I’m not someone who you would think of as an intern at this age. But I am a part-time one.

Three days out of the week, for fifteen hours, I go to Bleacherreport.com (from home) and edit, edit, and edit until my eyes bleed as Lil Wayne would say.

It’s something that I’m doing with the hope that ill be able to relocate to San Francisco one day and land a job with the company. If that’s not an option, at least land some part-time paid work with them.

I have two more months left, so we’ll see how this pans out.

When I initially told people about this, they looked at it as a waste of time.

‘You really think you’ll get a job considering how the market is right now. Especially one in dead as rocks journalism?’

‘At this point in your life, you shouldn’t work for anyone for free. You’re not a college student anymore.’

To some, those points are valid ones. But they aren’t to me.

You see, one of the biggest mistakes in my journalistic career was thinking I was ‘the man.’

In college, I had more clips than all my classmates. I had an award. I was invited to seminars. I appeared on NBC. I went to Columbia University on day trips to their journalism school, and their own Professors would tell me I was more advanced than their own students in both under and grad school.

All that stuff I thought never got to my head, but it did.

Why?

Because in the last two years, I could say that I haven’t done anything of relevance when it comes to journalism. I’ve basically disappeared.

I was writing for the New York Amsterdam News for close to two years. I was a consistent 2-3 clip person on a weekly basis. But once a new editor came on that I didn’t vibe with, I started slacking.

I’d skip out on assignments and blame her for what was really my own laziness/arrogance.

There was a time I was an editor for YoRaps.com and would interview people on various other Hip-Hop sites and get paid for it. I was DefJam.com’s main interview person for their artists.

But, after a while, I lost my love for Hip-Hop as have many. I could have been ‘that guy’ when it came to Hip-Hop journalism as my friend James once said, but in this case, I didn’t really want it.

And this brings me to this point.

I can say I have this, that and the other. But I can only live off the past for so long. I can’t go to someone and show them an article from three years back. I can’t even find some of my articles from three years back.

So I decided I have to start over.

I have to get down to business and maybe pitch a ‘free’ piece. Maybe I have to do some ‘free’ work for a few months.

Within the last two years, I can honestly say I was confused whether journalism was for me or not. But now, I know it is… on a limited level. If I can become a solid, respected freelance writer, as the Clipse would say, ‘I’m Good.’

I don’t need to have a daily byline. I don’t need any of that. What I need is to come back and prove that I can write with the best of them. If that means I have to work for free to get my foot back in the door, that’s just what I’m going to have to do.

So as long as you have the time and it won’t affect your financial situation to work a few hours a week for free, try it out. Don’t shun it. Some people search for internships instead of going out there and taking them. When I say taking them, I mean just emailing the folks at the company some ideas about what they do and how you can help “for free.”

Don’t just email them and send a resume. Send them a resume, why you want to help them, what you know about them, and some ideas you think can really help them out.

In the end, no one knows if it will produce what you want from it in the long run. But it doesn’t hurt to try. It never hurts…

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Working for free… is a post from: Live Above Mediocrity