Be the Change You want in Your Life
- just me
- Jan 4, 2017
- 3 min read
So we all like to feel safe in our day to day jobs. Some of us even really enjoy what we do. There are others that enjoy what they do but it’s just the mundane regularity of doing what they know and/or are qualified at doing.
I’ve lost my job twice in my life. The first time wasn’t pretty and I spent two years trying to get other work. It got so bad, my family and I ended up living a one room for about five months.
When it happened the second time, I decided that I firstly needed to stay positive; and secondly take the opportunity to do something that I enjoy to keep me busy. Fortunately I had a little cash income to keep my afloat, and I will admit it was definitely the life saver for me mentally.
Previously I had worked as an executive secretary and then after many years became a senior project manager. I will admit that I love what I do, and the sense of accomplishment is awesome. With that I have had to take copious amounts of minutes (blah blah boring for my creative mind). This had helped me to have a very good command of the English language.
I registered with a couple of employment agencies and after some prompting from my friends decided to try this virtual online work everyone is raving about. Of course the Rand exchange rate helps us South African people, as we get paid in dollars. So let’s cash in while we can.
It took some time but I got an opportunity to start writing for someone overseas. Now as I am sure you can imagine it wasn’t a very high paying job. In fact it was dirt cheap. I had nothing better to do, so thought what the heck, let’s give it a bash. I produced over 150 articles containing 1200 words for $6 an article. So dirt cheap was not the word.
The subjects were interesting so I thought, let’s do this. It turns out that I was pretty good at it. After the initial five articles, they gave me 144 titles, and I had to produce 12 a week. I thought, 'yay' that’s cool. The titles though were all along the same vein and in my mind were the most boring information I could ever be asked to write on. The first article took me three hours to produce. Now at $6 times the current Rand /Dollar exchange rate of about R13 which worked out to about R78. See what I mean about dirt cheap.
The current rate for an article in South Africa is about R500 for a 300 – 500 word article. But hey, I didn’t have other work, and I was getting some experience doing something different.
It’s very easy for successful people to say, “oh you know I tried this and made tons of money”. At the end of the day, when you have a family to financially support, the stress of knowing that you no longer have a real income can be enormous.
I am fortunate that I managed to find other work, and found a new little passion that I can explore in the interim. In my quest as a writer, I came across quite a few people who said that they have always wanted to be a writer. I say, it’s never too late to try something new.
Now I am not saying rush out and quit your job for something that you think you may be good at. But as I tell my daughter, you are never too old to learn. If there is something that you want to do, try it while you have a job. Or if you have the opportunity to be at home for a few months, at least investigate the possibility of doing something you have always wanted to do.
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