Posts Tagged ‘freelance’

Delaying a Project and a Good Review

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My “pays the rent” free­lance project load is such that I’m going to have to hold off on my “pipe dreams of the video game indus­try” project right now.  I’m going to shoot to start it up in November now (although I’ll be squeez­ing read­ing in any­where I can). It’s embar­rass­ing to have made that post on Monday and by Wednesday have to change my sched­ule and plans, but as always, my first pri­or­ity is pay­ing the rent.  I always seem to think there’s more time in the day than there really is.  I should prob­a­bly be work­ing more on my time man­age­ment skills (which really aren’t bad) before I should be work­ing on my game writ­ing skills.  Anyway, more to the point, I’m not see­ing a lot of work com­ing down the pipe right now, so I need to hus­tle some up.  If you’ve been think­ing about hir­ing me to build a web­site, now’s a good time.

In writing-​​related news, my story in Interzone issue 224 (on news­stands and in book­stores now!), “Godfalls’s Chemsong,” received a very nice review from John DeNardo over at SF Signal.  I’ll take 4 out of 5 stars any day.  The story is an exper­i­ment of mine to cre­ate  biz­zare alien biol­ogy and soci­ety using mostly real Earth biol­ogy traits that exist in real crea­tures.  I only impro­vised a lit­tle bit, and I’m pleased with the results.  I really should write more sto­ries like that, but they’re a bear to come up with.  But I guess if it were easy, every­body would be doing it.

The Trials and Tribulations of the Unemployed in Colorado

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I filed for my first unem­ploy­ment pay­ment a lit­tle over a week ago (Sunday, to be pre­cise).  I have since waited not-​​so-​​patiently for the money to arrive in my account.  As of writ­ing this post, I have yet to see a dime of it.

I have called repeat­edly to get a sta­tus from the auto­mated sys­tem over the past week.  Each time it sim­ply says that my pay­ment hasn’t processed yet.  It’s no sur­prise that the pay­ment sys­tem is under siege right now.  Thanks to the Bush Crash, we’ve got more peo­ple out of work than we have had for  quite a long time even in a rel­a­tively sta­ble state like Colorado.   Idiotically, there’s no way to check your pay­ment sta­tus online, so I am forced to call the sys­tem over and over again.  Today, I can’t even get through.  I want to know if there is a prob­lem so I can sort it out imme­di­ately. But I have no way of knowing.

It shouldn’t take a week to process a pay­ment.  Not in this era of auto­mated deposits.  People are rely­ing on that money to pay their bills and feed their chil­dren.  In our case, we have a lit­tle sav­ings to get by on while we wait, but each time they do this, our buffer against what I call “The Cardboard Box Life”  gets a lit­tle slim­mer.  And we’re bet­ter off than most.  I can’t imag­ine how a sin­gle par­ent is han­dling this system.

Filing for unem­ploy­ment in the first place is hum­bling and embarass­ing.  I felt humil­i­ated to do it, and every­thing about the process treats you like a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case.  The least they could do is make sure we receive our pay­ments in a timely fash­ion.  We’re not talk­ing about walking-​​around money here.  We’re talk­ing about rent and prescriptions.

Colorado gov­ern­ment, get your act together.  Speed up the pay­ment process.  Use some of that stim­u­lus money to hire some of the unem­ployed to bol­ster your ranks in the depart­ment.  Do some­thing.  A lot of peo­ple are hurt­ing out there, and you are fail­ing them.  You can do better.

Hopefully I’ll land this free­lance gig for March and I won’t need to col­lect unem­ploy­ment for the month of March.  It’s ridicu­lous how few jobs I am find­ing lately for which to apply.   Again, I say to you my most excel­lent read­ers, if you need a web­site built, or know some­one who does, please con­tact me.  (Yep, turned that post into a whor­ing post.  Many of my posts are going to end this way I am afraid).

Three Design Business Concepts

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am reach­ing a point where I think I need to brand my cre­ative ser­vices with its own web­site, port­fo­lio, and so on.  So I’ve been try­ing to brain­storm some busi­ness names and con­cepts I can design the site around.  I haven’t really hit on any­thing solid yet, but here are some of the ideas I’ve bounced around on my IM list and in my own head.  Sarah’s tired of hear­ing about them, so now you get to instead!

“Monster Stomp Studios”

Logo Concept:  A daikaiju mon­ster from a low angle, lift­ing a mas­sive foot to DESTROY!

Tagline:  “Small Studio.  Big ideas.”

Disadvantages:  I am not the world’s great­est illus­tra­tor, and I want a car­toony illus­tra­tion for that logo, I think.  Like a chibi Godzilla knock­off.  So I’d prob­a­bly have to out­source the illus­tra­tion to another designer and that doesn’t look good on my main work site to have done that.  I need the design to be com­pletely my work.  So if I stick with this one, I’ll have to really work hard in sketch­ing and illus­tra­tor to cre­ate a good logo.  I need to learn to draw bet­ter anyway!

Write Design

Site Concept:  Natural media, paper, pen­cils, inks.  Lots of edi­to­r­ial style marks on things, cor­rect­ing typos.  Focusing on the writ­ten word.  Great typog­ra­phy, lots of handwriting.

Tagline:  “Design solu­tions for authors and publishers.”

