Career Opportunity Falls By The Wayside

I forgot to put money on my green American Express card last night, as I was picking up a twenty pound bag of kitty litter, a gallon of ammonia, and a couple cans of cat food.

This meant that, once at the Uxi Duxi and online, I couldn't plunk down the seven dollars to join the Freelance Writer's Den, at the special "7th Anniversary" rate of seven dollars.

Has this not been the story of my life?

No, it hasn't.

The story of my life has been missing an opportunity like that, due to absentmindedness, laziness and/or procrastination, and then having to do things "the hard way."

Now, the Freelance Writer's Den would be 25 dollars to join, and, shucks, I am just a dollar or two short of that.

The Silver Lining

I decided to do the same thing that I do when I am shopping in a store.

In that scenario, I will pluck something off a shelf, after having done a meticulous price comparison, dividing ounces by dollars, perhaps. Then, as I wheel it around the store, I will brainstorm on ways I can circumvent buying the thing. "I can go outside and fill Harold's litter box with sand and dirt from the outside," I might conclude as I place the bag of kitty litter back on the shelf. "I can use dish washing liquid to do my laundry, especially if I add ammonia..." as I am returning the bottle of laundry detergent to where I got it.

I have often gone from having a half dozen items in my cart, to leaving a store empty-handed behind similar lines of reasoning. ...I can make my own Reese's Peanut Butter cups; I have cocoa, coconut oil, peanut butter, honey...

So, what I did was to look for a free version of the Writer's Den using Google.
Lo, and behold, by Googling: "getting started in freelance writing," I was able to find all kinds of resources.

Of course, I might find: Step One: Join a writer's group, such as The Freelance Writer's Den. For as little as $25 a month...etc.

So, I am doing the equivalent of filling a box with sand and dirt. I imagine that the Writer's Den has just distilled and organized a lot of what I plan to do into easy steps.

I found one particular site, run by a lady who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, where I have a 2 year history. Maybe she is my guru. My next step is to try Twitter for the first time and send a tweet to her.

I'm going to have to start proof reading my posts a little better, if I'm going to use this blog as part of a portfolio.

But, maybe I will want a separate blog to be my "writer's blog," I don't know...yet.

But, I am saving a ton of stuff to my drive, to be read this evening as the rain falls outside on a Wednesday night.

Lilly's Bunny

Lilly called me. Her pet rabbit is ailing and she has been running it to and from the vet -the rabbit veterinarian- actually returning the thing there after it hadn't eaten "on its own," as per her instructions to do so.

I feel like I am in good hands with Lilly, if she will drop everything she's doing to ambulate a rabbit to the vet first thing in the morning after discovering that it hadn't touched its alfalfa, the previous night.

She was full of "I love you"s and didn't want me to feel bad over the fact that our plans to swim in her pool last week fell through. I hadn't wanted to tell her that I wanted to go sell my plasma "...No, no Daniel, don't do that...you can get all kinds of diseases...don't!" on that particular Thursday when we might have swam, and then the next day, she had been mercifully tired after running errands, and then the situation with the rabbit arose, which spared me from having to rearrange my schedule.

I hesitated to tell her that I was at the Uxi Duxi when she called, only describing my location as being nearby "the cemeteries" and then mentioning that I was right by The Beachcorner. I had just started to mention how good their burgers were when she cut in with: "Oh, yeah I have it right here...the best burgers..." she had Googled it and was looking at pictures of the place. "We're all going to have to go there for burgers sometime, my treat, just you and I, and we'll bring the girls there for burgers..."

So, I suppose, had I mentioned the Uxi Duxi, she might have said: "Oh, no. Leave there right now. I don't like the looks of it...just leave, Daniel, go now! Don't ever go back there!"

She offered to house Harold the cat, should I make my trip to Massachusetts, so, there I go; one less worry.

She said that her daughter -she didn't say which one- was thinking about going to Boston. She also warned me to watch out for cars, because someone she knows just got hit by one. So, they are out there, hitting people, I guess. I consider myself as having been warned.

So, I guess I will go back to the apartment and sit and read as much as I can about the possibly rewarding field of free lance writing. I at least want to get an overview, as I now feel like I have plummeted from space and landed in the middle of the freelance writing rain forest, and can't decide in which direction I want to start to machete in.

I have downloaded more music from the band Yes after placing them on my top ten favorite bands list.

Yes!

There's is a fascinating story, about how they started out and then wound up upgrading their musicians, replacing an adequate guitarist with Steve Howe because, in the words of Jon Anderson "He knew way more chords" than the guy they had. Then bringing in Rick Wakeman to replace a keyboard player who was reluctant to play a synthesizer.

It's interesting to listen to their first albums, played by musicians whose days were numbered, and to hear how the dynamics of Jon Anderson the singer and Chris Squire the bassist remained a constant force which kind of attracted the caliber of talent to them that culminated in the production of some of their best music in the nineties.

So, the official Yes website has a section where each member gives a playlist of the 15 songs that influenced them the most. For example, the late Chris Squire lists "All My Loving," by The Beatles (live version) as being one of the first songs that he learned on the bass as a kid.

I've gotten the idea of putting together a music library consisting of each of the Yes band member's top fifteen influential songs, which would give me almost a hundred songs to listen to.

Then, I could take it a step further and try to find out how many musicians list the band Yes as one of their top fifteen influences.
So, if say, Phil Collins listed Yes as being one of his influences, then I suppose "What's Going On?" by Marvin Gaye (one of Chris Squires influences) would be one of Phil Collins grand-influences. It would be an interesting way to compile a playlist.

And, I guess it is quite possible that bands might have been influenced by each other.


I'm going to address my issues surrounding procrastination once and for all, very soon; I have determined that.