time, I knew that my day would include five hours of this training, which is very enjoyable and already filling me up with ideas (that are threatening my focus), and I’d also be teaching a student who I really like because she’s really enthusiastic, and that makes all the difference.

So I was looking at the rain and thinking, yeah, today is shaping up like a doozy when, at that very moment, there was a massive and totally unexpected clap of thunder.

It’s only thinking about it now that I realise I could have taken this as a portent of doom, as it might be in a hackneyed horror film, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. That didn’t occur to me at the time because I love thunder. I mean, I really love it. It excites me on some primal level. Just the (to me) baffling power of it, that it can get inside you and shake your bowels and then it’s gone.

And this was just a single clap, so I chose to interpret it as a personal message. From the Universe.

Yeah, why not.

So I’m having a good day.

I hope you are too.

If you’re not, this song’s for you. Embrace it. Embrace it.

 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: An Irishman Abroad, confidence, focus, productivity, The Sound of Music, thunder, West Side Story

Day Two :: The Change in My Pocket

Yes. The second day has gone well.

I feel I should say that most of the concepts and exercises that form the backbone of this course – thus far – are not new to me. I have come across them before. This is because I’ve been around a bit and I’ve kept my eyes and ears open. But that’s cool, because it’s not about novelty; it’s about structure and openness. Which is to say, the structure of the course – how these things have been brought together and are presented – and my own openness to these ideas. You can come across a very helpful idea every day of your life but unless you’re ready to engage with it, it’s about as useful as a chocolate Volvo*.

It’s like the change you want to see in the world is in your pocket, flapping about all loose and useless. You need to get a handle on that shit. You need to spend that motherfucker. (My metaphors have become mixed. And I am embracing that.)

Aside from the revitalising of the old, I am also finding myself excited by things that are new to me, such as Richard Wiseman’s work on luck and the concept of wabi-sabi. Also today I’ve been working on sorting out my priorities and figuring out why I’ve been holding myself back.

Actually, one of the main things that I think has held me back in my life and is kind of pricking at me even now as I write this, is shame, or fear of embarrassment. I see the two things as pretty much interchangeable.

This is something I’ve got so much better at over the years, but it still bothers me.

And now, writing here about what is essentially self-improvement, part of me gets embarrassed.

I don’t really know why, because it’s stuff I wholeheartedly believe in. I’ve learned a lot from forays into Buddhism and meditation and Positive Psychology over the years, and it’s served me extremely well and continues to do so. But there is a part of me which hears the mocking voices and derisive snorts of the cynical, and sees their rolling eyes and wearily shaking heads, and despite myself, very much despite myself, I still allow myself to be embarrassed.

I must remind myself at all times that I don’t actually have to answer to anyone, and certainly not to people with whom I fundamentally disagree.

…

Anyway, yes. A good day that I’m hoping will actually result in me taking on a couple of habits I’ve long wanted to adopt but never have because of a lack of self-discipline.

We’ll see though. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Oh, and yesterday I applied for a blog-post writing position on some ‘culture’ website. They got back to me and asked me how much I would charge for ten blog posts of 5-600 words each. I had the temerity to ask for a penny a word. (Which is bugger all, in case you were wondering, but probably much more than they are prepared to pay.) Consequently, I don’t think I’ll get that job. Consequently, I don’t think I want it.

(I do want it.)

Until tomorrow.

Be lucky.

x

 

*Please don’t argue with me about the usefulness of a chocolate Volvo. Arguments could be made, I grant you, but overall, a chocolate Volvo is impractical to the point of almost total uselessness. Accept it. 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: CeeLo Green, change, chocolate, Richard Wiseman, wabi sabi

Day One :: I Can Change

So I started this online training programme today. It entails getting up at 6 and working from 7 till noon every weekday for the next nine weeks. This is my own timetable.

Last night it occurred to me to write a little update at the end of every session, starting now.

I’m not going to say what exactly the training is until I’m either finished it or I give up and demand my money back. (It has a money-back guarantee in case of dissatisfaction, which was kind of key in my taking it on. I’m far too skint to go giving money away for useless tat.) To give you a tiny bit of background, however, what I’m hoping the course will help me do is find the necessary skills to enable me to make a living writing online.

Thus far I’m impressed.

Firstly, the tone of voice of the training materials is refreshingly frank and free from bullshit.

Secondly, simply working my way through the materials at the very beginning of the course has resulted in my joining various job-seeking websites. Nothing I didn’t know existed before, but nothing I had got round to joining before. (Actually one of them I had joined but more than a decade ago, when it had a completely different name. As did I. What a world.)

Thirdly, the online community attached to the course looks very interesting, and has already tossed up lots of new opportunities to make money from writing. Too many in fact to follow through on now, because I have to get ready to go teach.

This is going to be a busy couple of months. And about halfway through, when the clocks go back and spring springs into my face, it’s going to be beautiful.

Oh, and every day I’ll stick a song at the top*. A song with a pertinent lyric or two.

And it’s for me that I’m doing this. This is the best way I can think of to document this experience and make sure I’m getting as much from it as I possibly can.

So.

Here we are.

See you tomorrow.

x

 

*Some days I might stick a song at the bottom too.

 

Filed under: TRAINING