I'd go with Wilma, but I'd be thinkin' of Betty.
Update time, update time. Everybody loves update time.
I didn't get the magazine job.
They told me they'd "love" to work with me on a freelance basis, though, so feel free to e-mail story pitches directly. So I've sent them a number of pitches, and the response has been an overwhelming flood of absolute dead silence.
I've had two more interviews in the last two weeks, though -- both of them for internships. I've worked on and off for magazines since 2000, and still, the only bloody interviews I can get are for internships.
One of them was for a similar online hip men's magazine, and it would have paid for anything I'd published, but they also went with somebody else and said I could pitch to them. The other one I haven't heard back from yet: it was for a paying four-month internship for a campus magazine about, ironically enough, job-hunting. They said they'd let me know sometime this week... but I just noticed that they re-posted the same job ad online, after interviewing me. So I and all the other candidates must have really blown it.
Of course, I can pitch stories to them too... the problem is that I suck horrifyingly at pitching stories. It's not that I can't come up with ideas; it's more that I tend to express them very badly. When I used to write movie reviews for Exclaim!, the editor asked me to pitch ideas for a new rant column that would have actually paid. So I sent him a number of ideas... and not only did he reject every one of them, he rejected them very sarcastically. Most of the time, he completely missed the point of what I was trying to get across. Then one day, I sent him one and he replied, "Hmm... that one might work." And then went and changed his mind about it a few days later, for no apparent reason.
That's why I'm generally more comfortable with being assigned stories... or with a case like Digital Journal, where I just post whatever the hell I want and hardly anybody edits anything. And people do read Digital Journal. If only it paid more than almost nothing.
So I've been out of a day job for six weeks now. I'm not even sure whether I'm getting EI. And the worst part is that I've been feeling very unmotivated. I think it has a lot to do with the heat -- my building doesn't have air conditioning, and I'm not handling the heat wave well. So while I know I should be devoting all of my abundant free time to job-hunting, writing, pitching stories and other constructive pursuits, all I end up doing is sitting around surfing the web aimlessly or watching Red Dwarf episodes on Netflix.
In spite of unemployment, I still went to Washington over Canada Day weekend. (I'm a bad Canadian; this was the latest of several Canada Days that I spent part or all of outside the country.) I got to see a lot of the stuff I missed the last time: the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Ford's Theatre, the Exorcist Steps and Arlington Cemetery. I even caught an excellent production of The Music Man, although I couldn't get the Simpsons Monorail chant out of my head. The heat, however, was almost unbearable. And I was on my own again, which made me feel even lonelier than usual.
With my finances about to become strained again, I know I shouldn't be going to plays and concerts. But I already planned certain ones before my job slipped away. I'm seeing Peter Gabriel (again) in September and then Rush in October; this Friday, I'm seeing the Beatles-themed play Backbeat.
And now I hear that the Who (or what's left of them) is coming in November... as is Bob Dylan, opened by Mark Knopfler. Dare I strain the limits of my credit cards?
I didn't get the magazine job.
They told me they'd "love" to work with me on a freelance basis, though, so feel free to e-mail story pitches directly. So I've sent them a number of pitches, and the response has been an overwhelming flood of absolute dead silence.
I've had two more interviews in the last two weeks, though -- both of them for internships. I've worked on and off for magazines since 2000, and still, the only bloody interviews I can get are for internships.
One of them was for a similar online hip men's magazine, and it would have paid for anything I'd published, but they also went with somebody else and said I could pitch to them. The other one I haven't heard back from yet: it was for a paying four-month internship for a campus magazine about, ironically enough, job-hunting. They said they'd let me know sometime this week... but I just noticed that they re-posted the same job ad online, after interviewing me. So I and all the other candidates must have really blown it.
Of course, I can pitch stories to them too... the problem is that I suck horrifyingly at pitching stories. It's not that I can't come up with ideas; it's more that I tend to express them very badly. When I used to write movie reviews for Exclaim!, the editor asked me to pitch ideas for a new rant column that would have actually paid. So I sent him a number of ideas... and not only did he reject every one of them, he rejected them very sarcastically. Most of the time, he completely missed the point of what I was trying to get across. Then one day, I sent him one and he replied, "Hmm... that one might work." And then went and changed his mind about it a few days later, for no apparent reason.
That's why I'm generally more comfortable with being assigned stories... or with a case like Digital Journal, where I just post whatever the hell I want and hardly anybody edits anything. And people do read Digital Journal. If only it paid more than almost nothing.
So I've been out of a day job for six weeks now. I'm not even sure whether I'm getting EI. And the worst part is that I've been feeling very unmotivated. I think it has a lot to do with the heat -- my building doesn't have air conditioning, and I'm not handling the heat wave well. So while I know I should be devoting all of my abundant free time to job-hunting, writing, pitching stories and other constructive pursuits, all I end up doing is sitting around surfing the web aimlessly or watching Red Dwarf episodes on Netflix.
In spite of unemployment, I still went to Washington over Canada Day weekend. (I'm a bad Canadian; this was the latest of several Canada Days that I spent part or all of outside the country.) I got to see a lot of the stuff I missed the last time: the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Ford's Theatre, the Exorcist Steps and Arlington Cemetery. I even caught an excellent production of The Music Man, although I couldn't get the Simpsons Monorail chant out of my head. The heat, however, was almost unbearable. And I was on my own again, which made me feel even lonelier than usual.
With my finances about to become strained again, I know I shouldn't be going to plays and concerts. But I already planned certain ones before my job slipped away. I'm seeing Peter Gabriel (again) in September and then Rush in October; this Friday, I'm seeing the Beatles-themed play Backbeat.
And now I hear that the Who (or what's left of them) is coming in November... as is Bob Dylan, opened by Mark Knopfler. Dare I strain the limits of my credit cards?