After I got laid off, I struggled to figure out what to do with myself. I finally decided to follow my dream of becoming a writer. Unfortunately, this is a long and arduous process and success is not quick or even assured. To make ends meet, I had to find something else to do to make money but it needed to be something flexible so that I could work whenever and wherever I wanted to. I finally found the solution to be Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

I have been “turking” for several months now and I really enjoy it. Initially, it seemed daunting as I had to put in a lot of time and wasn’t skilled at knowing how to work effectively. With experience that all changed and I can now work quite well and still have enough time left for my writing. I have just finished my first novel so the overall plan is working.

More than a simple job or something to do though, Mechanical Turk has actually helped me grow as a person. There are a lot of things that I have been exposed to that otherwise would have never entered my life. For example, I have learned quite a bit about several sciences that I was never before exposed to like zoology by helping to classify animal species from pictures. I have also had the great experience of learning about myself through taking several psychological and emotional type surveys and taking part in other scientific studies. These might sound like unimportant things but they have really opened my eyes to a lot of things and have thus even improved my writing by giving me better ideas and becoming more knowledgeable about myself and the world.