Shameless: The Life of Bryan

I've been watching the television show Shameless a lot (the US version), and if you haven't seen it, it's a fantastic show. But it's also reminded me just how shameless of a human being I really am.

See, it's no secret that I'm an unemployed writer. It's also no secret that I want to be a full time writer, and in order to achieve that, I'm willing to stave off gainful employment for as long as I can until writing can pay the bills and be more than just something my mother pretends not to be embarrassed about.

And so, even though I'm unemployed, I'm still pulling in money, through methods that I will not pretend to be anything but shameless. The following are those methods.

1. I will absolutely write college essays for money.

Let's not pretend that writing your average college essay is anything other than a complete waste of time. And this is coming from a writer.

Like, for example, a girl majoring in business who has a history class where she's required to write a 10 page paper... about the Oregon Constitution. Yeah, that's sure gonna help her do well in business. Thankfully, for whatever they're willing to spend (this girl in particular gave me $100), I can chew out a paper like that in an afternoon, thanks to my writing skills and my good friend the Internet.

Later, in the professor's office...

2. I pretend to have diabetes.

What can I say?--We fat Americans are getting diabetes more now than ever, and because of it, companies that make things like glucose monitors want to stay at the head of the pack. So they find people to test their products. And while I don't actually have "the diabeetus", I do fully test their products... I just don't tell them that my readings are always normal. They just want to know how well it functions and if it's user friendly, anyway. And hey, if I ever do get "the diabeetus", I'll know literally the moment it happens! Win/win!

3. I pretend to smoke and chew tobacky.

Those wonderful cancer stick companies are always coming up with new products ways to kill you, and are always looking for people to test them out to make sure they're as addictive and poisonous as possible. So I test all of their new products for them and give them my honest opinion. Did I say test honestly? I meant I just throw it in the garbage, blow smoke up their asses (pun completely intended), and then gladly take the big tobacco companies' money. Yeah, I'm not losing any sleep over this one.

Thank God I don't really smoke or chew, though. Could you imagine that?

4. I pretend I'm still an IT Admin.

In my former employed life, I was a Systems Administrator. After all, I do have a Bachelors Degree in Information System Security. I hated every minute of it. However, big IT companies are always looking for opinions from IT Admins and are willing to pay big bucks for it. A few times a week I do video conferences or conference calls with these IT companies, and while there's the little white lie about my actually being an "IT Admin" or "employed," I do give them a real opinion on their product from someone who's familiar with the technology and the industry.

5. I take online surveys for money.

Online surveys are difficult and annoying because they only want certain demographics who use certain products. If you don't meet those requirements, then you get kicked out and don't get paid, which is about 90% of the time. I wouldn't recommend these things to anyone. However, what I've done over the years is learned, like a puzzle, how to read into each survey and figure out exactly which demographic they're looking for and which product they're testing... so that I succeed and get paid every time.

So if you'll excuse me, I have to nurse my black baby and test my blood sugar while smoking a cigarette on a conference call with IBM. It's all in a day's work around here.

Stay classy, friends,
Bryan

Music: Hoodie Allen
Beer: Amberbock

P.S. A good friend of ours is using a Kickstarter to fund the marketing of his book. Marketing in the book world is really, really hard, and at the very least, you should check out the sample of his book, which is on the page. It's really good.

Scott Lininger - Guesswork