Graduating Again?

So, I might be graduating again.

This time from safety.

It seems to me that all the sayings which dance around the truth (that greater risk can mean greater reward) forget the importance of the risk portion of the idiom. Using my time to write, be it KitchenAid articles for an Australian contractor, or blog posts for my own website development, has helped me realize the danger which exist with each and every venture we undertake.

It would have been so much easier to pursue a "normal" job. I mean, knowing the hours you will have, the money you will make, and the time you will spend is a comfort, a hedge against the fledgling economy. Even in that action, however, there exists hazard. If you lose your "normal" job, where does the next month's rent come from? If you don't receive a raise, will you ever move on? All actions come with threats to safety, and no amount of plans can guard against them all. There is, however, reward for the risk.

You blow the yellow light, you might get to the movie on time. You blow the red light, you might find the metal of your car twisted into another. Was the risk worth it? I guess it might depend on the movie. I find that calculating the costs and benefits can be a great arrow of direction, but that even that can spin us towards a winding path.

If, however, you refuse to stay in that twisted direction, in that doldrum of progress, risk becomes nearly non-existent. I have felt my hair stand on end, and it always, always sits back down. Take the risk because, after all, what is there to lose?

The Real Life: Money Money Money (and freelancing)

In this world, living costs money. I graduated from naivety a few days ago, only to walk into a distaste for reality. While freelancing I wondered, "are the articles I am writing about car insurance, Kitchenaid products, and paint drying on walls worth the time?" The answer is no. It's worth money, money that pays for me to live in this day and age. Money to buy Cheetohs, pay loan bills, and, of course, purchase classics tunes like this one:

So, after five hours of existential crises, I went back to freelancing. It had to be done. Really it did. I couldn't live on the side of the street, not because it was impossible, but because it was illegal. I couldn't go live in the woods, because I didn't own any forests. I couldn't even sleep in my car, because we are required to keep up with auto insurance. Auto insurance alone would cost me five to ten freelancing articles. No, living without money is not only frowned upon, it is illegal. I am, for all intensive purposes, tied to the system. That's okay, we all are.

Really, it's okay, we all are. 

A Working Man?

Yeah, I guess you could call me that. Today is the first day since obtaining my diploma that I was paid for my writing. Yes, paid. Ricaris, you good people. Did that last sentence include improper structure? The answer is hellz yes. Sorry, had to clean myself of grammar. Guhhhh.

Technology came through for me, and I hope it continues to down the road, much, much further down the road. It is not, however, just technology. This writing thing, it takes work. Money does not come easily, and neither does the perfecting of a skill.

Work, although it is work, can also be enlightening. Karl Marx once discussed in his article "The Alienation of Labor" the idea that exchanging time for labor is essentially exchanging life for goods, very obviously an uneven trade. What Marx might have missed, however, is that if you work, if I work, not only for the compensation, but for a reason beyond it, work can be opposite of alienating, it can be humanizing.

Striving forwards, focusing on something beyond the immediate, gives us momentum to move. Doing for the sake of doing can be of the most debilitating of lives. Doing for the sake of progress, the most invigorating.

I work, and will work, for something more, for something better.

The Freelance Life...or Something Like It

So, tomorrow I might be graduating unemployment. I know, I know, no ice-cream cake for this one. But hey, a little cash is still cash. I am experimenting with a freelancing site called Odesk, and have a contract through a company named Ricaris, based out of Barcelona, Spain. The frightening thing is, however, the thought of writing 100 articles about software for people I have never met.

Technology has changed peoples lives for centuries. Man-made light extends work days. Planes connect continents. Internet links everyone. Here I am, in the middle of all of it, hoping not to be swallowed by the tide of technology. This does not, however, feel unique. I am guessing that whoever is reading this has experienced something like it, something close to floating on a boat without a clue as to where that boat came from. Maybe not, maybe it is just me.

Despite these concerns, these out-on-a-limb, hanging-from-a-hair, fire-looming-below feelings, I push ahead. Because really, what else is there to do? Sit back and wait for something? Join the majority in an occupation that sucks life directly from the employee, compensating them for their time with ephemeral goods? No, that will not do.

It's pretty easy to fall when trying to make it on your own, but it's also much easier to pick your own direction when you get back up.

Oh man, oh man, oh man I hope I get paid.

(please excuse the paradoxes within this article:)   

College is over...and now what?

Well, now I am able to use ellipses (the dots in the title...duh), read what I want, and not feel guilty about skipping out on that one thing that one night next weekend. Yeah, college life is over for me, and surely something will come my way. Surely. Right?

I graduated last month with a happy, yet panicked view into my own future. Would my life continue to contain tuna and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the indefinite future: possibly. Could I make it as a writer: unlikely. Should I try: most definitely.

So I have graduated from one life and moved into another. This trend will not stop here. I am now in the school of the unemployed, and plan to finish with this major sooner rather than later. Eventually I will join in on the school of world travelers, home ownership, even family life. The graduating never ends; it starts in kindergarten, continues in eighth grade and high-school, and picks up from there. What's the difference between kids in school and us, us twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty somethings? We don't get ice-cream cake and cards full of cash when we find a job, spouse, or house.

We get bills, taxes, kids, groceries, houses, cars, medical care, dental, and all those other adult joys.

But we never stop graduating.

We never stop learning.

So here's to that.