Eccentric Flower:199807/forced to earn a living
From Eccentric Flower
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fifteen july ninety eight eleven a m forced to earn a living Sorry about the lapse here. I have hit a low ebb over the last few days, because I am having that sinking confidence problem again. Here's the thing: When it comes to work, my objective is to make a living wage while doing as little as possible. I'm relatively honest about it. I rarely want to put in supreme amounts of effort on any project that isn't of personal interest to me. I have a work ethic, but it only gets invoked with things like my web columns or my fiction. There is nothing that other people are willing to pay me to do which I could possibly work up that degree of interest in. Sorry if that sounds selfish. Fiction doesn't count. The older I get, the less convinced I am that people will pay me to write the kind of fiction I want to write. I have basically given up on the idea that I will someday make my living from writing. I don't have the self-promotion skills, I seem to have an uncanny knack for writing un-classifyable and thus unsalable material, and I won't prostitute myself writing genre books. But none of this is germane right now. Anyway. I feel like I've basically reached the position and pay level that I have by bluffing. I don't really know what I'm doing, I just read the instructions. Most people don't read the instructions, you know, so if you have patience and research skills, you can present yourself in a good light about nine-tenths of the time. Every so often a project gets to the point where I can't neglect it or dismiss it anymore, and then I panic. Every time, I think, "This is it. This is the time they'll catch me. This is when I'll screw up and they'll figure out that I wasn't qualified for the job all along." Frequently I'm working on things where I have utterly no idea what I'm doing - where I'm literally reading up on how to do each step before proceeding. I am, needless to say, at that point right now. And when I get like that, I don't feel much like writing, which is my usual outlet. It requires too much thinking. Or put another way: imagine I have only a finite amount of Deep Thought available every day. Normally I don't use it at work; I try to arrange things so I don't need to. Therefore it is free for writing. This week, I'm using it all up at work, via necessity. Ergo, I played a new game on my computer for about six hours last night and for about four the night before. Twitch games - no intellect required. I'll be sure to keep up my obligations here over the next few days though; can't let your regular affairs fall into disarray just because you're forced to work for a living for a change, after all. © columbine |
