#25 - It's a milestone, I suppose...
Sep 30 '03
The Bottom Line in which I wax nostalgic about Burrito Supremes, high school, and other things that have nothing to do with Sting
A long time ago, in a Taco Bell now 1800 miles away, I sat my 16-year-old butt down for my first job interview. High school sophomores need money and I was no exception; no girls want to date a pimply kid with no money, (at least, that’s what they claimed) and whose father happened to be principal of said high school – but that is another essay for another time. Despite fumbling my way through the discussion with an assistant manager who had to be all of 18 and a day, I managed to snag a job as a cashier. I believe that I earned the princely sum of $3.15/hour, which was much more that I was getting mowing lawns in my neighborhood for $5 a pop. Other than the need to impress the ladies with my newfound wealth, I’d found out that this particular Taco Bell would give employees free food on breaks. This may have been the actual selling point on this job for me – I was a raving Taco Bell fiend (I still am, and I have the looks to prove it).
I actually enjoyed working for the Bell, and I continued to work for them for seven long years. I was able to work my way into a management position before it was all over, but one thing never changed – every day that I worked, I looked forward to my next meal at Taco Bell. I probably ate two or three thousand meals during the time I worked for them, and never once got sick of it. This was back when my metabolism and my heart could keep pace with my Taco consumption, so I’m amazed that I still eat there, even though I have gone on to more satisfying (and much better paying) jobs. I absolutely love the food Taco Bell serves. Give me a burrito supreme with green sauce and extra cheese and I’m yours…
Those of you who are glancing up at the category chosen for this apparent review of Taco Bell are about ready to skip to the end and click “off topic”, so I’ll cut to the chase – when you find something you love, you’ll usually find a way to keep it close. Before I was out of high school, it didn’t really matter how much money I made working at Taco Bell – I was there because I loved the food. Though Taco Bell will always be close to my heart, or at least my waistline, there are other things that have come along in my life that I find are enjoyable simply for the love of it.
Those of you who have read my reviews know that I am a big Sting fan, probably one of, if not THE craziest Sting fan on the site. And this isn’t about Sting – this is about my newfound love of writing. Some of my friends know that I’ve been writing reviews, and they are shocked, to put it mildly, when I tell them the amount of money I’ve been able to earn for all of the research, time and effort that has gone into my writing. Let’s just say I’m keeping my day job –
Back to my point. I joined epinions because there weren’t a lot of reviews about Sting on the site (there still aren’t, though I have done my part by reviewing all of his studio albums). When I made this discovery, I found myself to be indignant over this perceived slight of Mr. Sumner – how could this fabulous music be overlooked? I was compelled by this righteous wrath to compose an essay about one of his un-reviewed singles; another followed, then another and another. Bigger priorities at work and home forced a sabbatical from epinions this year, though I had only managed 12 or 13 reviews by January of this year. When I returned in August, I found that the fire had not gone out; in fact, I found that my real incentive was not righting perceived slights or “earning amazing amounts of money from my home computer”. To my surprise, I discovered that what I really desired was to learn how to write well.
Writing well is like s e x – it takes a lot of luck to be able to do it at all, and a lot of practice to be able to do it right. The goal is learning how to do it with ease, and there’s the rub. Writers fret and worry over getting just the right phrase or crafting the witty remark that will win over the reader, and this is a long and difficult process. I know that I am constantly re-reading my own reviews, never quite believing that the process is complete for anything I write. I could make the inevitable joke about how my body of work is small compared to some epinionators, but that would be the cheap way to end this paragraph…
Though the incentives offered by epinions for my non-hatted reviews are small, the returns from reading the reviews and the comments of regular epinionators are immense. It’s an eye-opening experience to find that there are so many different ways of describing the same record, the same book, movie, or even the same fast food chain. Many different opinions can be found in these millions of pages, all focused on the pursuit of promoting viewpoints that I may never have considered. I’ve been challenged to think, encouraged to branch out, and also managed to have a great time while doing so. I do love writing, and I plan on writing for as long as I continue to love it. I may even get called on the carpet for subjecting everyone to another “why I write for epinions” essay – but hey, that’s why I work here.
…you gonna eat that burrito?
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Epinions.com ID:
bob_tomato
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Andrew
Location: Dallas Metroplex
Reviews written: 284
Trusted by: 209 members
About Me:
no more thhppptttt...
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