I was all excited on Thursday (was it Thursday? I think it was Thursday. I have no concept of time anymore, now that I don't have a normal day job) because I finally got a call back on something. About a month ago now I'd sent my resume off to an ad in the paper for freelance reporters and the guy finally called me back. It's some small local neighborhood thing and they wanted to know if I was interested in covering the Prospect area. I said sure, how close is it? He said it was pretty close to Old Louisville. He also asked if, based on my experience as a manager cum programmer, etc., I would be interested in teaching any classes at ITT Technical Institute. I said hmmm, maybe. The pay wasn't much on the articles (like $50 bucks a pop), but I thought it could at least be some writing credits and pretty easy ones to boot (restaurant / city coverage).
So I was all pumped, and then Tony kind of burst my bubble when I was telling him about it.
"You're supposed to be writing a book," he says, and I agree, yeah, I'm working on my book and I do need to finish it. But I also feel guilty that I'm not bringing any cash in and besides, I'd like to have some provable "new business" income so I can use some of that $7500 from AT&T that's part of my severance package if I start a new business.
"Don't you think that stuff like this will take too much time away from that? And the teaching has nothing to do with anything."
Ok, yeah, he's got me there too. He makes sense. It's just hard for me to go from making quite a bit of moolah, to absolutely no moolah at all. Or very little, anyway. And man, these magazines are so s-l-o-w at getting back to you. But, I suppose he's right, darn him. Especially since he looked up where Prospect is, and it's not particularly close to anywhere around here. They'd be better off getting someone who actually lived somewhere near where they want to write about. So I guess I'll call the guy back on Monday and tell him that I can't cover that area. But, if he ever wants Old Louisville or Downtown coverage, give me a call.
I've got to get over the feeling guilty about no regular income. It's just hard. We used to make about the same amount of money and now...maybe it's a bit of a pride thing. I dunno. But he's giving me a chance to work on my dream, so I need to just take it and stop feeling so darn guilty.
In other news...I e-mailed the lady that works at the Leo that I met at the ED2010 meeting and I'm going to send her some story pitches next week. We'll see how that goes. I've got tons, but like Tony said, it's really the book I need to concentrate on. But geez man, it would be nice to see my name in print on something. Yeah, I've already got some stuff out there, but it's nice to see, you know?
Oh, and I did hear something back from the place I'd submitted the Ferrara write up to. It was an effusive apology note that she was really, really busy, but she'd get back to me soon. No problem, that's better than nothing. Though she probably could have read the piece in the time it took to type up the apology. Ah, well.
2 comments:
No way! You used to work for AT&T? I got a beautiful severance package from them back in 2001! And, I'm now staying home with my kids thanks to them. I know a lot of people whose lives were really messed up as they restructured our part of the company. For me, it was a huge blessing!
I'll have to catch up on your blog later...I just took a peek at today's post and couldn't believe my eyes.
That's too weird! Yep, I just took a severance package from them in December. It wasn't a beautiful one, but it all worked out to be great timing.
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