That's the number of words I have to come up for my office sideline.
Blame it for my past slacking, but the deliverables I failed to turn over last week all had to be submitted in one drop. Spread out in 21 articles, the 10,500 words would have to cover topics about romance, dating and online relationship. I had to become a love coach without sounding much like the authors who wrote about the same subject on the Internet.
I was under pressure to produce the necessary copies, that's why I had to stop writing new entries. The slacking had almost cost me this project and admitting my incompetence rubbed salt to my wounded ego. You see, in almost a year I've been working with Bentusi, these things never happened. Either the instructions were not clear, or my manager failed to make me realize the urgency of this project.
Given a chance to correct my errors, I wasted no time in writing my first draft. The letter containing the official instructions was sent last Tuesday. The manager said that everything must be done by Monday at 8 pm. In order to catch up and beat the deadline, I had to break my comfort zone. I had to give up my free time and lend my sleep to dreaming about dating websites and relationship epic fails.
From 1,000 words a day in Bentusi's time, I have now to write 4 articles containing no less than 2,000 words. I would start in the afternoon and end my writing stint at past midnight. The repetitive nature of my job was so sickening, sometimes I feel my words coming out of assembly lines rather than mind-crafted, when it takes form here in my blog.
Close to the pangs of disillusionment, I wonder, is this what SEO is all about?
Between the puerile rantings and the hollow silence that comes after quick-revising an article, I lurched forward to complete my task. Slowly I was getting there - sometimes with only the partner to cheer me up. Having a one-track mind helped me focus despite the occasional down moments when the end seems so far and the work continues to pile up.
After all, there's a floor to look after aside from doing this project.
One by one, the items get crossed out from the list. An article done brings me closer to my goal. Subverting the feeling of fatigue, the temptation of procrastination, the corruption of plagiarism, only one thing stuck in my head:
Redemption.
It was three hours before the deadline when I began writing my last article. Lack of sleep, a cluttered head and a dazed spirit may have slowed me down, but the drive was there to finish what I started. Fifteen minutes before 8 and it was over. Without the fanfare announcing a victor, a simple acknowledgement of completion from the one who instructed the task, lacking all ceremonies for a feat broken,
A million cheers burst inside my chest.
Meanwhile, the room where the final article was penned remains hollow and empty, as it has become nowadays.