On the Departure of a Former Friend and Continued Writing Success

The passage of time is a really weird thing, especially when it comes to other people that are part of your life to varying degrees. The older I become and the more I change with the years, the less connected I feel to the people I used to know on whatever level. I've never been the most social person in my offline life, but I was relatively communicative and friendly online for a long while. Probably why changes in my online social life spark more reflection on this front.

I'm especially confused by a lot of my friendships with other women, both online and off. Most women are socialized to be a lot less direct and straightforward than men, so I'm never quite sure where I stand with a lot of them. There have always been at least a few who seem really conflicted as far as how they feel about me. I'll pick up on definite interest and admiration, but also an undercurrent of something darker. Jealousy or resentment, maybe. Something competitive gone completely sour.

I often feel like such acquaintances are secretly rooting for me to fail, especially if their goals and dreams for themselves intersect with mine at all, as if there's a limited amount of success to go around and they feel I'm getting more than my share. I never know what to do about people that give off that vibe -- that they don't root for me to win or cheer for me when I do. I don't like feeling like people I know are sitting around wishing evil or misfortune into my life, but I also feel like I'm not patient enough with people and cut others off way too quickly. I'm trying to be less like that, especially as I get older, so more often than not, I just let people hang around, but distance myself to stay off of their radar as much as possible.

This morning, I noticed that one of these women apparently unfriended me on Facebook over the weekend. I haven't been posting anything inflammatory lately, nor have I been leaving ambiguous comments on her posts, so I don't think the reason was anything like that. She was in the habit of leaving odd comments on some of my posts that made me feel like she resents a lot of the personal progress I've been making though -- especially when it comes to things like selfies, beauty posts, or workout/health updates. This person had been on the wagon for a while herself with all of that stuff, but she started backsliding badly around the time my own progress was becoming really visible, and I think she resents that.

On Regrouping and Looking Ahead to the Future

How we're already nearly halfway through January already, I'll never know. Don't even get me started on how an entirely new decade has up and started while I've been busy focusing on other things. I spent the rest of the time leading up to Christmas and New Year's continuing to focus on my professional and public-facing writing. Part of that involved continuing to build a presence and establish myself on a couple of the newer platforms I'd signed up with. The idea was to have turned those outlets into viable places to earn money on an ongoing basis before I was officially off the roster at BKA and really needed that income. 

Things worked out on that front a lot better than I'd hoped -- so well, I actually spent very little time writing for BKA in the second half of December. One of the two platforms I'm using regularly these days is a little more sporadic and less reliable as far as being able to go there and pick up extra work whenever I want some, but it's great for filling in my schedule here and there. The other has been working out well enough that it's definitely an appropriate replacement for BKA as far as my overall income goes. New work is posted there very regularly, so I've had plenty of things to work on. I've also managed to connect with some new regulars. The pay is really good. There's the potential to earn even more and gain access to even better projects if I work hard there as well. 

I'm hoping neither of those platforms suddenly goes tits up on me the way that BKA did because of AB-5, but I also feel like that becomes less likely the further into 2020 we get without it happening. It seems like most of the outlets that decided they wanted nothing more to do with California writers found it deeply important to give us the boot before the new year started and the new laws went into effect, so... knock on wood, and all that. 

On Kicks in the Face and What's Next

Well, this year certainly isn't drawing to a close on the note I wanted. This fucking horrible AB-5 bill that passed back in September sometime has really thrown a wrench into the machine as far as my professional copywriting work is concerned. Generally speaking, I don't tend to pay too much attention to what's going on with politics and all those laws unless they affect me, so I actually didn't even know about it... until I received an email a little over a week ago from the hiring manager at BKA Content, a writing agency I've spent the better part of the last year (and a lot of my professional time) working for. 

She was basically letting me know that the company was terminating all of their California writers at the end of the year because of this bill, and since I do indeed live in California, that definitely includes me. For those that don't know what the bill says, it basically requires any outlet working with California freelance writers to bring us on as full-time employees with benefits and all that jazz if we submit more than 35 published pieces to that outlet over the course of a year. The bill actually wasn't very well thought out, so it's quite unclear whether or not it even applies to copywriting agencies, as they're marketing businesses and not publications. However, a lot of agencies and platforms are erring on the side of caution by dumping all of their California writers regardless. 

That really sucked for me, because I'd really grown to like writing for BKA. I'd worked my way up to the point where I was on some of their most interesting teams. Because of them, I had the opportunity to write for major companies like Papa John's and AutoZone, as well as a multitude of different small businesses. I wrote content for a sober house, a cookie delivery company, an anti-aging skincare company, and many more this past year. Best of all, I didn't have to wait for someone to assign me whatever boring-ass content they decided was right for me. I got to personally select my assignments and work as much or as little as I wanted on any given day. It was perfect -- was. Don't even get me started on the amount of income I'll be losing thanks to that contract going in the crapper.