One of my favorite things about making a living as a freelance writer is that I am always learning something new. Part of this is just the nature of the job. And part of this is because I am always taking on new writing jobs that aren’t in my own areas of expertise. That has allowed me to broaden my experience of the world (and my own expertise for that matter) and to explore areas of study that I would probably never have gotten around to studying on my own. It also makes me interesting at parties and dinner table conversations since there’s always some job that relates to the topic at hand.
Because of my work as a writer, I know the basic qualities of all of the signs in the horoscope. I know the latest medical trends and technologies in preventive imaging software, stem cell research and infertility treatment options. I know that there are certain areas of San Francisco which are said to be haunted including hotels, bridges, forts and homes. I know that black is the new black. The research that I do for my writing has helped me to hone my own use of technology in the home and the office. The articles that I’ve written on plastic surgery and diet pills have reminded me to take a close look at my own relationship with food and my body. And the pieces that I’ve penned on musicians around the globe have helped me to explore a kind of creativity that I would never have gotten so intimately familiar with on my own (since, you know, I’ve got no musical talent).
I was never much of a fan of school. I did it and I excelled at it but it wasn’t for me. One of the problems was that I was always bored with a curriculum. I would read the first assigned book of the semester and then I would become passionately interested in that topic, or a tangential topic, and want to keep exploring it rather than wanting to move on to the next assigned reading material. Being a writer allows me this option. I find out about one new kind of computer software and I want to learn all that there is about related software … and hardware and online applications and careers that use this stuff. And so I find a way to write about it so that I can explore my interest while making a living.
This is what being a writer is all about. I don’t always love every job that I take on (although I try to take on only those that interest me so that I can provide the best writing). But I do generally love the exploration of learning new things. The only drawback is that I always want to visit some new travel destination I just wrote about or to buy some new gadget that I just discovered in my research. But I would say that’s a small price to pay for doing a job that you can always be excited about doing.
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