Why am I writing this? Good question, hopefully we both figure it out by the end. I can assure you it isn’t to fulfill my dream of becoming a famous blogger. Nothing against bloggers or anything, it just took me several weeks to write this post and I feel like I’m not that hip. I guess I wanted to start writing to add more examples of content creation to my website. Maybe someone from Into the Gloss will read this and think I’m kind of weird, but also kind of funny, and give me some freelance work.
I’m a 23-year-old living in Los Angeles, and yes, a (technically unemployed) freelancer. I've hit all of the clichés right on the head. I moved here after graduating with a bachelor's degree, and accepted a full-time job at a well-known company shortly after. This was before life said "LOL nah," and left me unemployed and poor. It's okay though because that’s true for about 90% of LA.
The scariest part of being laid off from my job was telling my dad. And my friends. And literally everyone back home. I’m from Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and people look at you weird if you don’t have a full-time job and/or an engagement ring by the time you’re, well, my age. When I told my dad, you would have thought I told him I had a life-threatening disease. There was a lot of silence then followed by a lot of concern. By the end, I was the one assuring him it was okay and everything would be alright. Welcome to my family, aka the Twilight Zone.
Meanwhile in the city of stars, I started applying to about 100 jobs a day and unemployment (people my age do this?). I wasn’t over-the-moon excited about any of the jobs I applied to, but they would at least allow me to make enough money to pay my bills and buy overpriced matcha lattes (if you know, you know).
Week after week, no full-time job offer was ever extended. The only thing I was getting positive responses for was freelance work – something I had never really done before and wasn't confident I was actually qualified to do. Nonetheless, I threw myself into requests and pretended I knew what I was doing.
3 months later and I'm a full-time freelancer. This isn’t exactly where I expected to be, but I have to say, being my own boss is pretty epic. I get to pick where I work, what I work on, and when I get to nap. The opportunity to work on several different projects for people from all kinds of industries has been such a unique change of pace. As fun as sitting behind a desk being micromanaged from 9-5 sounds… I think I am good for a while.
I know these articles typically come full circle with a transformational take-away and include a lot more motivational one-liners... but I guess I'm not a typical hero. If you were to ask me today what's next, I would whole-heartedly answer: I have no idea. Absolutely zero. Maybe I'll be a freelancer forever, maybe I'll get my dream job, but maybe I'll learn a whole other skillset.
Perhaps I can provide a relatable voice for the people who don’t have it all together. I won’t even add the, “twenty-somethings” overused verbiage to that statement. It’s totally fine at any age to not have your life together, or want to change direction (I think I am getting inspirational now??). Maybe I'll share something outrageous that happened to me (highly likely), or a really cool project I get to work on. Stay tuned, there’s a lot of detours left to be taken.
Xx,
Shannon