Re-start (Level Up - 1) by Dan Sugralinov

Chapter One. The Morning It All Started

"Please, there's gotta be something else I can do. Like mow your lawn every week for two weeks. I can't do it next week."

Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

AT FIRST, the game had become my life. And later, life itself had become a game.

I'd failed at life. By my thirty-plus I had a wife, a string of one-off freelance gigs, a state-of-the-art computer, a level 110 rogue character in a popular RPG game and a beer gut.

I also wrote books. A book, rather. I hadn't finished it yet.

Before, I used to feel flattered whenever someone called me a writer. But over the years, I'd finally forced myself to face the uncomfortable truth: I wasn't a writer at all. The only reason they called me so was because I had no other social tag to describe me by.

So who was I, then? A failed albeit once-promising sales rep who'd been fired from a dozen workplaces? Big deal. These days, everyone and their dog called themselves online marketing gurus.

Me, I couldn't sell anything. In order to promote a product, I had to believe in it. I just couldn't do it knowing the customer had no more need for it than for a garbage can.

I used to sell extra-powerful vacuum cleaners to gullible senior citizens; I'd hawked the latest water filters to big-city geeks who lived on rehydrated foods; I marketed premade websites to wannabe startups who'd mortgaged their homes to open their first businesses. I'd sold online advertisement, package tours, weight loss supplements and vermifuge pills.

I couldn't sell jack. I kept losing job after job after job. I also used to run a blog in my spare time (and admittedly during my work hours as well) where I published short stories to entertain whatever meager readership I could garner. That gave me enough ground to consider myself a decent Internet marketer.

Eventually, I'd even found a job with a company looking for someone to run their online store. Still, my very first meeting with their director had exposed my utter incompetence. He demanded to see their conversion rates, average order value, customer engagement levels, bounce rate, LTV and all the paraphernalia of stats I'd been supposed to present him with.

Apparently, running an online business had more to it than just keeping a witty blog peppered with comments and likes. Did you say trial period? They'd fired me before it had even run out.

Offended to the quick, I decided to finally learn the ropes. I downloaded a whole pile of courses, textbooks and video tutorials and even signed up for a few webinars.

I lasted exactly a week. For the first five days or so, I thoroughly enjoyed my new status. This wasn't going to take long, after all. With my enthusiasm and application, I was going to grasp the science of online marketing in no time.

I already pictured myself as a popular expert with a customers' list to match, someone who could charge top dollar for their knowledge of the market. I would finally buy myself a house and a decent car; I would take frequent vacations and enjoy all the perks of the four-hour workweek lifestyle.

Although admittedly euphoric, I wasn't in a hurry to actually hit the books. Over the course of those five days, my enthusiasm had finally worn thin, leaving me in the same place as before. When finally I forced myself to sit down and actually study, I quickly felt sad and bored. By the end of the second day, I realized I wasn't cut out for this sort of thing.

I spent the next year scraping by on my meager blog advertising income and doing occasional freelance jobs. Yanna, my wife, still had faith in me and my supposed potential — but her patience was already dwindling. Eight years my junior, she was at an age when all her friends were discussing the best shopping and vacation destinations while the best she could do was accompany her blogger husband to an occasional closed movie preview. Anyone can lose faith under these circumstances.