I’m Jackie Terrence, formerly known as Jackie Winston, but you may call me Jackie of All Trades if you wish. I have always enjoyed learning new skills and exploring new interests. Case in Point: In high school, I was on yearbook staff, drama club president, sang soprano in choir, participated in FFA (I liked a roper boy but ended up enjoying learning about bovines) and 4-H (cake decorating and STEM programs), took piano and dance lessons.
Maybe that just sounds like your typical high-schooler trying out lots of things, but it got even crazier in college. I won’t rehash all my activities as that might take all day. But in my higher education days, I experienced five different majors: Music, Engineering, Teaching, Journalism, and finally obtained a degree in Creative Writing, after five grueling years at Northeastern Missouri College. A degree, I’m certain, Dave Ramsey would consider worthless.
There was some wisdom in Dave’s advice about profitable majors, as for the last ten years I haven’t been able to find a degree in my field. After two years at a daycare and three years at a car dealership, I got married to the amazing Paul Terrence, contractor extraordinaire and moved to the small town of Alton, Illinois about 30 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri, where we currently reside in our humble abode. After we got married, I got a job as an elementary school secretary in my new hometown, but I knew I wouldn’t make a career out of that as I was hoping to have children fairly soon and stay home with them.
As if right on cue, I had my first child, Brody, a boy, two years later. Brody, now four years old, and baby Mia take up most of my time these days as a stay-at-home mom. Or domestic engineer, if you think that sounds better.
But at last, my writing career is about to take off. It isn’t specifically a creative writing job, but it does reinforce my reputation as Jackie of All Trades. Here’s how this all went down:
For several months I was in a major funk. It had been a pretty brutal fall and winter, and by February I was almost at my wits end. I had been stuck in the house with the kids for what seemed like ages. If it wasn’t snow or ice, it was sickness after sickness. Sometimes me, sometimes one or both of the kids.
I do have a pretty active social life and go to some mom groups and bible studies in my community, but wasn’t able to make it to them very much that winter. I needed something I could do during nap time at home.
Also, I should have been thrilled that Paul’s business was thriving so well, but he worked long hours, and to be honest, I was getting a little jealous of his success while I was at home cleaning up puke and diarrhea. So instead of having some kind of online emotional affair with an old boyfriend on Facebook (a la Desperate Housewives), I decided to go the morally and emotionally healthy route and look for some freelance work I could do from home.
Immediately, I knew who should I contact: my old college professor from Northeastern, Steve Daina. (And no, he wasn’t one of those aforementioned old boyfriends, in case you were wondering). I took many of his classes in college and he taught me practically everything I know about writing. I knew he was up on all the current writing trends and all the ins and outs of publishing, since I followed him and his blog on Facebook (the mecca of all experts). I decided to do the bold thing and…Facebook message him. Oh yes, much gutsier than a phone call.
Steve, being the great guy he is, messaged me back the same day asking me what exactly I was looking for. I told him I was pretty much desperate for anything I could do at my own leisure (within a reasonable period of time) from home. He said he had something in mind that would be maybe less than ideal, but something I could possibly help him with.
And, just like that, I became Jackie of All Trades. You see, for awhile Steve has been freelance editing e-books to supplement his income. He had a project he’d been wanting to tackle for awhile but didn’t want to do it by himself. He was looking for a guinea pig basically to write about their experiences trying out DIY projects in a mini e-book format.
What I would have to do is do a bit of research, either on the Internet or from DIY books on how to do a certain skill or hobby and try it myself. Then I would have to write about my experience, both the successes and failures. In the failure sections, I would have to write what went wrong and how I later fixed my mistakes. Yes, it’s a little bit like Pinterest Fail but maybe with a little more professionalism. I would possibly even interview some experts to help me. Then Steve would edit and self-publish the e-book and do the marketing. I would receive a percentage of profits to be determined at a later date.
You can probably tell I’m not much of a businesswoman, as I immediately accepted the assignment without much question of the payment, rights or anything else. I’m pretty trusting and heck, I don’t want to deal with the publishing and marketing side of things myself. So off I went to check out some of those (insert topic here) for Dummies books at the local library and bookmarked about a jillion DIY blogs, looking for an interesting topic.
So here I am on this blog sharing all the funny (and not so funny) side effects from trying to do all these DIY projects. You know, things that I probably can’t put in the books. As you’ll see, some of them involve huge embarrassments or personal issues I’ve had with my family and friends as a result of the projects that don’t quite fit with the DIY genre of literature. Reality TV, maybe, but not what Steve is going for.
Join me next time when I share the delightful story of how I tried the oldest hobby of them all: Gardening. ::Cringe::
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