Oh, hey, AMG. I found it!
Anyway...
There's my full time job, which has a very respectable benefits package (incredibly generous for the size of company and the cut-throat industry we're in). The past couple of months have been slow, and in the nine years I've been there I can remember about four such droughts lasting all of about six weeks each. What's more typical is a 40 to 45 hour week that ramps up to a 50 to 60 our week for four months in the fall. And they pay double-time for hours over 50.
Then I have my freelance work. Just finished spending, basically, all my waking hours for two and a half days working on a 48 page magazine. Technically, I'm still working on it, having just uploaded the second round of revisions for the editor, who should be e-mailing me back tonight either more changes or approval to FTP the booger to the printer.
Booger, it's an industry term. They only say 'put it to bed' in movies. Screenwriters are far to busy being enamored of their scripts and waiting tables in Los Angeles to squander their time learning about file transfer protocols or PDF preflight software.
The point being that I work my tail off. Not as much as Frau Lobster. She's a Mom, and for those of you who don't know about that job, it trumps the Peace Corps for the 'hardest job' claim, has no pay, no pension plan and can still end up with a crushing debt burden that needs to be restructured through bankruptcy court. Kind of like having your own airline with no off hours, travel, or airplanes. And the little bottles of liquor in the galley? If I was going to take that job, I’d demand they be replaced with bar liters.
So what do I plan to do with a couple of days off? Well, aside from reintroducing myself to my children and going through that annoying stack of junk mail called 'bills,' I plan to do more revision and rewriting on my novel.
Yes, it's a hobby. No one is paying me to write it. Even if I knock all the rough edges off it (like having plot continuity, credible characters, good pace, and a lot fewer txpos and error grammars), AND get an agent who actually sells it to a publisher. And if that publisher actually publishes it, and (insert music to indicate a miraculous event) it sells through a meager advance, I still won't have made the Bangladeshi Minimum Wage.
'Wealth Effects' predates my heart attack, so I've been wasting my efforts on this unlikely venture for well over three years and it's still an embarrassment. And I can't wait to give it my full and undivided attention for hours on end during the next two days when my employer is paying me not to be at the office.
What is wrong with me? Don't get me wrong, I can get sucked into the TV real easy. It's part of why I run from televisions as a rule. And I can get lost in a book, a good one can take over my life for days. This happened most recently with A.M. Homes' 'The End of Alice.' Just started Barry Hannah's 'Geronimo Rex,' and I guess we'll see if it hijacks me. I enjoyed 'Ray,' a much shorter novel of his, and this one won the Faulkner Prize which tends to be a fair to good sign.
But doing nothing? Like sitting somewhere and just being? I can't do it. It's fucking impossible.
Even now, while I await edits, I blog. And if I wasn't blogging, I'd be redesigning Lobster Land, or doing monkey-brain edits on 'Wealth Effects' or trying to wake up Frau Lobster. I can't do nothing.
Before I had kids, I used to play Super Nintendo while letting Keith Jarrett Trio run over me. Super Mario World, Tetris. I guess that was kind of doing nothing. Or I'd make a liter mug of gin & tonic and run the claw foot tub our old house had and spend the day reading some malnourishing comestible by Robert Ludlum or John Grisham. That was kind of doing nothing, except when I'd let water out of the tub with my wrinkled toes and run more hot water in...
Now if you turn the tables and talk about whether I'm doing anything productive... Like working up a budget that doesn't lead to financial crisis, finishing mowing the lawn, cleaning the garage...
I'm sorry, what were we talking about? And what’s this ADHD thing I hear about?
Anyway, when I practice the guitar, it's always with the thought that I ought to be pursuing my first career choice. I ought to be aiming for the stage of the Village Vanguard. A contract with Blue Note records. I want to hire Dave Holland to play bass, Billy Stewart for drums. Bring in Joe Lovano on sax and Hal Galper at the piano. Even though I lack a fundamental talent for time that makes real musicians hate playing with me.
When I work on my book, in my head it's for the Pulitzer committee, even if the result isn't worth a pulp house.
Other hobbies? I haven't brewed in a while, but when I made beer it was with an eye towards making better beer than I could buy; brewing led to making meads and ciders; making meads led to keeping bees. Then to a business plan I never quite perfected for a meadery and cider mill — to do for dry sparkling mead and cider what the microbrewery movement did for beer.
In other words, there's few things I do, even as a hobby, that I don't approach as if it was a job. What the fuck is wrong with me? The only way I got into graphic arts work to begin with is I wanted to publish a magazine. Talk about a get-poor-quick scheme.
When I started blogging, I ended up trying to figure out how to tweak my CSS template to make it look more professional.
A professional blog, that's got to be a warning sign, like posting two blog entries in one day.
Remember in 'True Stories,' the movie David Byrne made, with the speech by Spaulding Grey about how people don't see the difference between working and not working? How there's no such thing as weekends anymore?
Work, it's the other vacation!
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