Free Feet » art

3 Reasons To Work For Free

Carlee Mallard — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:36:43 +0000

With all this talk about the legality of unpaid internships, I started wondering where unpaid work (not specified as an internship) would fall in this argument. Where do you draw the line between doing work for free and for a fee?

Otherwise You Have to Pay Someone Else

Perhaps we draw the line between work that benefits us as individuals directly as opposed to benefiting another person. For example, most of us clean our homes, cook our own food, plant gardens, write our own resumes, do our taxes (arguably beneficial), raise our own children, and paint our own toes; all of which I consider “work” without being paid. Yet some people do exactly those tasks as paid work. Cooks, gardeners, resume-writers, accountants, nannies, and nail technicians are all paid to do exactly the same task we could do ourselves but for one reason or another chose not to. This point is pretty obvious though, because honestly, the only time and place that someone would pay you to clean up was back when you were 5 years old trying to earn your allowance from your parents.

You Don’t Know What The Hell You’re Doing

Or perhaps we draw the line at our perceived experience of skill level at the task at hand. Even if we’re doing work to directly benefit another person, say for example counseling high school students to get into college, giving some an awesome new hair-do, or photographing a friend’s wedding, there are instances where we’ll do that work for free. We may feel as though we don’t have enough experience to justify being paid for giving advice. We may need to complete a practicum or apprenticeship before we’re really qualified to cut someone’s hair for money better than they could trim their own bangs themselves. Sometimes we just don’t think that our skill or talent is good enough to charge a fee even if all of our friends keep telling us how amazing we are and that we need to start charging people (as is the case with thousands of artists and creative-types).

You Love It Too Much

Then again you may even be tempted drawing the line at the simple enjoyment level of the task. I think this is where most hobbies fit in because people are under the impression that if it’s fun, it can’t be work. This one is for all the amateur photographers, bloggers (if you’re still not earning an income from that), and geeky new social media kids who are just so stoked to even be doing what they’re doing that they’re not even thinking about money. Leaving a hobby as a hobby is fine, but…

Remember kids that just because you’re having a blast doing whatever you’re doing, that is certainly no excuse for not being paid if that’s what you want. In fact, we learned in an earlier post (credit to the comments) that you should in fact find some enjoyment in your paid job–maybe even a lot of fun!

For what other reasons have you worked for free? Has anyone ever asked you to work for free because they knew how much you loved it (and therefore would do it anyways)? If so, did you give in and do the work for free (or if not, how did you convince the potential employer/client to pay you)?

March Monthly Goal Meetup

Carlee Mallard — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:00:06 +0000

February surprised me in a lot of ways. When I wrote my goals for February I thought that I had it all planned out. But then mid-month some new opportunities arose, events popped up, connections were made, priorities changed.

Cyn Mallard's New Paintings

I know that’s all very vague, but my point is that if you can’t go with the flow, you might just miss out on some really great stuff. For example, you might notice that I have a brand new WordPress website with my own domain! When my aunt offered (read: really pressured me) to host the new site for me and help with the technical side of things, I couldn’t pass it up the opportunity to learn the WordPress platform and get a little more serious about everything. So before I get into March let’s check out last month:

Do my taxes! I even got my refund back already. Onwards and upwards!
Arrange my first tweetup in the Raleigh-Durham area. An example of something that I would have worked on had some unforeseen more immediate events come up. Instead of working on our own tweetup, Brianne and I have been working with the Pecha Kucha Night event organizers to help out doing PR, spreading the word to get more speakers, and helping out the day of the event. It’ll be a meetup, even if not a tweetup. We both agreed to postpone the tweetup until after all the March events are over.
Up the blog frequency. This was so much easier than I thought it would be. Easier as in… I wanted to do it, so I did it. Not easier as it didn’t take a lot of work, because let me tell you — it takes a lot of work. So much fun, so exciting though! It’s as if there was a piece of me that was missing all this time.
Take on a part-time job. I did a lot of looking and made notes & bookmarks, but I realized that I really need to re-write my resume first. I needed to break up the big goal into smaller goals.
Keep having fun. I didn’t end up doing everything I thought I would do, but there were some exciting things going on last month. Most notably my mom had her first art show in over 5 years. I am so proud of her we had a fantastic night celebrating after the opening!

Reflecting on last month, I’m hesitant to make any predictions for March. What I do know about this month is that it’s packed full of events, traveling, networking, and birthdays! What do I want to get out of it all then?

Finish perfecting the killer resume. I started this in February when I realized it needed a complete re-haul. I’m even considering hiring a resume writer to help out. Personal recommendations?
Finish the new blog redesign. You all reading this are among the first to see it live, so tell me what you think. Feedback is ever-so-appreciated!
Don’t be shy. By this I mean get out of my comfort zone, talk to people I haven’t talked to before, and make some meaningful connections. There are 4 big idea sharing events that I’m going to this month (3 this week and 1 the last week of March) where there will undoubtedly be hundreds of people eager to have interesting conversation and I CAN’T wait. So excited. Not only that, but my sister and I are going to NYC March 10th – 14th. While we don’t have a plan yet, I will be happy as long as I come home thinking it was worth my time. I really hope to catch up with some old friends but also meet some new people that I’ve met online. So really, help me with this one, and if you’re in the NYC area please let me know so we can get together!

To participate in the meet-up:
1. Post a list of your career/life related goals for March, along with your checked off February goals if you’d like, on your own blog.
2. Go back to Brazen Careerist and leave a link to your post (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list in the comments to join in!)
3. Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments - click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about!

What Is “interesting” Anyways? College Was.

Carlee Mallard — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:32:00 +0000

I’m three years out of college now. I find myself looking back at my life and the former college-lives of others around me and can’t help but feel like most of us were much more interesting people in college.

I look back at pictures from college:

Black & white shots with my film SLR in Pittsburgh
Strangers I met in Rome while studying abroad in Florence
Me with my Swiss foreign exchange student waiting in line to get into a concert
Fashion shots of aspiring models printed in my college fashion magazine
My family and me covered in sulfur mud from a volcano in Colombia, South America
Heck, it was impressive enough that I even took so many damn photographs (and some were pretty good).

I look back at my resume and notice a laundry list of activities, accomplishments, projects, research interests, and course completions. Tutoring. Mentoring. Ushering. Photographing. Editing. Traveling. Dissecting (pigs). Personal Assisting. Reading. Researching. Writing (like, a lot). Crushing. Loving. Organizing. Leading. Perfecting. Exploring. Freaking (out).

Yea, we do a lot of freaking out in college. We don’t know what life is going to look like post-college or how we’ll support ourselves (if you haven’t been already). So when I got a permanent full-time job I stopped freaking out. I got immediately comfortable with my (relatively) stress-free life. But I look at my life since starting this job 1 year and 7 months ago and life just doesn’t seem as interesting. Of course it’s mostly all my own fault. I mean, it’s my life and it’s up to me to make the most of it. But it seems to me that the general population with permanent full-time jobs were much more interesting in college. We get so content just collecting the paycheck every month that we spend our free time going to bars, restaurants, watching TV, and going on the occasional vacation. Is that interesting? Is there more to it?

I find myself wanting to talk to people about my past or my future instead of my present. But am I still that person from college that I think was so interesting? Was I really ever that interesting to begin with? Am I still interesting and I don’t know it? What is interesting anyways: popular, exciting, creative, foreign?

Note: After posing this question Sunday night, @ElleLaMode responded with some ideas of her own. You should check out her perspective over here.