Some work bragging from Kate

As part of my updates, I wanted to do a little bragging about the work I've done in the last while. I'm rocking the work-from-home thing (okay, "rocking" is a bit strong; I'm accomplishing it with varying levels of success) and finally even have a babysitter three days a week to make it happen (thank you, Elyse!)

I've mentioned this before, but after my job with the scrapbooking/crafting magazines disappeared, I took some time off to have a baby and then started doing freelance and contract work. It was stressful to start working for myself that way, but the miracles flowed in (and then again) and it's been a great experience, even if the stress of working from home gets me down on a regular basis. 

Between my 3 1/2 years with the magazines and the 1 1/2 years of freelance work, I can say I've been writing and editing professionally for 5 years, which is awesome and sort of amazing to me still. This is what I wanted to do, career-wise, and I am making it work the way I wanted to do it - at home, part-time. English major victory!!!

At least half of my jobs have been to write content for various websites, so I actually get to see my name in (digital) print, which is really cool! (My next goal is getting published for something I wrote creatively for me and not for a job.)

First, my stint with writing for eHow last year, which did not pan out but I completed my 3 articles and got my $50 bonus so, sweet, right?

How to Make a T-shirt from Fabric
How to Make an Adult Tinkerbell Costume
How to Make Accordion-fold Books

Second, I spent last summer writing company reviews for thebestcompanys.com, though sadly, none of my reviews have my name attached. If you care to browse, I ended up writing about DNS providers and life insurance, business loan, personal loan, and payday loan companies (don't EVER use a payday loan company is the moral of that story).

And third, my current really awesome job is writing content for ASecureLife.com and I've had a couple of articles go live already. These have actually been really interesting to research, as I've covered a pretty wide range of topics in just the two months since I started working there. These are just the start of many articles to come:

Do Security Systems Really Work?
Funding Circle Reviews: An Exceptional Loan Experience?
Updated: Prosper Reviews: Our #2 Pick for Peer-to-Peer Lending
More updates:
Best Smart Locks: A Look at the Top Locks on the Market
Best Digital Door Locks: Security and Convenience
Best Wi-Fi Baby Monitors: Peace of Mind from Far Away
Lending Club Reviews: Our #1 Peer-to-Peer Lending Company

All this researching random topics makes me feel like a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. Except, of course, for the researching and writing part. I've got that part down.

P.S. I should mention that the other half of my freelance work has been writing educational materials (another job where I got to research all kinds of random stuff in order to write reading passages for various grade levels) and editing all kinds of papers. I worked for an online editing/proofreading company (don't anymore, I just quit last month) that accepted almost anything, so I got to edit (mostly poorly written) essays about a huuuuge range of topics. I mean, everything from marine biology to emergency room procedures to the materials used to make dentures to Italian painters to health administration reports to literature reviews to the best bituminous mixtures to make asphalt, which, funny enough, I though was another paper about dentures for the first 2 pages. I don't miss that particular job but it definitely kept me on my toes!