Professional persistance always wins

Guess what I’m getting paid to do now?

Go on. Guess.

On April 3rd, I will be embarking on a new career – a change from my never-ending struggle to write for a living. I’ll be entering the seedy world of advertising, the relentlessly horrible underbelly of writing.

Here’s the thing though: this is a perfect fit.

I’ve never aspired to write the Great American Novel. The G.A.N. isn’t what I do. I don’t have the attention span, or the ability to fill line after line with descriptions of a wheat field or a gentle ocean wave. I have literary A.D.D. – I’m only comfortable writing less than three pages of text in one sitting.

This blog has been perfect for that. My thoughts can be short, to the point, concise. Copywriting is the same thing except shorter, more to the point, more concise.

This has been an odd journey for me. I left college with the intention of becoming a teacher. I subbed for a long time (in between being denied jobs in three different states) and eventually took up working at a relay call center to help pay the bills.

Somehow my intentions switched. I began writing, enjoyed it, and cursed myself for not pursuing something that I knew I was talented at in college. I quit the subbing circuit to become a low-level business manager because, well, it was available. Chalk up career change number one.

I held steady at the relay center as a manager – Team Leader, specifically – for nearly two years. I enjoyed my work there, at times, and became frustrated with the executive structure and changes in policies during others, but I do have to say I learned a lot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t designed to be a call center manager. I wasn’t designed to be on any executive track.

I was designed to be a writer. I know that this is my purpose in life, to sound cheesy and philosophical about it.

And now, officially, I am.

I know that the world of copywriting isn’t necessarily glamorous. That’s fine with me. I’m not going into this career with my eyes on being some famous advertising personality. I’m not looking to rewrite the rules of language, or to blow everyone away with some style unknown to anyone B.V. (Before Vilhauer). If during that happens during the process, so be it. I’m doing this because I have a love for words. Because I’m ready to learn more about language. About design. About radio, television, magazines, punctuation, spelling, style, and syntax. Because this is my passion, and I know now that it always has been.

So, thanks to some persistence and an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, I now work for HenkinSchultz. My supervisor to be is already a visitor to this blog (Hi Clara!) so she’ll hopefully be glad to see me get some free plugs out there.

I’m excited for this. I really am. And, as you might expect, I won’t be talking much about it in the future. Work and blogs don’t mix. I never talked specifically about CSD Relay, and I’ll never talk specifically about HenkinSchultz – I can’t. Clients have privacy rights too.

So with that, congratulations to me.

It’s St. Patrick’s day. Who needs a drink?