WORKING MOM

I took the babeola to the zoo today where she was enamored by a) other kids and b) a rock-like chunk of concrete. Lions, flamingos, and condors are just so not cool.  Eh. I bought a year membership so maybe, with time, she'll notice something besides the masses and the concrete jungle.

In other news... freelance writing is an insane amount of work and it pays poorly. I'm feeling a little burned out and also looking at other, easier ways to make money online. Since I am not hot enough to do nudie type internt things, I'm hoping to start some monetized niche blogs. I also plan to continue with the ad revenue writing for a while until I am sure it is or is not profitable.

Ironically, one of the reasons why freelance writing pays so little is due to ad revenue sharing websites. That and people in India who provide online content for like a buck because, despite what the US Department of Education maintains, grammar and spelling are really not important. All that matters is whether or not someone clicks an ad.

I have 5 articles due on Monday and then I'm taking a break from up front pay work. One of the things that really bothers me about up front work is they want instant turnaround. I was looking at signing up with another content service, but they want 2500 words in 48 hours, which includes keyword research, topic research, product research, writing and editing. I sat down last night and roughly calculated how much free time I have each week and yo, I have like 20 hours of downtime a week, if I'm lucky. 20 hours in which I must tutor, do tutor paperwork, work out, run errands, blog, relax, and eat.  For me to write 2500 words in 2 days is impossible, I can't handle that kind of deadline.

Well...if let the babeola watch TV all day, everyday and I stay up until midnight, I can get more work done. Except that really starts to run me down because I don't get to sleep until 1am and then the babeola is screaming morning revelry at 7am. Not to mention the brain frying TV addiction. So freelance writing is not the easy mom friendly solution it is cracked up to be. However, there is money to be made. If I can find a happy balance between deadlines and my ability to do the work, things might be good. Lately, the whole thing has just been stressing me out big time though.

I'm really crossing my fingers that the ad revenue share work pays off. Tons of people are supposedly making $500 a month or more. From what I understand (and I've read 3 books on the topic now) there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do it too. Plus, there are no deadlines.

My moles were all normal by the way. So yay for no cancer or pre-cancer. I am laughing though because Kaiser is so damn cheap they didn't shave my nape, just cut the mole off and slapped a bandaid over my hair. So the bandaid didn't stick well enough to cover the wounds and migrated as my hair and neck moved. One of my moles, they couldn't figure out how to bandage due to hair, so I got nothing.

I'm of the thinking Kaiser is lucky I didn't pick up an infection. I really do wonder at their business model. In the aggregate they may save money, but I question at what risk to patients.

Oh! And the Mother's Day epilogue. I got some perfume. Not wrapped. No card, but I think that's the best the husband could do given his obvious holiday disability. Christmas is a nightmare of a similar nature. Thankfully, the husband is pretty spectacular on non-holiday days and I think I'm just going to try and be grateful that holidays aren't that prevalent.