CSotD: Keeping your reality checks from bouncing
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Here's an interesting juxtaposition for creative types in the current economy, and I can relate to both of them.
If Blabbing Baboon were fiction, I'd tell Richard John Marcej to end the unemployment story arc, because it's been going on awhile and it's becoming kind of tiresome. Unfortunately, it's a journal and I'm pretty sure he would like to wrap up this up.
I had a small weekly paper shot out from under me six years ago and was out of work for about eight months. Fortunately, I was a renter and my semi-expensive lease ran out two months after my job did. I was able to get an cut-rate temporary apartment near Dartmouth then, since it was summer and they'd rather have some money than none, and, when the students came back, I moved in with my son and his family until I was able to be self-supporting again.
I go into that detail because a lot of things fell into place for me, and I am aware of how badly things could have gone otherwise. Dumb luck and good timing are powerful allies, but you can't count on them.
This economy, in case you have somehow missed the news, is not much fun.
Better than it was, yes. Thanks, Obama.
But "better than it was" is a long way from "fun."
Anyway, about five months into the dry spell, I got a call from a former colleague from my newspapers-in-education days who was creating a geography curriculum for NIE programs and needed a writer.
As with the above project, it wasn't a permanent gig but it was a little cash in the pocket and, more important, a reminder that you do have some competence and value after all.
I pulled in Cory Thomas, who was still doing Watch Your Head at the time, as illustrator and he was fun to work with: Fast and excellent are a good combination, plus he's a nice guy.
But the best part of all was that, just about the time we were wrapping that up, I got another call from another former NIE colleague with an editing gig that I still have and is my main, but not only, source of income.
Which ending I would wish for Richard, but, as with cheap apartments and sons-with-whom-to-bunk-in, you can't simply wave the wand and make it happen.
Which brings us to Bug Martini, because successful freelancing tends to summon up that attitude you see in people who grew up in the Depression. Not Little Georgie's depression, the other one; the Great one.
It's not simply a case of Ebenezer Scrooge, feverishly working, in the wake of a tough childhood, to amass more than he could possibly ever need, though there are workaholics who do that. I knew of a guy who had been a POW in the Pacific Theater during WWII and, 25 years later, still came to work each morning with a sack of oranges and had eaten them all by quitting time.
It's not that kind of reaction, at least for me.
It's more that freelance work doesn't pay very well and if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone, you might as well not be working at all. If you're not that kind of person in the first place, you're better off with a job where you show up at this hour and go home at that hour and get paid this much this often.
Anyway, I've had no work and I've had too much work and I can tell you which one is worse.
Having too much work is like having too many oranges.
You don't have to be obsessive to remember what scurvy felt like.
On a lighter note:
I have thought about cutting the cord, but I'm too far out in the sticks to get more than NBC and PBS over the air, and, besides, ESPN and NFL Network are important because I can have them on and keep working.
If I stream a movie or Boardwalk Empire or something, I have to actually back away from the keyboard and pay attention. See above.
Exclusive CSotD insider gossip: Edison Lee cartoonist John Hambrock had to go to a bar last weekend to watch the playoffs because they were on ESPN and he's a cord-cutter.
The internal economics of giving up cable require that you factor in the cost of drinking at home versus drinking at a bar and the frequency of must-see sports programming.
Which gives me a cunning plan: Now that Sesame Street has moved to HBO, I'm going to open a chain of apple juice bars for the children of cord-cutters so they'll have a place to hang out and watch it first-run.
And a technical note:
Today's Betty drove me to ask Alexa, my Echo assistant, the same question.
Her response: "I'm sure you look just great."
Good answer: Professional but not pissy. She's no doormat, yet she knows how to command respect rather than demanding it.
Bub's assistant is going to be stuck in that phone for the rest of her career, but Jeff Bezos better not turn his back on Alexa.
Which brings up this question: How come all the digital assistants are women?
Actually, there's a reason, which is that cockpit warnings are given in women's voices because women's voices stand out in a stream of male voices.
Or at least they did back in the days when women's voices only asked about coffee, tea or milk and reminded you that your seat cushion could be used as a flotation device.
But, by the time Siri and Alexa and the rest came along, those days were ancient history.
When they start making personal assistants with male voices, I want one named Desmond: A former second-story man with whom I can have adventures.
Though I hope, when I simply ask him to play some music without specifying more, he throws on Duke Ellington.
'Cause Alexa just did.
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