Okay, this has been a wonderful adventure and all, but now that it’s finally over, it’s time to reconsider what to do with the remainder of my life.
During the late ongoing drama, I’ve pretty much stopped working altogether, except for my client novelist’s copy. We’ve been in semester break, so no students have been rattling around in their usual Brownian motion. I’ve ignored the other client’s much harder stuff. I’ve let my own projects go by the wayside.
This is the first time in more years than I can reckon that I’ve passed whole days without working. Day after day without working. Yes.
And you know what? I’m finding it very hard to contemplate having to go back.
It occurs to me that I might want to drop at least one of my endeavors: either the teaching or the editorial business.
Which would that be, if either?
I famously hate teaching. So that seems like the likeliest candidate, hm?
However, the teaching is my most reliable income source, after Social Security. It allows me to make ends meet without having to pull a huge amount out of savings. And although it can be annoying, it’s not very hard, especially when courses are all online. So…one thinks twice about abandoning something like that.
Although editorial work can be significantly more interesting and less futile than teaching, at times it can be every bit as tedious. Maybe even more so. The other day a client decided that his table of contents needed to include subheads all the way down to level 4 heads! Utterly pointless, just ridiculous, and not something I managed to discourage. The manuscript was 275 single-spaced pages! So I had to sift through all of that chaff searching for sub-sub-subheads and typing them into the TofC. Like I had nothing else to do with my time?
True, he pays my top rate. But that does not make me feel good about it. To the contrary. I feel like I’m ripping him off to charge him sixty bucks an hour for mindless menial work.
Then there are the indexing jobs: painfully mind-numbing work that falls way, way short of even my mid-range hourly rate. I expect a scholarly index, if you follow it all the way into page proofs (as you most surely should), pays $10 an hour or less.
It’s occurred to me that I could farm out the menial drudgery to minimum-wage workers. Or to workers overseas for whom US minimum wage looks like a living wage.
But I’d still have to go over it all and check it carefully. That brain-banging TofC would require almost as much work to proof as to write: you’d have to track down every subhead on every page and be sure it appeared in the table. If some of them didn’t, you could end up doing the whole damn thing over yourself. Checking an index would demand a similar level of attention. And believe me: I have farmed out indexes that came back as slumgullion, requiring me to throw out the work I’d paid for and compile a whole new index right up against the deadline. That, I have no desire to do again.
I don’t know how you’d find anyone who would be good enough and trustworthy enough to do the job, especially on scholarly and technical books, without having to pay them the entire fee the client is paying. There’s no profit in that, obviously.
I want to write a book about the choices involved in getting a mastectomy — many confront any woman in that predicament, no matter what her circumstances. I know it would sell, I know I could sell it to a mainline publisher, and I know I can make money on it. But…to do it, I need time. When I’m running two enterprises — teaching and The Copyeditor’s Desk — I don’t have a lot of time. If I let the editorial work go for, say, a year (though I think I can do the mastectomy book in four to six months, working on it full-time), I’ll lose clients and lose opportunities to land new clients.
Which way to jump? If jump at all?
My vote….No matter what you do… write the book about the cancer experience. My thought is this is a winner on many levels. First you can provide a first hand account of what it feels like…what you did right…what you’d do differently…offering hope along the way. Second IMHO it would sell…as cancer seems to be everywhere people are hungry for information. It would be a form of “public service” to those are hit by this dreaded diagnosis. And third….you’ll make money…not sure how much. But a story about someone who was diagnosed with “not cancer yet” and to go thru all the crap and come out the other end…perhaps a better person. Yeah this will sell…
As for the teaching…might want to look upon it as “exercise”…Folks hate to go to the gym but know it makes them feel better and promotes good health. So teaching will be like going to the “gym” only you get paid to attend….or you could look upon it as “penance”…..
I think it’s a highly salable book, especially if it can be made to include a bit of inspirational chatter in addition to practical suggestions.
