I am at a crossroad in my life. About six months ago I walked out of a 9 to 5 job that was causing me months of stressful sleepless nights and days of dread. I thought, yes, I will finally try to pursue a freelance writing career from home.
For the next two months, I worked tirelessly. I had not given myself the chance to find a well paid freelance writing position and was simply ghost writing articles from home. While the idea of waking up in your pj's and being able to just type away and get paid sounds like a dream, the pay was next to nothing per article and I kid you not, I was writing about one hundred articles per week to make ends meet. I ended up writing for about 10 hours a day and as you can imagine, I had very little contact with anyone outside. It became a very isolating, yet rewarding experience.
I learned that under pressure and certain circumstances I had an incredible wealth of imagination and ability to create new material every given moment of the day than I had ever fathomed before. It also made me realize that if I ever choose to do such a thing again, I must really work hard and work up to such a step. There are incredible freelance writing opportunities available, however you must submit to many places first in order to be accepted by any one of them. You must be prepared for plenty of rejections or no replies at all. You must be prepared to work hard with little reward until you work up an impressive portfolio.
This situation combined with another business opportunity that proved to be unreliable propelled me in a state of financial and emotional desperation to contact my “adopted” family that I had been estranged from for the past eight years. While I had hoped for the best, this did not prove to be a successful event; too many difficult details to go into in one article alone. During this time, I was also the victim of a con artist who robbed me and damaged my property. You might say “When it rains it pours.”
I began to question God and why he was putting me through all of this.
With the pressing desperation of the need for income, I luckily went for an interview for a sales position and was called back the same day for the job. I was thrilled, but due to the stress I had been going through (and still was going through) I fell ill for a complete month. I not only thought I had an ulcer, I could hardly move or eat anything I had off and on fevers as high as 102 degrees. I couldn't understand after everything in my life, being abandoned as an infant to all the struggles I have been through in my life why God seemed to need to keep testing me.
Part of me understands now. Sometimes I believe when we get comfortable in a particular situation, even if it isn't the best for us, we need to be “kicked” or put in a state of emergency to make a move for the betterment of our lives. Unfortunately, this is true for most people. We sort of get used to the status quo and the only thing that propels us to make the important changes we need to make to enjoy a happier life is desperation and urgency.
Luckily, my new job was very understanding and I was able to start my second day of work and first day of training today, however, the relaxation of worries does not end there. The job was not what I thought it would be. I thought it would be quite straight forward. A straight sales opportunity, however, the sales pitch utilizes tools that are not completely honest and though the staff has said I do not need to use those tools, the fact that they are part of the company's training manual bothers me. I do not want to be a part of any company that misrepresents itself and blatantly lies to its customers and the public. This greatly troubled me today and has left me feeling stressed out again.
While I have committed to this week of work, luckily the first five or six days are have training pay, while the rest of the job is straight commission, it left me feeling very unsure about continuing onward with this position. IN addition, when I showed up to be trained the lady who was supposed to train me told me she did not know she was supposed to be training me that day and a chair was not available for me. I had to spend the next two hours looking for a chair. I did not end up getting a chair until about two hours later. I only heard her sales pitch four times and that was the gist of my on-the-job training. Tomorrow, before I go “out in the field” on my own, I am to train for an hour with my boss. This unprepared introduction to my new position is a less than satisfactory start to say the least.
