Desperate Freelancer

Since I started as a freelancer, the web is my new territory. And it's an amazing place to explore. You can find so many things that are just beyond imagination. My imagination I mean.

Just look what I have found today :

The people from Roto Rooter conceived this. I suppose their intention was to increase global productivity of the world when they designed such a tool. I let you discover all the features on their website : Dvd player, Xbox, Tv, laptop computer, fridge... They forget nothing. And it's damn serious. And you can even win it !

With this "pimp-out-John", you can start a brand new life, at home or at the office. A life where you don't need to get up to go where nobody can go for you. How convenient, isn't it ?

Clearly, for someone of my age, It could be helpful. But I fear that if I could stay all day long on this new "office", I would end up dying there too. Well, you could definitely think of something better for the last impression you make.

For the first time in my long life, I am sitting in an office, in front of a computer, and it's my job to do so.

How strange as it could seem, I am 61 and I never had a job whose main activity was to sit, watch a screen and type! And eventually move a mouse.

In the past, I had lots of job but none of them consisted in using a computer most of the time. I had been waiter in a restaurant, carpenter apprentice, night watchman, taxi driver, chauffeur de maître, cook in a canteen, seller in a library, street pedlar and also demolition contractor. I had also been doing weird jobs such as cleaner in a cold store, pet's baby-sitter, corpses conveyor for my town's mortuary or even phone boxes tester.

Yes, I had ran into plenty of different forms of what some today call "modern slavery". Some were easy and boring, others so painful I could hit my toes with a brick just to have an excuse not to go, others just silly as a dream. I had great times also. But rarely I had been sitting in an office and more rarely I had been using a computer as a tool.

But now I resolved to do so and for a long time.

I rented myself a little desk in a shared open space for freelancers. It is definitely more convenient than the cupboard filled to the top with old torn books and unwashed clothes that I call my home.

If you have a good capacity of abstraction from your environment and some persistence, you could almost work here. There are other freelancers, doing jobs I don't understand, and wandering around in the office screaming like devils in their mobiles when it's time to get paid. And everybody is just like me sitting in front of a damn computer. Typing typing and typing. And eventually moving mouses.

And, to tell the truth, it's just awful. How can you do that all the day long, all the year, all your life? Don't you get mad in the end ?

Well, as I have no choice, I suppose I have to get accustomed to it. So I had invented a few techniques to change my mind in this buzzing office.

Here are 3 of them, which are quite effective to me. Hoping they could help some of you confronted to such a situation.

Technique 1 : Office spy
This is kind of a game. I pretend to be an office spy and just go stare at one of my neighbours' screen. I approach myself little by little, keeping lurking at what my spied colleague is typing. Until I get caught. And then, you have a good point to start an half an hour conversation about the "what exactly is your job" topic. I could come back the same day to the same guy. Because at my age it is quite acceptable to forget everything, especially when it is as complicated as a freelancer's job.

Technique 2 : Office Gymkhana
In order to break the monotony of the posture, and help my body not to turn into an office potato, I force myself to get up and do things. Whatever the real need. The idea is that you have to move around, not regarding the efficiency of the task. Just go check the printer before printing, changing the ink toner when it's not necessary. Go try to fix the toilets because you heard a disturbing little noise. Move to the post office for every letter you have to send. Go visit the basement to see if you could read your writings in the dark. That's good sport.

Technique 3 : Office hide and seek
Most of my neighbours are very serious people, doing dead-boring jobs and talking a pompous jargon. So I have to put a little fun into this. Each time I could take the opportunity; I steal a little object on a desk, and just hide it in someone else's drawer. Then I go ask the robbed if he could lend me the missing object. Not finding it, he usually gets mad and I could help him to play the hide and seek game. Usually, I just dodge myself before he starts to argue with the drawer's owner where his object has been surprisingly found.

Since I started to talk about my new job, telling people it has something to do with Internet, they are all coming to me with a single word in their mouth: Google!!

Like if they were kids in front of the Magic Kingdom of Fantasia, I really can feel the wonder of it in their eyes. But like if they were a pack of dogs barking and yelping all around their master, I really can see they were also ready to bite as soon as you would pretend to threaten their mentor.

It aroused my curiosity. A lot.

So some times ago, I went to THE Google. And there was almost nothing. Just a logo and a field to fill. The main idea is that you fill it, and then you have to click on the Google button.

It took me 15 minutes to get to this point.

And another 15 minutes to understand that the page Google sent me after I filled the field was related to what I typed in this very field!

It was a kind of a question and answer game. You type a word or a few and Google give you all the websites that have something do to with it. Amazing, isn't it ?

Of course, all of you already know that.

But for me, It was an hard guess. The first word I wrote was "hello". And I was not surprised to see that Google replied me "Hello welcome" in return. You could check

So I thought my first assumption was right. For me, Google was a kind of dialog engine. Yes, I could communicate with Google.

Then I logically said something like "how are you ?".

Google replied "bored".