Disadvantage:  My con­cept is mean­ing­ful, but there are a mil­lion Write Design web­sites out there.  It’s too com­mon of an idea, and I almost cer­tainly won’t be using this one, which is sad because I like the idea of mak­ing a web­site with real paper.  Which leads me to the next

Little Fish Big Pond Studio

Logo/​site con­cept:  con­struc­tion paper!  Blue sea back­ground, styl­ized fish and other sea cutouts here and there.  Maybe some javascript  ani­mat­ing a few mov­ing around.  Masthead involves a bunch of lit­tle fish in a school,  with one solo fish a dif­fer­ent color out lead­ing the pack.

Tagline: “How do lit­tle fish sur­vive in the big blue sea?  They stick together.”

Disadvantages:  A few other design com­pa­nies out there using a sim­i­lar con­cept.  This one posi­tions me specif­i­cally as being a small busi­ness designer, which may be a niche I don’t want to put myself into.  I really like the design con­cept though, and now I just can­not help but want to build a site out of con­struc­tion paper cutouts.  It would look awesome!

Other ideas/​concepts that aren’t ripe yet:

  • some­thing that can play on sci­ence fiction
  • some­thing spin­ning off of Roundbottom?
  • some­thing super grungy and crunchy
  • some­thing that I can use my pho­tog­ra­phy skills for
  • Something about Kansas, using the tall grass prairie as a design element
  • dinosaurs! (no, I don’t know what that means)

It’s hard work being a cre­ative genius, but someone’s gotta do it.  Eventually, I’m going to hit on the per­fect con­cept that’s going to show my skills at their best.  I know it.  I just need a bit more time and thought.  Advice is gladly accepted.

I am Also On the Market for Writing Gigs

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I can string words together in a pleas­ing fashion

I’ve been writ­ing much here about how I am avail­able for free­lance web design, but I wanted to make it known that I am very inter­ested in pick­ing up free­lance writ­ing jobs as well, par­tic­u­larly within my areas of exper­tise.  I would espe­cially like to break into some free­lance blog­ging.  If any­one hears of jobs in this depart­ment, or knows of good resources where I can seek out said work, please drop me a line via email or in the comments.

Week One of the Freelancing (And Job Hunting) Life

This past week has gone very well.  I have now been longer with­out a  job than any time since I was six­teen.  But don’t think I haven’t been work­ing.  I am han­dling a num­ber of design projects at the moment (but I’m always look­ing for more).  About half of this week’s work was direct client work, and half of it was work I am doing as a sub­con­trac­tor for another design firm in the area.  The design firm work is at a lower rate than I charge myself, but I am try­ing to jus­tify that to myself with the acknowl­edg­ment that I have to spend less time get­ting that work.

I have sur­prised myself with inner strength and pro­fes­sion­al­ism that I didn’t know I had.   The expe­ri­ence is teach­ing me to be less afraid of ask­ing for things I want.  Shame melts away when you have the feel­ing that you have noth­ing to lose in doing some­thing.  There is a lot of fear of uncer­tainty in this pur­suit, but there isn’t that dread that comes with wor­ry­ing about your job.  You are your job.  You make your work.  It’s a direct level of con­trol of des­tiny that is refreshing.

I have worked harder in the past week than I have in years.  In a paid posi­tion, a lot of your time is spent doing tasks that are not the actual work.  But you still get paid for those hours just the same.  But as a free­lancer, you only bill for work on the project, so your days are longer.  You still have admin­is­tra­tive tasks that need to be done.  My finan­cial goals will never be set on hav­ing 40 hours a week of bill­able labor.  Because it would mean 65 hour weeks in reality.

The Health Care Issue

A large con­cern  is find­ing a way to get afford­able health insur­ance for myself and my wife.  We’re using COBRA right now (although I still haven’t received the paper­work, so it’s all out of pocket until such time as we can be reim­bursed).  The COBRA is dou­ble the cost of our insur­ance pre­vi­ously.  Sarah’s work plan would cost nearly the same to add both of us, on an infe­rior plan at that.   I’m will­ing to take any advice any­one has on this issue.   If I con­tinue to work as a free­lancer, and do not find a full time posi­tion some­where, then I will increas­ingly need to find a solu­tion to this prob­lem.   Going with­out insur­ance is not an option, given just the cost of our prescriptions.

What’s Next?

Learning to relax.  Learning that the work will still be there when I get back.  That is a les­son that I am going to have to drill into myself.   Finding more work is some­thing I feel con­stantly com­pelled to do right now.

Developing my plans and schemes into coher­ent busi­nesses.  I am draw­ing up plans to develop an actual design com­pany that will be my pub­lic face in the web world.  I am locat­ing other design firms in the area to offer my ser­vices.  I am writ­ing pro­pos­als and pitches for the pub­lish­ing indus­try that could be a big break for me if they go well.  I’m inves­ti­gat­ing the cost ben­e­fits of invest­ing in my own printer for photo prints, and seri­ously launch­ing my pho­to­graphic work for sale.  I think I have a lot of great work in my port­fo­lio now, and I would like to share it with oth­ers.  Getting paid for that would be a bonus.

Things look up right now.  I have a lot of plans, back-​​up plans, and busi­ness ideas.  I would love to have a 28 hour day to work on them, but if I bud­get my time right, I think this could end up being a very pos­i­tive life tran­si­tion.   The best part about it all is, I look for­ward to get­ting out of bed each morn­ing and tack­ling it all.

New Client Site: Susan Groppi

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My March project is now live.  There are still a few bugs I need to squash here and there, and I think Susan is still kick­ing the tires a bit, but it’s no longer a secret.  Let me know if you find any prob­lems.
I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. Be sure to check all the pages. They’re all a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, and the blog is com­pletely dif­fer­ent than the rest.