New Year, New Me, Yadda Yadda

I have wanted to write all of my life. As far back as I can recall, it has been the Thing I Want to Do. And yet, I haven't really been writing, or at least not doing the writing that I want to do.

A couple of years ago, I lost my job and found myself stuck at home. Virtually all of my experience as a working adult had been spent working in various retail positions. Some had been great, while others... not so much. But as an older guy who was suddenly unemployed, I didn't really have a whole lot to offer employers.

If you have worked retail, you know that a fair amount of it (at least in the jobs I worked) can be pretty physical. That was fine and I didn't mind it, but after working for 20+ years, I was a bit slower than I used to be and not only did I not want to keep doing heavy lifting for the rest of my career, employers were looking for younger guys who could lift more, move faster, and accept less pay, so....

After several months at home, I happened to post something about job hunting on Facebook and an old friend of mine contacted me asking if I was still writing. Her husband, as it turned out, had a copywriting company, and was looking for writers. Would I be interested in something like that?

Would I? Hell yeah.

As a result of my first chat with her husband, I found myself becoming a "professional" writer. I put that in quotes because, while technically true since I am being paid to write, I feel weird calling myself a professional. I mean, what I am doing isn't brain surgery, it's something that I love doing and have been doing forever.

Fast forward to today. It's been more than 3 years and I am still working with the same guy. Hopefully, we will continue for years to come, but as the months went by in 2020, I found myself wanting more and more to do some of my own writing. With that in mind, I started looking around for online sites where I could post stuff. I had heard about a few places that actually paid for that sort of thing. Cool!

I came to Vocal a couple of months ago and started a trial, ready to bang out a bunch of content, and promptly did... nothing. So what happened?

I realized that as appealing as Vocal is, it was lacking what I wanted: a fiction category. Almost everything I was seeing was non-fiction. There are exceptions of course, but I was hoping for a chance to post all kinds of stories, especially within the fantasy and science fiction genres, which have always been among my favourites.

Disappointed, I let the trial period pass without typing a word.

Now we are here in 2021 and I have decided to take another shot at it. I figure I spend time on social media sharing my opinions about all kinds of stuff anyway, so why not try my hand at writing a few articles here?

I am probably going to be all over the map, writing about any random thing that comes to mind. I don't know if anyone will ever see any of the things I write, but what matters to me right now is that I get back into the writing habit. If someone reads what I write and enjoys it? Great. If I make a buck or two on top of it, even better.

I might even write up some fantasy stories and leave it to the gang at Vocal to find an appropriate place to file it.

Maybe then I will finally be able to get that long-delayed novel written.

Edit: well, it looks like it's up to me to find the right category. I don't even know where to file this, though I am looking at... humour? Motivation? No idea.

Wish me luck.