by Joe Wallace

You think I’ve lost my mind now, right? What in the WORLD does POT have to do with freelance writing? Besides the obvious, I mean.

Whether you agree with marijuana use or not, take a long look at California’s new marijuana tax legislation–proposed by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, but not yet passed. Can you find a freelance writing or freelance jobs tie-in here? Think hard.

California is sinking under its own weight. It can’t pay its bills, is issuing IOUs to state contractors and is desperately looking for any way to cut spending. The state is in grave danger from a financial perspective. But here is a cash crop grown in the state–legally or not. If California were to legalize the cultivation, sale, and posession of pot, it could raise more than a billion in tax money from it. It’s a solution that’s right under the noses of everyone in the state, pun intended.

Taxing the sale of a plant that’s in and of itself no more harmful than tobacco makes perfect sense, whatever your feelings about getting high. But what has all this got to do with freelance jobs and growing (hah) your career as a freelance writer?

Sometimes the answers to your freelance job woes are right under your nose. The most obvious solutions are there waiting for somebody to grow a pair and suggest them.

I have a friend who got very offended once when I suggested that she expand her freelance writing horizons to include a topic she was most familiar with–parenting. As if the subject were somehow distasteful to write about because she did it every day. I reminded her that being a freelance writing success includes being a good time manager. It’s not required to do endless research on every single article.

Another friend complained that her favorite freelance jobs resource rarely updated the website’s job board. I asked her which editor she worked with the most, and my friend rattled off two names right off the top of her head. “Why don’t you just e-mail your editors directly? You’re all on a first name basis, right?”

The California pot tax issue remains to be decided at press time, but your freelance job conundrum can be solved right now. Take a good look at your situation and ask yourself, “What’s the simplest solution, the one I haven’t tried yet?” You should also take a bit of advice from an old Brian Eno art project, where the phrase “Honor thy mistake as thy hidden intention” was used as a sort of writer’s block-busting wisdom.

The last word on this–my old art instructor advises painters to turn their work upside down when they get stuck and try looking at the work with a fresh set of eyes. What do you see when you turn your freelance career updside down?