Lots of people start a blog, but few survive. Most lie in state in a strange creativity ICU until one Sunday morning, the jolt of potential employers reading it is just enough to resuscitate it. For now.

“… with links to some of your written work …”

CLEAR. thwump CLEAR. thwump 

The thing is that I have the same excuses as anyone would have. It’s not as if I’ve been idle. You know me. No? Well ask anyone. But I’ve been busy doing things that seem to have had no effect on burgeoning my career. It’s time to get moving. I mean it. I have LinkedIn now, for crying out loud.

The word on the internet is “start a blog”. That’s always been the word. Everybody’s heard “you, start a blog”. It gives you a space to practise… whatever it is you’re writing, be it musings on your life as a writer in Canada to musings on your life as a writer in Paris. It gives you the very slightest chance of somebody noticing and reading; the power to change opinions and have people listen to you. It forces you to sit down and actually write something, which is highly recommended by all writers.*

But almost as important as all that, it makes you look busy when you’re not really doing all that much.

It has often been said those seeking employment should treat job-seeking as their job. It can be a tough world out there, for the under- and over- qualified alike. If you are actively seeking employment, you should be sending out 20 to 30 cold letters a week to firms that you are interested in working for. Surely, in the modern age, one could easily add the maintenance of a blog into that workload. Especially if it really is so important in landing a job.

But I’m going to be honest here: I haven’t been seeking employment all that actively. That doesn’t mean I’ve not been working, just to clarify. I’ve been writing. A lot. Just not on the internet very much. I consider myself a start-up business who** hasn’t got his turnover quite sorted yet. In this position, a company must always be looking for ways to expand its revenue. That’s what I’ve been doing. Keeping an eye out for opportunities to expand.

So if you’re here to check my writing for a job: Hello. Thank you for considering my application. Now let me quickly explain why the next post after this one is dated 2011 and why I haven’t got much writing on the internet.

Firstly, I love the arts. I love the arts so much that I want to get involved. So instead of writing a blog about musicals, I wrote a musical. Then we staged it in Birmingham. I know, it’s not London, but bare with us. Instead of writing reviews of all the movies I’d seen over the last 3 years, I wrote a couple of films. Instead of writing pieces on the comedians I’ve seen, I concentrated on my material.

Admittedly, I’ve played a lot of video games, and I haven’t made a video game. But it’s on my  bucket list  to do list.

I went back to uni to get Master’s degree in writing. There was a lot of writing involved. But it was mostly fiction, not reviews.***

But don’t think I’m bitter. Having said all that, I can change. I can change for you, potential employer. Just give me a chance. Now I’m off to write you a covering letter. Hope to see you soon.

Writing a blog:

Entertainment – 7 Like everything, this number is highly subjective. But you can enjoy the freedom to say what you want, and the satisfaction of a completed post is definitely a factor here.

Effort – 2 To have anything interesting to write about, you have to be not writing, and when you’re off on those “research sabbaticals”, it can be hard to pull yourself away. And perhaps you have other work to do, too. Nightmare.

Expense – 10 Nothing, so far.

Endurance – 9 If you stick with it, it will stick with you.

EQUALS –  7 Oh. That’s quite a fair score. Guess I should try to keep it up then.

* Not a joke.

** “Corporations are people, my friend.” – Mitt Romney

*** One could argue a segment of it was reviews. Especially the film modules. But they were really academic reviews.

You can ‘Like’ my musical at http://www.facebook.com/thecomedianmusical to be the first to get info on it.