I Guess It's Time To Go Back To Work
July 13, 2008
Well, I actually took pretty much an entire week off and aside from proofing some galleys and some correspondence and some query letters, I didn't work. Unfortunately for me, I'm rarely completely comfortable not working any more (this is a very unpleasant side effect of being self-employed and I'm fairly certain I'm not alone in it).
So tomorrow, after getting the oil changed on my truck, it'll be, as my father used to say, back to the salt mines. (My father was the supervisor of a bank vault, so I suspect there were layers to his "salt mine" reference. As a guy I knew who interned there for a couple months told me, "It sort of sucks to have to go through security just to take a piss.")
I seem to be in the summer doldrums in terms of pay, where people who owe me money seem to be sitting on the checks and where everybody who has your work plans to publish it ... next month. So tomorrow I'll dig in, crank away at a market research report I'm working on, start editing the materials for the next issue of the journal I edit, start rounding up interviews for an article I'm working on for a client and send out some queries in an effort to round up some more work. And yeah, probably start working on finishing a draft of a novel--China Fire--I've been dorking around with too long while I was working on Fortress of Diamonds. And there's also a nonfiction book proposal I'm working on.
It was a good week off, though.
Cheers,
Mark Terry
posted by Mark Terry at 10:33 AM
5 Comments:
You really like that picture, don't you? That is the dream life, I think. :-)
There's this nagging little "oh shit!" voice when I'm not working. It's just easier to go do things than to worry about them. I only seem to get away from it all if I go to the movie theater. And even that's arguably work.
I'm in those summer doldrums, too. I wish they'd just pay me. July is always a bare month. There've been Julys where I've had twenty dollars to last the month. (And that includes buying food and bills and gas.) I'm usually owed $1,000 - 2,500 in July that doesn't come until too late. C'est la vie.
Yes, I LOVE that picture.
I don't know if all Julys are slow-pay, but there's always at least one month or more where the money's slow to come. June was so-so because of the oddity of me going to work for someone else, although briefly, and that's partly why things are slow, I think. I put aside other things to mess around for them and it left a weird hole in future earnings until I catch up again.
Yes, I always feel antsy when I am not working. When I was employed I was always just happy to be able to good off.
I didn't even know there was such a thing as a bank vault supervisor. There's got to be a story there.
It's the town I live in. In my twelve years of teaching out here, I've met ONE family who doesn't go on a big vacation every year. I have one student who only goes on one a year. Most go on a vacation during Christmas, Spring Break, skiing in February, miss school for Disney World, and multiple places over the summer.
All TONS more important than paying their piano bill. No, not bitter at all. Just resigned at this point.
Man, that picture of the hammock and the water and the sand makes me mourn the loss of the beach this year. I gotta get out more.
And I know what you mean, when work feels like play it's hard to take a vacation, but it's good to get away a little. I don't work much on the weekends and it makes me stir crazy. I can't wait for Monday to arrive so i can get back to work.
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