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Still just spinning my wheels...
Feb. 28th, 2011 05:05 pmI didn't do a whole lot this month. Three Bright Hub articles written, tinkered with my vampire story a lot, and otherwise wondered whether I'm still employed and whether it's time to find a new job or something else to do.
Basically the cruises aren't happening much in March, either, and now they're talking about April. And I might end up doing some tromping around in a marsh instead of an open ocean cruise - for less pay. (Not that I mind marshes, I'm the masochist kind of field scientist.)
On the other hand, I got phone interviewed for a job I didn't apply for. Basically, I applied for a job back in September right before finding the cruises job - and then heard nothing at all after the phone interview. Then I got an email from a colleague of the guy who was hiring, saying he had a position that resembled my resume. So now I'm waiting to hear back on a yea or nay for it in mid-March. If it's a go, I'll be moving to Alabama in late March. Really hoping this one pans out, and the chances are higher if they called me first, right?
If it's not a go, well, I guess I'll be sending out more apps. Because even if there will be cruises this spring and summer, it's too intermittent to pay bills on. I'm still going to need an actual 40-hr per week job. Preferably one that will let me go on the cruises too, but that's really secondary at this point.
And if I'm back to basically being unemployed again, I might go get a degree in statistics while I'm waiting around. Since I'm right next to an excellent university and all. Of course, that means taking the GRE and finding financial aid and other mounds of paperwork, and the earliest I'd be able to start is Fall 2012.
I guess we'll see what the fallout looks like by mid-March.
Meanwhile, I only wrote three articles for Bright Hub this month:
What is Soil Made Of? - this one I couldn't not pick up after I'd adopted Mechanical Weathering and Chemical Weathering last month. After all, rocks + weathering = soil, so of course it needed to be the third article in my series. :)
Dragons of Atlantis Guide for Beginners - 174 views in its first day. I think, now that I have three big hits all on the theme of "guide to a Facebook mmorts for beginners", that maybe possibly I should focus on writing strategy guides for Facebook mmorts's. ;) As for DoA, it's basically the same thing as Kingdoms of Camelot. And while the viewcount is starting to die on my article about it (it's not even going to pass 2k this month! noes!!), it's still at the top of my list.
How to be a good neighbor in Ravenwood Fair - basically I just wanted to write down some things that people could do on their fairs to help their neighbors get loot and complete quests. Naturally, since I'm prone to blather, it somehow ended up being two pages long... no idea yet how it'll do. It just went up earlier today.
Also, a couple new guides: Native Americans and yoga.
In general, I'm starting to lose motivation to write for Bright Hub. The pay breakdown seemed fair while I was learning how it all worked, but now that I'm pretty good at this SEO thing, and for a lot of articles I'm pulling basically all of the weight on writing, editting, SEO research, etc., I feel I should get a larger share of the pot. Maybe the editors are helping with promotion like they're supposed to be, but I can't really tell if they are.
<rant>
In one case I wish I could actually fire the CE, who was basically not there at all when I needed her to push something simple through her queue. -.- Eventually I had to get the ME involved, and lo and behold my SEO tweaking made a BIG difference to the article which should've started weeks earlier than it did, no thanks to it being held up in someone else's queue who was clearly doing nothing at all for the article and hadn't done anything editlike the first time either (why yes, I *AM* just that good!!). And I should also point out that I was not the one who had picked the original SEO for the article, the person who did pick it is crappy at picking good SEO.
There, got that out of my system.
</rant>
Anyhoo... overall I need to find bigger fish to work for, I think.
On the fiction front...
Well, my plan in January was to get a lot of work done on my Fortress Launne series, which is the one I work on during Nanowrimo. For some reason I have a lot of trouble focusing on it the rest of the year though. Instead I have other stories that insist on being written first. In particular, there's a vampire story that originally started in an RPoL game, that I've now got about 9 chapters planned. The first few are actually done, then there's rough draft versions of the next few, and the 9th is still basically an outline. At least it has a viable roadmap? I've been very very slowly writing this thing since 2007 or so and have no idea how long it'll be when it's done. It'll be whatever length it is when I get there, and I'll figure out what I want to do with it after that.
