The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => People & Places => Topic started by: wombat on March 23, 2004, 12:09:14 pm
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It looks like Wombat is about to lose her wonderful interesting job at the zoo. Will anyone still love me when I am no longer the keeper of the mole rats?
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Ack. Sorry to hear it, you seemed to really like that job.
Any idea what you will do instead or are you avoiding thinking about that?
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That really sucks. But maybe something even better will come up. Strange things like that happen sometimes.
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Damn Lucy Spelman! DAMN HER! This is all her fault!
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It's not her fault, but hey, damn her anyway!
People are looking around for another temp job for me so I can hang in there and keep trying for something permanent. And I have some vague ideas for other animal related possibilities if that doesn't work out. But right at this very moment the future is a yawning chasm and life isn't fair and someone else is going to get my animals and I need the huuugs.
Career plan C was these murder mysteries I have been writing, but an author friend of mine just emailed me a horribly depressing story from salon.com about how no one can make it as a midlist author. Very badly timed email. But maybe I just need to make the books more trashy...
On top of this I just got a whole pile of overdue notices from the library at my old job, where I haven't yet bothered to do the overwhelming job of cleaning my office out (including the library books), and where they sat on these notices for a month before forwarding them. I don't think there's any way they can actually get the money from me, but it adds insult to injury.
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Career plan C was these murder mysteries I have been writing, but an author friend of mine just emailed me a horribly depressing story from salon.com about how no one can make it as a midlist author. Very badly timed email. But maybe I just need to make the books more trashy...
You can't go wrong making things more trashy.
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Career plan C was these murder mysteries I have been writing, but an author friend of mine just emailed me a horribly depressing story from salon.com about how no one can make it as a midlist author. Very badly timed email.
I read, and was depressed by, that article too.
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I'd be sadder if I were going to start missing pygmy marmoset stories but this is still hella bad news.
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I think the second choice only applies to me.
In any case, I am sad to hear of this, since it means that I won't get to get the inside tour of the small mammal house, or visit the steam tunnels with you.
Yes, a sad day indeed.
Well, with the job market the way it is, I'm sure you'll have no problems finding work. Look at me, I've only been unemployed for 26 months now!
Oh wait, bad example...
Do you know when your last day is?
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I don't know my last day yet. The boss promised me two weeks notice, but I could get it tomorrow, or it could be delayed by federal bureaucracy foot-dragging, I have no idea. But there's definitely still time for you to see the steam tunnels - er, the small mammal house - if you can do it soon.
I went out and got a haircut. It is a haircut of a woman In Charge Of Her Life. And I had dim sum for lunch and took some stuff home and have that warm takeout-Chinese-in-the-fridge feeling. Just for right this second, I have everything under control...
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*weeps*
Oh, wombat. I'm so sorry. I know how much that job means to you. But, being den mother and all, the only way I know to express my condolences is to offer you unsolicited advice.
Read Stephen King's On Writing, [Cheap (http://www.hamiltonbook.com/hamiltonbook.storefront/EN/product/3207102) | Reliable (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XWST167OM&isbn=0671024256&itm=1)] if you haven't already. Better yet, get a copy of it on audiobook (http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/product.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0610689231.1080065873@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgadckmmfmgfmcefecegedfhfdgfi.0&uniqueKey=1080065920296&pageType=preliminaryResults&productID=BK_SANS_000224). It will make you feel much, much better about the prospect of getting your work published. At the very least, it will make you feel more in control of your destiny in that respect.
Meanwhile, I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they find you another temporary job at the zoo. The bastards don't know what they're losing if they let you go.
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Yeah, really it's a comfort to know that the animals won't actually miss me like I will miss them.
Thank you jl. Don't trip because you've got your toes crossed, especially with all that home-improvement equipment in your hands, you might get hurt. I'll look at that Stephen King book - who could know more about commercial genre-writing success.
In the meantime I inadvertantly got back at my writer friend by sending her a Washington Post article about how books about the Clintons are selling like hotcakes. I meant to suggest that she ought to get her publisher to do some more publicity even though her book came out a while ago - but it just depressed her to read that everyone's book about the Clintons was more successful than hers. Oh well, what are friends for.