Ha ha! I think of teaching writing to people who cannot construct a competent sentence and who do not WANT to learn to write as a sort of “reverse exercise.” It rots your brain.
Write the book. Leaving our imprint and making a difference matters the most in the long run, I think.
Thinking of the body image points you have brought up, I was a pretty serious gymnast all through college and had a very athletic build. When I went back to a more reasonable level of physical activity and got curvier, I remember often looking down in the bathtub thinking, “What is all this! ?!?” It took about a decade for the curves to coincide with my internal image of myself.
Nice that you can be thinking long term again!
That is a very interesting insight. I suppose we become accustomed to our body image and find changes disturbing, even if the surrounding culture might think bigger boobs and a curvier derriere to be desirable.
I was very lucky in having had a friend who chose to go flat after a double mastectomy, who was a sharp-looking woman to start with, and who looked JUST GREAT after the surgical adventure. She never seemed to regret the way she looked. Because we used to go shopping together, I learned (in a casual way) the types of clothing she would choose…so it was pretty easy for me to visualize how I myself might look in the Great Boobless Beyond.
We are, after all, not our boobs. 😉
We love what you write, so of course we want you to write more. So, hire minions, delegate, and write.
I didn’t mean for that to sound quite as selfish as it did.
Sounds sane, to me. 😉
Definitely put the book as a priority. As for what to give up, one thing to consider is to look at what makes you think and use your mind. You’re obviously very motivated to use your brain, and if any one of the tasks is work that you can do that shuts your brain off, I think that’s probably the one you can do without.
I just want to say that in the past I have gotten the impression you are trying hard to keep as much of your savings intact as possible to leave to your beloved son. Certainly understandable. But can I push you towards drawing down more savings at your age, and being less inclined to leave a bundle behind? You have a lifetime of hard work behind you and you deserve to reap the rewards NOW.
Why spend your last decade or two doing work you hate?
Because…. It’s not at all outside the realm of possibility that I’ll live three decades. If I escape the family disease — cancer — I could very easily live as long as some of my female predecessors have done. Two of them, who were Christian Scientists and never visited a doctor, ever, lived to be 95. WonderSurgeon believes I will live at least that long and possibly to 100 or more.
Now to my ear, that sounds more like a curse than a cheery prediction. But one way or another, I’ll need that money to support me in what will be a dreary and expensive final few years.
If, as I hope, I die in my early 80s, I really do want to leave as much as humanly possible to my son. The middle class is dying in this country; when we re-elect a Republican president and hand over essentially all the political power to a party now infested with seditious, doctrinaire lunatics, that will finish the US middle class, once and for all.
If he has children, which seems to me unlikely at this point, they will spend their adult lives as members of the working poor. But I would at least like my son to have enough to maintain a decent standard of living, comparable to what I’ve enjoyed. And to be able to retire while he still has some years to enjoy a little leisure — something that also will not be possible for his sons and daughters.
It’s a lot to ask. But I intend to make it so.
You must be feeling a whole lot better if you’re again able to conjure up the Republican party as the evil empire that ate the United States. 😀
Heee! It must be a good sign. In this morning’s Times, there’s a pretty funny op-ed piece on the Republicans’ tergiversations in advance of the next presidential race: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/opinion/gail-collins-texas-is-sending-you-a-present.html?_r=0
How close are you to 70.5, at which point you will have to take required minimum distributions from your (recovered?) retirement accounts.
In December, I’ll have to take a required minimum distribution. This year we’re hoping not to have to draw down from savings, which will minimize taxes on that distribution. That’s another good reason to keep the Dog Chariot running — it will have to be paid for with a taxable drawdown.
The plan is to reinvest that distribution in the ordinary taxable brokerage account.
Write the book and shine on the teaching. It takes at least as much out of you as the editing, right? And you won’t have to deal with freshman comp.
Funny,
Glad that you are looking forward to the future once again!!
Perhaps you could take this year, with these questions in mind, to ponder what you really want?
Good luck and continued good wishes on your recovery.