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Kathryn Mayer • Writing Out Loud

I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist

Liar Liar

September 15, 2008 by Kate Mayer 5 Comments

Here’s the scoop: I can write practically anything in a couple hours. Brochures, space advertisements, blogs, annual reports, newsletters, eblasts, promo copy, whatever. Longer pieces, longer hours, but I can get it done. I’m apparently still good at it and people pay me. Go figure! I’m on the road again! I’m working! I’m a copywriter!

Way back when, outnumbered by kids and the energy in, energy out equation left me bitchy and exhausted with no one getting the best of me, I quit working. I assure you, the 90’s woman having it all was TOTALLY overrated. So I opted for the off-ramp, as it would be referred to in the not so distant future.

Bad timing for me. Back when I opted out, the internet was just taking off. Cutting edge as I was, I had written for one, count ‘em: one website before quitting. That’s it, that’s all there was. And working from home wasn’t like it is now. 


Way back when, I couldn’t reach clients because dial-up was busy. I had a second line installed so I could write and take calls. I never left the house because a client might call. I had FedEx pick up floppies and overnight them to clients. There was no google. MACs were for losers (I was a proud loser). 

This was not when the dinosaurs roamed, 
this was when the now 11 year old crawled. 

Attempting to once again contribute to the economic well-being of my family, I’ve found I’ve been left not in the slow lane, but am actually the disabled vehicle in the center lane. A rusty, oil-leaking, gas-guzzling am/fm cassette heap of a clunker with too many miles on it, blocking traffic from every which way. Causing accidents, rubbernecking, and bottle-neck congestion that make clients cringe. That’s me.


The thing is, yes, I can still write just about anything you need, when you need it for a fraction of the cost of a contemporary, hip, eblasting, search engine optimizing copy webmeister. However, I have one itsy-bitsy problem: I can’t seem to get it to you.

Didja hear that?


I can write it, I just can’t send it. Attach it. PDF it. Hyper-cyber whatever it. I even tried I Dream of Jeannie-ing it. No can do. Not to you. Or your designers. Or your agency. I seem to have email under control, so if they really, really Sally Field like me, I can, and have, successfully responded to: “JUST DUMP IT IN THE EMAIL MESSAGE AND HIT SEND,” as clients have calmly encouraged me to do. That seems to work.

I’m working on it. Kids 3 and 4 are helping me; 1 and 2 just laugh. Husband tried, but to no avail. It’s worse than hanging wallpaper together. We’d never survive.  I’ll kill him, make no mistake about it.

So when prospective clients ask if I’m computer savvy, I lie, lie, lie through my teeth, hoping to get a foot in the door. I’m hoping we’ll hit it off and that’ll buy me a little time while I figure out how to get them the words they need.

I know it sounds barbaric to those of you still out there in the workforce. To those of you who opted back in when I stepped aside, you are technologically fortunate. But there’s a whole lot of women out there just like me. A generation of us. Sitting around, waiting for the kids to get home from school so they can help their poor old moms get up to speed.  But when we do . . .

A Decade of Difference
What Would You Not Do For a Buck?

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    September 19, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Well, you think you are computer illiterate? It just took me ten minutes to figure out how to leave a comment about your article!! I think I win! Anyway, what a relief that I am not the only woman out there trying to get back into the world of people with brains. I feel a little better, but I still have to figure out how to send this comment!!!

    Reply
  2. JC says

    September 19, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    Me too! This whole blog thing is intimidating. And I have to create another password?? I have a list of passwords and every couple of months I lose the list and then have to spend hours creating new ones.

    For the past 25 years (yes, I am the new 40) I have been balancing a career and family/life. I have tried it all: part-time, full-time, consulting, off-ramp, always looking for the perfect solution. Finally, I concluded there is no perfect solution and I just go with it. When I am not working and I can no longer stand being introduced as my husband’s wife and being nicely pushed into the kitchen with the other women who are talking about kids, laundry, sports, and blah, blah, blah, I go back to work. Why is it that if you are a stay-at-home Mom, no one in the “workforce” thinks you have a serious opinion about anything?

    Reply
  3. vbjenn says

    September 20, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    Techno savvy I am not… but I’ll play until I get it done… The trick, I think, is to show no fear. As long as I confidently type on my keyboard and am continuosly trying something all is well. The minute I start to hesitate, my computer decides to lose files, or save them in never-never land, and it takes an under 18yo to find it. As for PDF… you may want to try “Cute PDF Writer” it is a free program that converts from word to a PDF file… and acts like a printer… 🙂 I’m sure that kids 2, 3 and 4 can help you figure it out.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says

    September 22, 2008 at 2:04 am

    I never off-ramped/on-ramped and never knew it! (been trudging through since the beginning of time) That was what I learned today from you–never heard these terms because I really live in the stone age. I enjoyed reading this blog, probably because it is so much how you are in real life–very real! As hard as it is, and you seem to juggle all very well, you have to keep at it because it is really amazing when you find a career that you like and do so well!

    Reply
  5. Anonymous says

    September 28, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    being in the work force ever since leaving the school force hasn’t helped me a bit. My job entails working with/on computers all day but the things the kids are doing still leaves me feeling rusty old and a bit psycho. Some of the twenty- something I work with text me and think I am just too busy to respond but i’ll clue you in it’s just because I have tried a couple of times & my texts are in outer cyberspace somewhere and I can’t be bothered to go look for them. I tell you though even working we these ‘chucks everyday doesn’t get me promoted to the big boy conversations, I’m still stuck in the kitches w/ the wives club talking about kids I’ll never have and shopping I don’t want to do and housework noone wants to do. THANKS so much for those ovaries.

    Reply

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About Kathryn Mayer

Kathryn Mayer

An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of the Year … Read More Here...

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