Associated Content Makes a Great Writer's Portfolio

Two years ago I thought that I was washed up. I'm a veteran television and new media writer. Friends told me to buck up, that I was lucky to have had a thirty year run in a young person's business. Enjoy retirement, I was told. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to mention to my friends that I was broke. Of course, when you're unemployed, faking retirement is possible, but not for long.

Back story: In 2003, my house burned to the ground with 2000 other houses in a San Diego wildfire. In 2005, after rebuilding and selling my house, I moved to South Florida, a place where I had no friends or business connections. I was starting all over again from scratch - in my sixties!

To my relief, in early 2006, I was able to find a local television writer gig on Monster. But my relief was short-lived. My employer was a Boca Raton television infomercial company and the job was actually 20% writing and 80% sales. I came up very short on the sales end, and they canned me after three months.

I decided not to pursue anything resembling the television or new media business in Florida, and applied to become a rural mail carrier. I passed the civil service exam. However, I flunked the mail truck driver's test. I had no idea that you had to use ten mirrors when driving a mail truck. I couldn't get it straight.

They paid me for three days and I was back to square one.

At this point, I knew that I would never find any employment in South Florida.

For months I wallowed in self-pity. Then one night at 3 am, when my mind's usually at its clearest, I finally snapped out of my depression. My realization: I had survived a long period of unemployment and self-pity ten years earlier in Los Angeles at age 50 back when I knew that I would never work in television again. I bailed myself out back then by learning everything that I could about the Internet. The results: in 1998, I wound up going to work for an online game company. This gig lasted for seven years. I was the oldest out of 1000 employees.

In 2007, I decided to go back to the Internet for bail-out help and found Associated Content.

Even though I had never written short non-fiction feature-style articles before, I decided to make an effort. To my amazement, I was soon getting paid again. Yes, the money was small and I wouldn't be able to pay the rent with it; but I was a working writer again. To me, this was the cosmic kick in the ass.

I kept writing AC content and eventually accumulated 100 articles. At that point, I realized that I had a respectable non-fiction writer portfolio. Other content sites have begun to contact me and freelance work has started to roll in. $10 here. $100 there.

Life is getting better. Thank you, Associated Content.