Doing What You Love

I'm lucky. As an SEO and digital marketing strategist, I get to do the work I always wanted to do. It rarely feels like a job. It feels more like a hobby that pays me every month.

At L’Oréal, I work with SEO, digital strategy, AI and international content across several brands and markets. The work combines creativity, technology and data, plus the occasional Google update to ruin an otherwise perfectly good day.

I can spend hours studying search behaviour, solving technical problems and testing new ideas. The industry changes constantly, so there is always something new to learn.

I feel the same way about writing.

At HarperCollins, I have the pleasure of writing short stories and screenplays and working with other writers and people from the television and film industry. I love creating characters, dialogue and worlds from an idea that may have started as one strange sentence in my head.

Some stories become dark and serious. Others become completely absurd. I enjoy both.

I also have several personal creative projects.

Groovy Diesel Spaghetti is my AI music project. It started because I wanted to try making music, and apparently trying something once is not an option for me. One song became another, and some have now even received radio play. That is far more than I expected when I started.

My newest project is Kevin the SEO Manager, a satirical comic about working in SEO. Kevin deals with Google updates, AI advice, office politics and questionable SEO tactics. Familiar digital brands appear as cute and occasionally unhinged cartoon characters who try to help him survive his job.

Kevin also has Winston, a lazy, sarcastic and overweight cat who offers very little emotional support but makes up for it with judgement and strategic flatulence.

I'm also fascinated by AI video creation. I can sit down intending to test something for ten minutes and emerge several hours later with 27 versions, no dinner and a steampunk rabbit that still walks funny.

I usually have several projects running at the same time. I may spend the day working on SEO strategy, then write part of a screenplay, edit a song, create a comic strip and try to make an AI character walk like a normal human being.

Unfortunately, a day still has only 24 hours.

I have checked.

The body also continues to demand sleep, which seems like a serious design flaw.

Still, I know how fortunate I am. I work in a field I genuinely enjoy, I write because I love writing, and my hobbies usually turn into new projects before I have time to call them hobbies.

I simply need someone to invent a 28-hour day.