The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

Rocsteady wrote:Motivation at an all time low today, done absolutely strawberry float all so far.

Same, unless you count planning Fantasy Football transfers.

Tomous wrote:
Rocsteady wrote:Motivation at an all time low today, done absolutely strawberry float all so far.

Same, unless you count planning Fantasy Football transfers.

A noble pursuit.

Feel like I've been in a twilight zone since March as the industry collapses around me (corporate travel). Basically taking bets at this point to guess the exact month I'll be made redundant.

Has anyone heard of Reedsy? Some woman from there keeps emailing me asking me if I want freelance editorial work, saying she found my details on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn also says I retrained as an archaeologist so she's not read it properly.

The tone of the emails is just really grating, I was hoping she would give up after a non-response as I don't really want to enter into a dialogue but she sends me one every week that starts 'I think my emails must be going into your spam folder because I've not had a reply...' like they're so irresistible or something. I mean, I wish they were going into my spam folder.

I don't post in here much as for the last 2 years the prospect of work has been something that provoked dread and hopelessness just by thinking of it.

But I sort of feel I've turned a corner recently. I've been freelance for a few years now, and for the first year entire I was scraping by on one-off proofreading or editing contracts and making so little money it might as well have been nothing. My savings cratered and my enthusiasm with it. I had had a grand plan to make it as either a games journalist or a writer for games and neither had come true.

Now though...I feel the momentum building. I finished an editing job on Night Call which morphed into some writing, then a small publisher I interview with (for a PR role actually) got back to me and began giving me regular work. Not just any work, writing work. I was mainly doing marketing materials, Steam pages and Kickstarters, but then they brought a few games onboard that needed actual content.

So now I'm in a position where I created the entire narrative for an upcoming Mini-Metro esque puzzler that recently had a double page spread in EDGE, and I'll be writing multiple questlines for a detective game that's already had press from all the major sites (links in my sig, natch).

So yeah. I'm actually feeling...positive? Tentitatively? for the future.

That's great news, Taf. Are you able to link us to some of your stuff? I'm sure that we would both be keen to help support your content with views/engagement but also that it would be of interest to lots of us on here!

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

Cheers! And all my current projects are in my sig, though there's a bunch of steam pages and stuff I haven't linked as I don't really feel I can say I've worked "on" those games. Also some of them were straight trash.

Like, utter gooseberry fool.

EDIT: I mean the games, not my own work. Probably my own work too, but still.

That's great news, Taf. Sure does feel good to have some success, no matter how small that may be. Hopefully the contributions you make to those projects bring more recognition of your talent so that maybe you'll go on to larger projects.

That's really good to hear Taf after some of the posts you've done in the past. Well happy for you.

Good to hear Taf, nice work.

Pissed as I'm getting roped into essentially a sales director role for a major client. Would be fine if I wasn't about 4 levels down in terms of salary.

Well done Taf, looking forward to seeing what comes from your current projects.

Red wrote:Has anyone heard of Reedsy? Some woman from there keeps emailing me asking me if I want freelance editorial work, saying she found my details on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn also says I retrained as an archaeologist so she's not read it properly.

The tone of the emails is just really grating, I was hoping she would give up after a non-response as I don't really want to enter into a dialogue but she sends me one every week that starts 'I think my emails must be going into your spam folder because I've not had a reply...' like they're so irresistible or something. I mean, I wish they were going into my spam folder.

I swear some of that stuff must just be script/automated because I get it too but pretty much weekly for things like, link placement on GRcade, as they have an "interesting article that we think would really add value to your audience. I found your article on [insert random irrelevant thread here]."

"I just thought I would follow up to see if you got my email, and confirm you were interested in discussing? Looking forwarding to hear from you."

Total content: zero

"I know you're really busy, and perhaps I got the tone of my email wrong, in which case, sorry! Is there any better way to get in touch with you to discuss this? Thanks!"

Total content: zero

Just strawberry float off, your targeting is completely hopeless, you clearly don't understand the audience, you clearly haven't even looked at the website, your presume it's a commercial enterprise which it isn't, and that alone gives me no confidence in working with you. Even if I were interested, which (by the way) I'm not (interested in sponsored link placements).

And if you reply and say, "no", you just know they're going to argue why it's such a great idea. :dread:

I mean sure, we have established page rank and domain authority which is just slowly rotting away, but the suggestions could at the very least be relevant and make sense in the context of the medium, which they never do. It's so spectacularly lazy, and probably conducted on such scale, it offends the better logic on my side of the fence.

Red wrote:I mean, I wish they were going into my spam folder.

Can you mark it as spam so that's exactly where it goes?

I think that reports the account. On things like LinkedIn, you get whatever people send you.

I think you can prevent it by turning off "LinkedIn open" or some gooseberry fool, so they have to be a connection first, but it's hard not to add people who look like they might be looking for workers as part of a job hunt. Then they send you loads of completely irrelevant gooseberry fool.

Also if you do the open to recruiters thing, you'll probably get some leads, but half the time they aren't relevant. You could blame your own profile but, honestly, recruiters cast a pretty wide net these days... Which is probably a good thing.

We've just been told that from 1 January we will be officially remote working forever. They will keep one office in Bristol as a "hub" but nobody will have a permanent desk. Up until 1 January we can still use the office every day (if pre-approved) but are not expected to.

Pretty good news really. When I finally sort out my housing situation it also means I can live anywhere with a decent internet connection, road/rail links don't really matter anymore.

Moggy living the dream.

Zilnad wrote:Moggy living the dream.

Almost. If I can move to a house with a spare room that I can use as an office, then I'll be in dreamland.

In a small flat it's a pain in the bum.

Nice, our place seems desperate to keep the office as a thing, somewhat understandable I guess as its less than a year old and theyve spent millions on it. I can see myself doing a lot more WFH though, will save time and money and I can put some time into setting up a proper home office if I do it regularly.

My work are desperate to keep us in the office to, its like they don't trust anyone

They also mentioned there will be no redundancies, they are keen to expand our team and they will be paying an allowance (for internet, electric etc) to us.

Sounds too good to be true. I'm waiting for something really horrible to be announced. :lol:

The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

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