Bila the Bosnian Painter arrived on the scene yesterday. His business clearly is doing well: he now has underlings. These he set to work moving furniture and filling cracks. I see they missed a few spots, so I’ll have to point those out to him this morning.
He peeled off the mess The Three Stooges made of the crack over the kitchen door and had one of his slaves fill it properly so it would be dry this morning. Then he went off to order paint, leaving them to drag an old bookcase and a heavy four-drawer file cabinet away from the garage walls.
Painting the garage dirt brown adobe greige will make it even darker in there than it already is. However, with the money I’ve saved by canning the Jeff the Painting Entrpreneur’s stooges and hiring Bila, I should be able to afford a tube skylight over the washer & dryer, a desiderata that I’ve coveted for some time. Should have done that while I still have a job. But short-term diddle-it-away savings have grown enough that there’s about twice as much in that account as it will take to pay Bila and have someone install the proposed skylight.
Ugh! I’ve delayed doing this fall’s course prep to the last minute. It’s already August, and all I’ve done is prepare a calendar of due dates. Have to write a whole new Eng. 101 course to fit my current scheme of making the poor little things write on topics of my choice, not the clichéd blather they put into all those high-school English papers they want to recycle in my classes.
It was a good thing My Esteemed Chair insisted that I keep the third composition course that I was trying to weasel out of. As you’ll recall, I tried to simply shuck it off, so as to have time on Tuesday afternoons for the anticipated AAME meetings. He insisted, instead, that I accept a 7:30 a.m. Monday & Wednesday section. I cringed, but couldn’t see a way to get out of it politely.
As it developed, the AAME board rejected us—they decided that because I have to hold down a miserable teaching job to put food on the table while I’m trying to build The Copyeditor’s Desk into a paying concern, what I do in my business must be a “hobby.” (Right! I never take a vacation because working 16 hours a day, seven days a week is my hobby!) One guy’s attitude was so obnoxious that I decided if they accepted us into the program, I probably would decline.
One of the endless problems with freelance writing and editing is that even professionals with long publication records and lengthy stints on newspaper and magazine staffs are not regarded, by people outside of publishing, as “working.” For most people, work is a place, not an activity. Publishers and editors recognize this and, when confronted with an obvious pro will treat you as a pro, even though your office is a bedroom in the back of your house. (They also recognize that the fields are full of wannabe’s, and those folks are likely to be treated as amateurs and hobbyists.) But people like the character on the AAME board who went out of his way to be insulting just don’t grasp that distinction.
Probably, to be fair, trying to move the pro/freelance paradigm into the business world is going to be a challenge—for that very reason: most business people expect other businesses to run out of an office.
It’s entirely possible that, if we continue to earn as we have over the past two or three months, we may be able to afford a small office. There’s a nice place in Tempe where I could imagine setting up shop, and in town, I covet an ersatz Spanish-style garden office building on east Missouri that always has vacancies. The recession-that-is-not-a-depression is still in force here, despite improving real estate prospects, and so commercial office buildings have plenty of empty space. First, though, Tina and I each need an income. After that, we’ll think about other blandishments. Personally, I’d rather have the business buy me a car than set me up in an office…but whatever works, works.
Well, speaking of the Workman Waltz, as we were above, I’d better feed the dog and get something to eat myself before the first dance of the day begins. And so, to…heaven only knows what! Then, to work…
PLEASE DON’T RENT AN OFFICE!
BTW, I’ve thought about some changes to my courses, but I force myself to wait till the last minute, because something always changes anyway. This is one area where procrastination is a good thing.
@ frugalscholar: Boy, isn’t that the truth!
But it takes for-freaking-EVER to write the damn syllabi for these courses. I can’t imagine doing it after classes start! Or even very close to day 1.
The department demands that we follow an 8-page boilerplate that has to be done just so and that includes a calendar listing exactly what will go on in class, what readings are assigned, and what assignments and busywork are due week by week. I spent ALL DAY yesterday on the 101 and 102 syllabi and will spend most of today on the 101 and the 235 syllabi. I estimate I’ve got another three full days of work to put in.
Decided to clone the new 101 course into the 102 course this semester, since it’s brand-new, but next spring I’ll have to come up with an new theme for the 102 section. In finishing off the 102 syllabus I came up with new ideas that now need to be cloned back into the 101 syllabus. And I haven’t even looked at the 235 course. And of course all three websites have to be updated, as usual. Plus I have to build new course packets and get those to the print shop. And arrange for computer classroom space. And arrange for library visits. Augh!
None of this tedium would be all THAT annoying if I were being paid for it. But I’m not. I won’t get a paycheck until the middle of September, and when I do, it will cover time beginning on August 20. So all of this is off the clock: free labor donated to the district.
That (among many other issues) is why I would like to earn enough from editorial work to quit teaching. Once. and. for. all.