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I hope you managed to sneak in fine print that stops them firing you and actually puts you in charge of the small mammals section for good.
That would kick ass.
But I guess, yea, do some more writing done and just, well, write how you want and someone will want to read it. That's the way I look at it.
And, in the meantime, have some time doing things you like to do when not covered in mammal shit. Good chance to I guess.
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This is because you gave a private tour to your hooligan friends isn't it?
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Many condolences, Wombat.
Hope you fill your pockets with mole rats on the way out.
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Many condolences, Wombat.
Hope you fill your pockets with mole rats on the way out.
But not the bitingest ones. Yee-ouch!
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That sucks seven kinds of ass. I thought it was really hard to get rid of Federal Employees. Are you a contractor? I hope everyone involved in the mismanagement of our National Zoo gets chronic explosive diarrhea like that guy that kep writing to Ray.
I'm sad 'cause I wanted a tour, too. Don't cash in your last favors with your coworkers too soon. If you are bored with not working, come on out here. We'll get you up on a surfboard, you can swim with dolphins or sea turtles not too far from where I live.
J
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I'm not a permanent employee, I'm temporary. No benefits and they can let me go any time. They use a lot of temps because it takes months to hire someone permanent, and animals can't go months without being taken care of.
Yeah, it is very hard to fire the permanent federal employees. Unfortunate, because I am pretty sure my boss would be happy to trade one or two of them for me. But he has no choice. He has so little control over what he can do to hire, reward or punish his employees that I almost feel sorrier for him than for myself. It is a little frightening, frankly, to have seen my federal government at work up close like this.
In one sense I can't complain. I could never have gotten hired permanently at the time they took me on as a temp. Now I've had nine months of what is basically paid job training and if I can just get a little more, might be able to get a real job at some point. And if it did nothing other than get me to quit my old career it will have been worth it. But it would have been awfully nice to be able to stay.
I am pretty sure I will still be able to call in favors for tours for years. It would be slightly less fun than if I could do them myself, but probably not so's you'd notice.
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Do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself.
Happiness is remarkably easy to come by; you just have to be open to it. This probably sounds like rhetoric bullshit, but trust me, it's true. You want to write? Write. Work nights in a dishroom if you need to pay the bills - it may give you some subject matter. Who cares? As long as you do what you love.
Best of luck and lots of love to you. You'll be just fine.
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Do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself.
You know, you always hear people say this, or variations on this theme, but the fact is that the World demands too many cheeseburgers, and automobiles, and portable toilets for everyone to do what they love. My advice is try not to get stuck doing something you hate, and do what you love (or who you love) in your off-time.
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Screw that! Life's too short and screwy to not just do what you love all the time.
Perseverence and hard work it may take, but it's easier to work hard doing what you love than something else. And there's enough idiots out there who think they have to do some menial shit they don't want to, that you really don't have to!
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I just mean that it's nice to have that philosophy in your own life, but it's short-sighted to think that everyone on Earth can just do what they love. Do you think everyone in Haiti, or Iraq, or Chad can go out and find a job doing what they love?
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Career plan C was these murder mysteries I have been writing, but an author friend of mine just emailed me a horribly depressing story from salon.com about how no one can make it as a midlist author. Very badly timed email. But maybe I just need to make the books more trashy...
You should read the letters they got on this story here (http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2004/03/24/midlist/index.html). They made me feel better.
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Oh, great letters - thanks.
On the subject of loving your work or not - I have tried various permutations of loving your work, doing your work just to be able to do what you love in your spare time, trying if you can't do the work you love to love the work you do... It's better to love your job but as my current (and some previous) experience shows, it's risky to love something like a job or an institution, that can't love you back.
But hey, it's better to have loved and lost. And in the meantime I am sending emails to all the bosses around here that I have schmoozed with...
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Nabu is kind of right in a way; not too many people can spend their whole career outside of the grind chuckling at the racing rats. If you can Pay that Piper at some point and get out to do what you want to do and still make your ends meet, do it - and then tell the rest of us how you did it.
Obviously it's also a function of your comfort level and your needs. I've talked to some pretty content homeless people, some of whom had no other reason to be homeless but because they wanted to be. They just detached and left a lot of the societally imposed responsibilities and expectations behind them.
