This is a First

Sometimes, it’s the things you vow never to do that turn out the best.

When I first became one of the great, unwashed unemployed of the Great Recession, many career experts were urging former professionals like me (so that’s what I was) to raise our career profiles by writing a blog. Not only did they cost zero to launch and maintain, the reasoning went, but you can share your expertise with the world, thus garnering potential customers for your small business or impressing future employers with your industry knowledge and expertise.

There’s just one small point they left out – it sure as hell helps if you can write.

I can’t tell you how many networking events I attended where I was handed a business card that featured a dreaded WordPress or, dare I write it, Blogspot address only to have the other party breathlessly announce, “Oh, and that’s my blog.”

Out of sheer curiosity (which, I swear, someday will kill me) and a small streak of masochism (ditto), I checked out a number of these blogs.

If I mixed two parts disgust with one part outrage, added a dash of depression and a twist of Schadenfreude, that’s the cocktail of discontent I’d serve with this sub-par fare. By then, I figured the blogosphere was already cluttered with enough debris and promised myself (and anyone within earshot) that I would never add to the world wide waste of space.

So why, you may wonder, did I?

Certainly the most overriding reason was the sheer act of writing itself. Until the job market picks up, or hangs out a permanent “Gone Fishing” sign, I make my coin through freelance writing, which is a “feast or famine” business even in the best of times. Writing is like any other physical or mental muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Following a close second was the liberating thought that, for once in 27 years, I could write whatever the hell I wanted without having it vetted by one of the “Eight Types of Bad Creative Critics.” (A future blog article, for sure.)

Resurrecting a name and logo created for a previous freelance venture that went nowhere, the Bite Size Copy blog was born on November 20, 2009.

Although I devote more time thinking, researching and writing for Bite Size than I do for any paid project without getting one thin dime, it’s the most enjoyable gig I’ve ever had. I can only hope my readers get as much of a charge perusing it as I do writing it.

To mark the occasion of Bite Size’s first anniversary, I’ll be imbibing another cocktail, this one made up of two parts appreciation, one part gratitude, a dash of thankfulness and a twist of “ta!”

This one’s for you. Cheers!