Three years ago I was sitting in a cube writing ad copy, moonlighting as a technology blogger at night. Living on hor d’oeuvres and white wine (ok fine, vodka), my life was a blur of fancy hotels, international flights and various adaptors.

The fact that I chose to write about technology was somewhat a product of circumstance. I met the editor of a popular consumer electronics blog around the same time I desperately wanted to ditch the desk job, and I wanted to write. So I did. The topic? Technology…why not.

Right off the bat the genre seemed to suit me. Sure, I didn’t really know anything at the time, but I was able to discover these products and trends along with the audience — putting it all in laymen’s terms along the way. The fact that technology has penetrated every aspect of life from art, to film, to music, to travel and so-on has kept me going, giving me a good chance to write about my passions (cute boys) here and there. I like startups too.

After traveling from London, Estonia, Finland, Dublin and everywhere in between (Orlando!) writing for publications like TechCrunch, The Next Web, Pocket-lint and Engadget, I decided to give it all up…for dental insurance. Of course, it’s about more than the fact I care about my teeth. Although, I do think the turning point was when the owner of a video studio made a comment about people with “freelancer teeth,” helping me realize that giving up the gig was the right choice.

So what do I do now?

I am a tech blogger, of course.

I work at JWT, a global advertising company responsible for creating the grilled cheese sandwich for Kraft. YUM. I work in the emerging brand journalism department where we create campaigns using the principles of journalism. This means that we help brands put out content like real humans that doesn’t involve marketing terms and superscript Rs and TMs in circles. I work with former New York Timers and PCMagers. We get to say fancy terms like “content strategy” and “EOD.”

Also, everyone is good looking.

Most recently, I helped launched Qualcomm Spark. The point of the site isn’t to evangelize people about Qualcomm’s message. Rather, it’s designed to house stories relevant to the mobile industry — relevant to Qualcomm — and to raise awareness about all the really fucking cool things happening in mobile.

And there’s a lot.

We have real money to send a real video crew to interview real people like the guy who created the iPhone electrocardiogram, or Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist. This interests me. I get to do things I could never do as a freelance journalist, like create cool documentaries and get opinions from people like Peter Rojas and all the friends I’ve met while globetrottin’.

Plus, the job allows me to go the dentist, which we all know is a good, good thing.

Check out the first episode of the Spark documentary series

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About the author

LydiaLeavitt