The Flip Side of Unconventional
It’s not easy being freesy: Unconventional doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
Aug 6, 2021
It’s not easy being freesy: Unconventional doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
It’s not easy being freesy: Unconventional doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
The first time I ever thought about striking it out on my own as a professional freelance writer, you know what held me back? Not “fear.” <–Gaaaaad, the overuse of this word can eat my armpit. Not a lack of conviction in my abilities. Not imposter syndrome.Not the fact that I had no fucking idea what a “copy deck” was, or how to make one. You know what it was? The Winner’s Circle Sports Bar in Exton, Pennsylvania. THIS PLACE.
Once upon a time when I was young and naive and still believed “liquor before beer, you’re in the clear,” I also believed that I needed to have 800 items in my portfolio before anyone would “take me seriously.” Oh god. That fucking phrase. 🙄 That fucking phrase turns so many brilliant creatives into boring nobodies. The thing is, when you’re young and inexperienced in business, you still assume that the people in charge are, you know, relatively important. You
Last night we watched LOVE, SARAH, a movie on AppleTV about a dead woman’s child, mother, and best friend all banding together to start the bakery of aforementioned dead woman’s dreams. The movie takes place in Notting Hill, London, which is obviously the first reason why I wanted to watch it. The second, however, was that I wanted to watch them do it—which is unfortunately not as kinky as it sounds, but alas, as someone who is obsessed with business
I once met a guy whose job is to gut dead poodles and freeze dry their corpses—and I didn’t even get this luminary’s phone number. I know, the recklessness in it all! If I may offer some advice, anytime you meet someone with a business card that says, “We won’t turn your poodle into a puddle,” you follow up. At the very least, you’ll (finally) have a tip to submit to Unsolved Mysteries one day. Anyway, our poodle pal here
SIX-HUNDRED DADDIES. That’s my shorthand for “dollars.” I don’t know why or when it started. Actually, just kidding, it just started right now. Not because I have daddy issues or anything (though clearly I do). SIX HUNDRED DADDIES was what I paid. Six-hundred! And you know why? Because I just had to import a slab of wood the weight of a small ocean liner. I just had to to send a ninety-million-hundred pound box all the way to the jungles
You ever see people that look like your dead relatives and then you CAN’T STOP STARING? I do that a lot. Like this fall, in Dublin, when I creepily tried to take a photograph of a total stranger in a pub without his knowledge by casually waving my phone around in the air—#PROTIP: do not drop mid-operation—because I was convinced he looked like the spitting image of the one photograph I have ever seen of my father. This
BLINDFOLDED PILLOW FIGHTS. That’s what people are resorting to. Putting their hoodies on backwards with the hood part over their face and then trying to whack their spouse with a giant down-stuffed rectangle as they bumble around the living room. (And somehow managing not to knock over the five-hundred porcelain gnome figurines, which I just assume these people have in their house.) I watched that yesterday and you know what I thought? These people need an online business! Or I
Her name was Karen, and Karen did NOT like me. At least, that’s how I took it the day my application came back DENIIIEDDDDD. “Consists of or includes immoral or scandalous matter under Section 2(a).” This was back in 2013. She was an examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark office. I was trying to do the responsible thing by registering the mark for The Middle Finger Project, which had been in-use since 2009. (Better late than never, homies.)