Haven't Felt Much Like Posting, Lately

But I owe it to my loyal fans (both of) to struggle on . . .

I have frequently mentioned in these pages my frustration at being unable thus far to find work. Lately things have gotten busier.

First, an interview with the Continuing Legal Education Society. They needed, essentially, an editor. The interview (the second I've had since April) was terrific in some ways. I swatted the "trick question" out of the park.

Interviewer:"So you've just contacted an author a week prior to deadline and they're saying their stuff isn't ready. What do you do?"

Noble Self: Well I think the key is to not let it get to that point. If my deadline is the tenth, I'd give the author the first as HIS deadline, and work from there."

It also made me fully realize, perhaps, what my working worth is now:
Interviewer 1: "Now regarding salary, er, well . . . you understand this IS an entry-level position, so it's perhaps, well . . . er, well what I'm saying is that the job starts at $28 to $30 thousand per year."

Now I'd been worrying that it'd be about $24-$26K, so I'm trying to conceal my glee, and then I reflexively blurt out my instinctive reaction--call it the auctioneer's curse:

"Oh. Well from my research I'd found that this sort of work averages around $32 thousand . . . but of course there's the learning curve . . . er, training takes time . . . er."

It's my thing--from years of stumbling into jobs. I suppose I'm not the swiftest thinker in town, and in prior jobs I think my silent hesitation has been perceived as reluctance to accept the stated amount. So I've grown a bit cocky, I suppose. I almost always raise the stated figure.

Nowadays, I'm applying for an altogether better class of job, and I'm a bit worried that I may have priced myself out of two successive jobs.

But it seems as though my life is busying up. I'm prepping a fiction piece for submission, working on a short novel (but not a novella, nor a novelette, and definitely not a novellina), fighting an insurance company for some $300, trying to get various medicos to agree I'm fat and thus that I qualify to attend a fat-loss clinic at the local hospital . . .

&cetera &cetera &cetera.