Somewhere between 'wage slave' and 'homeless guy' is where you want to be, (me too) and I hope we get there before we get old or something...
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Somewhere between 'wage slave' and 'homeless guy' is where you want to be, (me too) and I hope we get there before we get old or something...
I'd hope to be somewhere above either of those descriptions by that point...
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I want to have a room filled with gold coins, and I want to jump into it sometimes and swim around, a la Scrooge McDuck.
Seriously, where I am right now, I'm not sure if I even want to go to college, just because I'm feeling so totally content just waiting tables.
But of course I'm going to.
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Somewhere between 'wage slave' and 'homeless guy' is where you want to be, (me too) and I hope we get there before we get old or something...
I'd hope to be somewhere above either of those descriptions by that point...
No, I think that's a great description of the scale. Exactly what I've done is try to move closer to the 'homeless guy' end of it - giving up a whole lot of stuff that everyone else thought was important, and that made me Respectable and all that, but that was interfering with actual happiness.
I don't want to go all the way to that end of the scale, of course. But yeah, find the point in between that feels right.
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Wombat and me are gonna quit workin' and spend the summer riding the rails like hobos, eatin' dinty moore out of the can and having nothing to do but learn to pick guitar and figure out what to do next. It'll be awesome. Who's a-comin'?
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Who's a-comin'?
Sorry. I mean, I probably will end up riding' the rails, but for now, I'm desperately trying (with much procrastination) to remain unemployed and edging towards receiving great and fantastical riches from the creative things I love doing, mainly music.
Fortunately I am getting 6 months or so studio time in a month or so, which will help so much. But, while I shun 'stuff', and would love a world of simplicity and spiritual happiness, I like stuff too much. I want to own the new top of the range computer parts, and sell my soul (well, ok, I work) to pay for it every time. I'm not capitalist scum, I just like stuff.
But, I'm not going to work a real job. I just want to get comfortably rich doing what I like. If not... I'll be a hobo.
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Oh yeah let's go.
Um, do they have rails in Hawaii?
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Are you going to be making that crazy liquor out of raisins? Cause if so, I'm in.
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Um, do they have rails in Hawaii?
Hmm, looks like they're extinct.
http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/heywood/geog358/extinctb/HaSpRail.htm
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My (somewhat belated) sympathies, Wombat. I hope things go well, however they do.
I can sympathize wholeheartedly with the entire "I have no idea what to do with my life" problem; my life right now is pretty much this constant shambling mass of "holy CRAP I have to DECLARE A MAJOR and WHAT IF I CAN'T GET INTO BIO GRAD SCHOOLS, WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO WITH A DEGREE IN BIOLOGY AND JAPANESE, and I sure as hell wish ANYONE ON THIS FLOOR was still talking to me, and wow, I get ranty when I'm scared." If nothing else, I suppose we could run off and found a commune dedicated to breeding a better, bitinger mole rat, and thus take revenge on a cruel and cold world.
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Thank you. Yup, it is not a great way to feel. Especially when I'm, like, twice your age.
But hey, if it's any comfort, a degree in Biology and Japanese is EXACTLY what I wish I had done in college. It is precisely what I need right now. I am so jealous.
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I feel this way most of the time.
I even have a fairly rewarding, intellectually challenging job. It's just not anywhere close to what I thought I'd do with my life or what I think I should or could be doing. But it pays the bills.
You are not your job!
I'm trying to remember that, and to develop the areas of my life that atrophy as a result of my profession. I also try to remember that one can have a rich and rewarding creative life without creating for a living.
Sometimes it helps.
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I think I AM my job, but then again, my job is being me.
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I think I AM my job, but then again, my job is being me.
You do it well.
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As well as can be expected.
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And here I thought Jough was just a character Jough played on this messageboard.
I had a good handle on I-Am-Not-My-Job-ness in my last career. But was that while I still liked it, or not till I hated it? I can't remember. I do know that it was much easier to have that distance from a career where I was vaguely embarrassed by the answer whenever anyone asked me what I did for a living. It's harder when you're doing something that seems so totally unbelievably cool.