I was a ghost writer for a Ph.D student.
The work was money for editing. And, since that’s what I aspire to do, well – why not? Yet, that logic is devoid of reality because I was demanding that situations yield to me instead of trying to yield to what was really going on.
I was taking what I felt I could reasonably get in my comfort zone; but the comfort zone is not reality.
I was an unemployed writer and editor looking for opportunities to build work beyond her blog. I wasn’t thinking about the difference between an effective, professional opportunity and the opportunity to make a corrupt fool out of myself.
Quickly, I learned that it was much more than editing. It was exhaustive ghost writing, research during Thanksgiving and 10 pm panic calls.
Nonetheless, I was writing and researching. Doing things I love to do. I couldn’t, however, share my work with anyone because it was technically not my own. I couldn’t engage my findings with anyone except my clueless client. And, that was not meaningful because it was highly transactional. She was no more interested in the work than a john is interested in a hooker’s sex life.
The code of evil is a gut check
When you cannot present what you produce in a way that means something to you and the world – your talents are being used against you. This is evil.
Evil is mistakenly thinking that because you are getting paid you are wielding your skills in an artful manner.
The point of the talent (and the work) is to have someone find it useful or fulfill a need – not a means to an end. In other words, if the only way you can create execution for talent is through pointless work, you might be planning for overall failure in execution.
Of course you are wondering, I was getting paid, how pointless was it in the first place? After all, getting $20 bucks an hour should satisfy anyone struggling to gain income through freelancing. However, now that I think about it, the money was the least of my worries.
I don’t spend time wondering how I will get paid for work. I spend time wondering how my work will bring my career to the next level. How will I learn from it? How will I use it to get what I want next? How can I leverage this? What’s the point?
Therefore, if I’m getting paid to do pointless work, then what am I really aspiring to become?