Minding My Own Business

That’s it. I can no longer stand by and allow these misspellings, grammatical errors and just plain embarrassing mistakes. So rather than continuing to roll my eyes and silently complain about the state of our educational system, I choose to take action. I am officially entering the business of proofreading.

I love to fix mistakes. Okay, don’t overthink that, I’m referring specifically to writing. When someone asks me to look something over, my heart starts racing with excitement. If it’s a story or an article and I have time to dig in, I enjoy making suggestions about where to add or move things, but I especially love the process of “cleaning things up.” Correcting spelling is one of my strongest skills--I have a knack for spotting errors quickly, a blessing and a curse as these errors run rampant everywhere!

Here are a few of my favorites:

I hope to save businesses the embarrassment of posting these kind of mistakes. Whether it’s a sign, flyer, menu...I can be a final set of eyes on it to be sure it’s perfect. Because hey, who doesn’t want perfect? Again, I make this promise only in reference to writing!

I considered working for a company that hires proofreaders for online work and even took a few fun quizzes to gauge my skills. I fared pretty well, but no one is exactly knocking my door down at this point. Soooo….I figured I’d stick my toes in the water and see what happens. Here is my first go at a business card, and I would love everyone’s thoughts on the name. Just to clarify, I was going for the play on words: I’m proofing your writing, and my goal is that you’re right in how you’ve presented everything. Make sense? Clever or confusing? Other ideas for names? I appreciate any feedback you want to give.

This seems to be a gift that God has given me, and I am so excited to put it to work. While proofreading may not be your bag (baby!), I encourage you to seek out the things that make your heart race with excitement and spend as much time as possible doing them. If that’s your job, great. If it’s a hobby, carve out time for it whenever possible. Whether you can profit from it financially or emotionally, we all need to spend more time pursuing things that make us happy while blessing others. So what’s your thing?