I was puzzled but not completely. It was meaningful to me that Google could be bored of having the very same dialogue with all these people coming to visit it. So I decided to go over the traditional "hello how are you" dialogue to go directly into a more personal sphere.

I asked : "Who isn't bored "� I thought I could show Google how intimate I was with its boredom problem being myself an old bored man, having nothing much to hope from life. I am not myself much of a psychologist but I thought asking questions like if I already had a plain knowledge about what I was talking about was a good way to start.

Google replied : "George Allen isn't bored."

It was a strange answer, but I felt like Google wanted to talk to me about George Allen. He had something to do with Google's boredom for sure. A kind of jealousy maybe. Maybe George Allen had a more interesting job than Google, and Google was lurking to this job.

So I asked : "who is George Allen ?"

George Allen was an American football coach in the NFL, said Google.

I was feeling in confidence. Google was giving information in a slow pace, but I was in a good trend to start a real discussion. I decided to play cards on table :
- Are you jealous of him?
- Are you jealous, google replied. Returning me a question as an answer.
- I am not, I said, entering its game.
- "Why I am not a Christian", replied Google.

So Google wanted to talk about religion. But I was not very keen on. I was above all wondering where this conversation was getting into. It started slowly but surely to turn into a really surrealistic dialogue between a very inquisitive old man and a "something" who could definitely not focus on a subject more than 2 lines.

All this seemed totally absurd to me. After 3 more questions&answers, Google was answering me bullshit any times. Sometimes repeating my own words, sometimes changing subject all of a sudden, sometimes asking meaningless questions...

But something was starting to bother me and to question my perception of Google's "raison d'être" : There was not only one answer to each question I asked to Google, but they were plenty of them... A bunch of... Pages.

As if Google was some kind of schizoid who could not fix himself on a unique personality and give a single answer to a simple question.

It couldn't be that. So I understood I had to change my first assumption. But at this point, I really had no clue, what Google can be made for ?

Then I spotted the "I am feeling lucky" button.

And my life changed.

Well it doesn't exactly. I didn't felt that lucky. I am still a 61 years old man trying to earn his life in this blog-job he isn't made for. But, I understood what the web really was. That is to say : links ! Yeah, I am sure some of you have forgotten how crucial this point is. More than websites, web is about links.

By clicking the "I am feeling lucky" button, Google sent me directly to another website. And this time I made the proper reasoning and guessed what was Google main function : the first link generator.

Yes ! Google's raison d'être was to create links that could let you go to the website you want. Without Google, you will have plenty of existing websites on the web but you can't go surf them because there would be no link you can click on. Like houses you can't go because there is no path or road which leads you to them.

So it is. A link is a road. And Google is a roadbuilder.

I am kind of a newbie in this blogging mess. I really know nothing about nothing. And now I got this tool called a blog and I have to do something with it in order to keep that job.

Do something!� Do something!� I keep saying to myself : do something. Write a god-damn post and you will get your money. Easy to say, pal. But inspiration doesn't come as taxes.

I feel myself in a dream situation alike this one : I was given a hammer and I have to nail. But there is no wall !!

What can be done with a blog ? What can I write about ?

To get inspiration, I have been reading some others blogs (should I say competitors?) and I really haven't seen the point. Why are all this people talking/writing? Alone with themselves for most. With no people reading or giving comments (but will there be some here one day ?).

Is that a new kind of mental illness, like people talking to themselves in the streets?

If so, I just need to get the virus.

Does someone know where all these guys get themselves inoculated ?

France is well known for being a country filled to the top with social advantages. I guess things could be seen that way for some. As a French man, having been living in that country for 61 years, not leaving it much in all these years, I should nod in agreement as a monkey in a banana factory with this statement of fact.

But when you get to know, at this quite respectable age, that your retirement pension will be cancelled for some obscure reasons, you start to consider things in a much much different way.

Suicide could be a solution. After all, if you don't deserve your retirement, maybe it means you don't deserve to live anymore. But when it comes to suicide, I suddenly become as lazy as a lion.

Living on your own could be another one. But it's a hard work to dig out out-of-date cans from a ten meters high junkyard. Work still remains the best choice. But – and this is another characteristic of this country – nobody wants you anymore when you have written 61 on your resume. And, if my compatriots are stupid enough to turn my retirement pension into a Copperfield's magic trick, they are definitely not to believe that this grey hair belongs to a 38 years old man who happened to be very very frightened by his approaching forties.

Lucky me. My daughter decided to provide some help to her aging and merciful father by giving my job research a bit of a boost.

She sacrificed what she had of most value (understand : one of her rare moment of intellectual awakening) by pushing for my case to a top manager of her company. After some deep personal implication, needless to say.

Thus, I was recruited as a freelance consultant by Delconsulting. Yeah, the very same company you are actually reading the blog of.

But as a beginner, bad english speaking and computer illiterate resource, they could not reasonably give me any mission as a certified consultant. So far. So they say.

But a blogger job was available. Until I could be staffed on a proper consulting mission. Of course. So, here I am. Hired for life in this company to run this blog and looking for adventure in whatever comes my way.