Sitting in a journalism class in the spring semester of junior year at Rowan University I decided that it was time to enter the blogging world. This was in 2007 when blogging was still taking shape as a new way of sharing thoughts and ideas on the Internet.
My professor had mentioned that I should start a blog, on the topic of my choice, because he loved my writing and thought it would be a great way to write outside of school. That spring I started a blog on WordPress called Baseball Is Life.
Since that blog, I have created dozens of different websites, blogs, and other online entities for fun and for my career. I was hired as a radio producer in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania spring of my senior year for what I thought was going to become my full-time job.
I worked roughly 30 hours per week outside of school, pulling a lot of late nights and long weekends at Metro Networks, the company that produces the traffic reports for KYW NewsRadio 1060 in Philadelphia.
While working there I began writing part-time for clients. I found this to be a very rewarding and entertaining venture. I quit the radio job in September 2008 to begin writing full-time as a freelancer. I’m not going to lie, I was scared. I was nervous and I was about to get engaged to my longtime girlfriend. Would this be a career that could sustain a family? I’d find out soon enough.
It’s been almost 10 years since I began working full-time as a freelance writer and I can honestly say that I’ve never worked a day in those 10 years. It’s a lifestyle, not a job. The profession has taught me quite a bit about perseverance.
There have been some lean years. There have been some amazing years. There have been a lot of arguments, tears, and finding creative ways to pay the bills. But, through it all, I have persevered. We have persevered as a couple. We have two young sons who are in private (Catholic) school, following the upbringing my wife and I experienced.
I’ve had to persevere through rejection, nasty clients, low-paying jobs and non-paying jobs to build the portfolio that I proudly display today. I’ve had to beg clients to send me payment months after a project was completed and accepted. I’ve had to get rid of some of my most favorite clients due to a lack of funding or other payment issues.
I’ve learned to look for red flags in job advertisements. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. I also learned early on that you should never have to pay a fee to work unless you are registering for online classes or buying books.
Freelancing has taught me quite a bit over the last nine-plus years. The greatest thing it taught me was perseverance. I now have a quality that will remain with me for the rest of my days because I took a chance on an unknown career and made it work.