Basically the cruises aren't happening much in March, either, and now they're talking about April. And I might end up doing some tromping around in a marsh instead of an open ocean cruise - for less pay. (Not that I mind marshes, I'm the masochist kind of field scientist.)
On the other hand, I got phone interviewed for a job I didn't apply for. Basically, I applied for a job back in September right before finding the cruises job - and then heard nothing at all after the phone interview. Then I got an email from a colleague of the guy who was hiring, saying he had a position that resembled my resume. So now I'm waiting to hear back on a yea or nay for it in mid-March. If it's a go, I'll be moving to Alabama in late March. Really hoping this one pans out, and the chances are higher if they called me first, right?
If it's not a go, well, I guess I'll be sending out more apps. Because even if there will be cruises this spring and summer, it's too intermittent to pay bills on. I'm still going to need an actual 40-hr per week job. Preferably one that will let me go on the cruises too, but that's really secondary at this point.
And if I'm back to basically being unemployed again, I might go get a degree in statistics while I'm waiting around. Since I'm right next to an excellent university and all. Of course, that means taking the GRE and finding financial aid and other mounds of paperwork, and the earliest I'd be able to start is Fall 2012.
I guess we'll see what the fallout looks like by mid-March.
Meanwhile, I only wrote three articles for Bright Hub this month:
What is Soil Made Of? - this one I couldn't not pick up after I'd adopted Mechanical Weathering and Chemical Weathering last month. After all, rocks + weathering = soil, so of course it needed to be the third article in my series. :)
Dragons of Atlantis Guide for Beginners - 174 views in its first day. I think, now that I have three big hits all on the theme of "guide to a Facebook mmorts for beginners", that maybe possibly I should focus on writing strategy guides for Facebook mmorts's. ;) As for DoA, it's basically the same thing as Kingdoms of Camelot. And while the viewcount is starting to die on my article about it (it's not even going to pass 2k this month! noes!!), it's still at the top of my list.
How to be a good neighbor in Ravenwood Fair - basically I just wanted to write down some things that people could do on their fairs to help their neighbors get loot and complete quests. Naturally, since I'm prone to blather, it somehow ended up being two pages long... no idea yet how it'll do. It just went up earlier today.
Also, a couple new guides: Native Americans and yoga.
In general, I'm starting to lose motivation to write for Bright Hub. The pay breakdown seemed fair while I was learning how it all worked, but now that I'm pretty good at this SEO thing, and for a lot of articles I'm pulling basically all of the weight on writing, editting, SEO research, etc., I feel I should get a larger share of the pot. Maybe the editors are helping with promotion like they're supposed to be, but I can't really tell if they are.
<rant>
In one case I wish I could actually fire the CE, who was basically not there at all when I needed her to push something simple through her queue. -.- Eventually I had to get the ME involved, and lo and behold my SEO tweaking made a BIG difference to the article which should've started weeks earlier than it did, no thanks to it being held up in someone else's queue who was clearly doing nothing at all for the article and hadn't done anything editlike the first time either (why yes, I *AM* just that good!!). And I should also point out that I was not the one who had picked the original SEO for the article, the person who did pick it is crappy at picking good SEO.
There, got that out of my system.
</rant>
Anyhoo... overall I need to find bigger fish to work for, I think.
On the fiction front...
Well, my plan in January was to get a lot of work done on my Fortress Launne series, which is the one I work on during Nanowrimo. For some reason I have a lot of trouble focusing on it the rest of the year though. Instead I have other stories that insist on being written first. In particular, there's a vampire story that originally started in an RPoL game, that I've now got about 9 chapters planned. The first few are actually done, then there's rough draft versions of the next few, and the 9th is still basically an outline. At least it has a viable roadmap? I've been very very slowly writing this thing since 2007 or so and have no idea how long it'll be when it's done. It'll be whatever length it is when I get there, and I'll figure out what I want to do with it after that.
