One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure

I always seem to blog in the middle of the night. It just seems right, somehow, to be in semi-darkness, posting my thoughts and the happenings of my day after it's all been done, right before I sleep.

So, as I've mentioned before, I have one steady client (we'll call this client Mr. Big) for whom I write at least 500 words a day. In addition to that, I have a client for whom I write anywhere from 500 to 2,000 words a week, depending on my 'bandwidth,' to use a buzzword. And I have a couple other clients from which work comes sporadically, once every couple months. It works out to a pretty steady stream of income, especially from Mr. Big.

Mr. Big pays the bills. He keeps the lights on, buys groceries and gas and even pays for my yoga habit. But there's a major issue with Mr. Big. The person that I report to -- for lack of a better way to phrase it, my 'boss,' -- is impossible to please.

This person is one of those hyper-manic, never-sleeps, control freak workaholics. This person believes they are an amazing writer, editor and manager, and is not. This person is, as a fellow writer once put it, like a ball hog on a basketball team. They talk the talk about teamwork, ethics, a common goal, and then ignore these platitudes when it's game time.

They desperately try to make every play themselves. They lay out a game plan and/or strategy, and then change the rules as it suits them, often without informing teammates that they're playing by 'house rules.'

They'll act as though they're on your side, that they want to support and encourage you, but then exploit any weaknesses you show them to grab accolades for themselves. Or privately push you to work on one particular 'play,' and then publicly berate you for wasting your time on an unimportant, meaningless pursuit.

It's ridiculous. It leads to uncomfortable situations, to say the least.

To finally move away from the basketball analogy, it results in my working for hours on researching, interviewing sources and writing pieces that are promptly discarded, often without a valid reason. There have been instances where I wasn't even aware I should have been working on a piece, but am then reprimanded for not doing so. This person has neglected to send me necessary background material I needed to work on stories, and then freaked out when I didn't file a piece on that topic, though I repeatedly asked for the information.

Enough complaining. I really could go on and on here, but the point is that there's a huge contrast between that person and my other clients, who cannot say enough good things about my work. I feel like I was going somewhere else with this, but I can't really remember where.

Probably something about how it takes all kinds, you have to take the good with the bad, The Client is Always Right, blah blah blah. But it also makes me think about how I really shouldn't put up with bad treatement and unpleasant clients.

I need to start marketing myself more effectively and try to shore up my client list, so that I can ditch Mr. Big, or at least cut down my dependence on that income. I think I'd be much happier if I did so.

This week I've written some personal profiles of job seekers for an employment assistance company, a piece on Citrix's latest enterprise and consumer virtualization tools, an article on some incredibly cool network virtualization software, and have done a kickoff meeting with a Huge Software Company client for a piece I'm doing on innovation in the automobile industry. Pretty cool stuff.

Tomorrow, an abstract for the software company and a piece for Mr. Big, and then maybe I can start reaching out to more potential clients.