And thanks for the opportunity to rant — you may live to regret that!

Yuwanda
P.S.: I’ve come across your comments on other sites and have always enjoyed your writing style.

While I don’t have a weakness for marines, I am enjoying golf these days. I try to reserve it for Tuesday nights and the occasional Friday afternoon – once my work is done.

Wow, wow and triple wow! I love this part: “If I wanted to make something of myself, if I wanted to be a success, I needed to make it happen. No one was going to do it for me.”

I find that so many people want you to hand things to them. Deb Ng nailed this point perfectly.

I too get a ton of people asking me how to do “X”, or can I give them work, help them find work, tell them how to do “x”, etc. The hardest part of freelancing is not the work itself, it’s finding the work, carving out a niche for yourself and then taking the time to find out about what you don’t know about.

I’ve managed to become pretty successsful as an SEO writer, but a year ago, I only knew what the letters SEO stood for — nothing else. How did I learn? I scoured the internet reading any and everything I could on it, lurked in tech forums, researched web trends, etc.

Many days I wanted to go for a run while the sun was shining, join my sister and my girlfriend for margaritas at our favorite Mexican hangout, take a nap with my fiance (he’s 6′3″, 220 lbs of the finest strapping Marine with washboard abs you ever saw).

BUT NOOOOOOOO, with all this temptation a mere 12 feet away, what did I do — I sat my butt in the chair in my office and researched until I was cross-eyed. This is what it means to want DO. You don’t make excuses, procrastinate and/or sit idle and hope that things will change.

You get up off your butt — or in my case — sit on your butt and just get going! A simple message, but a powerful one.

Thanks for letting me rant Bob. If one more person asks me how to become a freelance writer, I’m going to . . . ignore them.

Yuwanda