About This Site

How would you have known without this graphic?

Welcome!

The core function of this site is to showcase the professional writing credentials of Ron Fleming. That’s me. For some brief information on my personal and professional background, please see my standalone bio at About.me for now. Future updates to the site will include a relatively short-form bio that focuses mainly on my professional history, and a longer bio, which will tell a more personal story for anyone who might be interested.

This site exists because after two years and seven months on a freelance technical writing team that provided content and other services for Amazon.com, I suddenly saw that team disbanded, and myself floating freely in an unfamiliar, multidimensional morass of the freelancer who is truly free.

This is what you get when you cross Slingblade with Flowers for Algernon.

I did my best to learn what I could from people who had stood in my shoes and found their way. Many former colleagues offered help and advice, some of which led to near misses that seemed promising for a time. But after a few months the feeling of momentum that came with the freshness of the team’s disbandment seemed to die down, and the hooks I had in the water dissolved one by one, until I found myself staring at six or seven Chrome windows loaded with 30 to 50 tabs apiece, each one of them displaying a job listing, LinkedIn article, staffing agency site, video tutorial on in-demand productivity tools, or one of the many how-to pieces intent on convincing job seekers that “the conventional wisdom on landing that ‘dream job’ is wrong. Here’s how it’s really done.” Nearly every resource I found seemed too important to close.

With my leads played out, my desktop full, and my efforts as fruitless as they were sincere and laborious, I came to the conclusion that something else had to be done–something I’d told myself I wouldn’t need to do. Something I didn’t want to have to do, because my plate was full enough as it was. “Damn it,” I said, “I need build my own website.” And here we are.

My plans for what I would actually do with this site have evolved since I first began the project.

This was my favorite way of keeping my head from hitting the computer for several months.

It was first conceived as a marketing tool and a go-to repository for material for prospective employers or clients, and this remains its primary purpose. For a time I had ambitious goals for the blog section, but the reality of how time-consuming my ideas were eventually set in. I also realized, particularly after consulting people with more expertise in this area, that my target audience and general focus wasn’t yet as clear as it should be. And if I’m honest, I have to admit that these areas are still in need of refinement.

But I believe the site is evolving in a positive direction, and I intend to continue adjusting and fine-tuning things until I have something in place that is satisfying to myself and visitors alike. The first major adjustment I made was to make the landing page static instead of defaulting to the latest blog posts. This, I believe (and hope), will make the site a bit less confusing for people who come here to see a showcase of my credentials and not my latest bit of yammering about this or that.

I hope that you will at least have a look around and drop in from time to time. Take a few moments to register or subscribe by email if you like. Registering will enable you to
comment on pages and posts–and I am always interested in feedback, constructive criticism, or even a short acknowledgement of your having visited. There is a place on the sidebar to upload an avatar of your choice after you’ve registered. Anybody who skips this step will be assigned the Success Kid default avatar, which may or may not be to your liking. 

If there is something on the site that you believe detracts from its effectiveness, or if you have any sort of message you’d like to communicate to me, please feel free to do so using the contact page. I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for dropping by. I hope you enjoy the site!

–Ron