Skip to main content

Right Me?

            So I’m at a bit of a crossroads. I could take a job for a nickel an hour and redeem my self-esteem in the process, or I could take up the terrifying life of a freelancer.

            No self-respecting 54-year-old wants to be on the dole.

            That being said, I’m too damn old to bring home $387 a week. I don’t care if I’m stirring oatmeal at the nursing home.

            I find my professional life has taken a turn since I moved from Syracuse to Martha’s Vineyard. Granted, it’s a newspaper life and we all know the printed word is about to be dug up by archeologists any time now.

            When you do something with your hands or your mind, even if it’s just typing, you tend to wonder all the time if you’re good enough. Isn’t there somebody just over the horizon that’s better, that’s faster than you in every way?

            Then there’s the whole thing about making a living for the past 25 years as a writer. There’s still this part of me that thinks to myself, "I’m a writer . . . that’s kind of like being a court jester or a food taster."  It’s not a real job.

            My title a few years ago was editor but I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. And really I think of myself as a storyteller. My idea of a dream job is sitting around a group of octogenarians and asking them about their first kiss. 

            Writing is an ethereal way to make a living. You feel like it’s not quite real even while you’re doing it. Then I’m amazed that people pay me money to do it. Even though they pay me very little money and I don’t know how I’ll pay rent with my dividend.

            Then there’s the whole thing about how great it feels when someone, anyone, compliments your work.  It’s different than a foreman on a bricklaying job in a few ways, but not many. We’re both constructing something that we hope someone will buy. The end product is ours alone. You can look at it and see its worth.

            When you put what you have produced right out there for everyone to see, it’s personal. If they don’t like it, they don’t like you. It’s sort of hard to get past that mindset. It must be like when a painter of a house or a masterpiece sits in anticipation before the homeowner or art gallery curator. There are many occupations but I’m not sure how many take such a toll on your soul.

            I’ve thought to myself a million times that I should take that nurse’s aide training course or that civil service test for that post office job, but I just can’t do it. I feel like those jobs just don’t suit me. Then I think I must be some kind of highfalutin bitch who can’t bring herself to wipe the ass of a stranger. But I know full well that if it was my mom’s ass or my brother’s ass, I’d wipe it in a heartbeat.


            I’m “unemployed” right now and the word alone lends itself to degradation.  Visions of heavy-set women buying cheese curls with food stamps come to mind when I know that they buy them because they — A. Don’t have a car, and B. Are shopping at the corner store for children they just want to make happy.


Mine is the world of an underemployed writer. I see the speck of a crumb on your top lip and I think about how it got there and I feel compelled to write about it. Welcome to my world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Like to Call Them Ow-Bows

   It’s a toss-up. Do I write about the fact that if you search “jobless goddess” in Google the dairy goddess and the library goddess come way ahead of me, or do I write about the fact that my husband is incapacitated due to a broken elbow? I guess I’ll go with the broken elbow. Besides, who the hell breaks their elbow anyway? My husband of course.    It started out innocently enough. I, in my desire to lose weight and become the wrinkly, thinner woman I was meant to be, decided we should start up the morning walks again. I prodded him while he was still under the covers. “Come on, let’s do it. You know we have to do this,” I said while tugging on my really sexy yoga pants (which, by the way, never get used for yoga).    To his credit, he got up, pulled on his pajama pants and went with me. We got about a 16 th of a mile past the driveway before he landed in the gravel. I’m talking a bed of gravel. Gravel embedded in the palm of your hand. Gravel ...
2 comments
Read more

He sells sea shells, I wish

   So now rather than being obsessed with fake fingernails I can’t afford, I’m becoming obsessed with checking this blog. I’m pretty sure all 52 views were made by either me or my husband.   That leads me right into the current situation at hand. We need friends. We’re desperate for them. I’ve started handing out my telephone number to people I meet while doing my meager freelance work. They think it’s for the story I’m writing but really it’s in hope that someday they’ll find a reason to call and then I can hit them with, “By the way, do you play cards? Bingo? Gin Rummy?” If I wasn’t so arthritic I’d throw Twister in there.    It’s not so much for me, it’s my husband who likes to have people around. I have become hermit-like since moving here while he has become convinced we could die here and not be found for months. He had friends back in Syracuse but he chose to stay home at night with his loving wife. Now all of a sudden I get the impression he’d h...
6 comments
Read more

Parish the Thought

     I love small towns. When I lived in Parish, New York, there was no end to the reverie, not to mention the constant parades.      We had a Halloween parade through town featuring people of all ages marching in costume along a rather abbreviated parade route. It all culminated at the fire barn where a couple of old draft horses would pull along a hay wagon. Most all town festivities featured the fire barn.       Monday night bingo held there. The caller was a volunteer firefighter prone to bringing on fits of laughter when he drew N 44…which he pronounced as "N farty-far," whereby producing great gales of cackling from the middle-aged women who showed up every week, I think maybe just to flirt with the caller and the other male volunteers who collected their money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun. I spent more than a few Monday nights there myself.      The gas stations served as restaurants in Parish. You...
2 comments
Read more