So sorry to be so late with this, but I came home to a pile of stuff that needed to be done. Yes, there were other reasons for my cutting short the Texas trip, reasons having to do with family stuff (no, nothing horrible) but here’s the thing – even without that staying away for two weeks would be inadvisable. Because I’d come home to two weeks of stuff that needed done, and not just house stuff (where the guys do pitch in, if often not well) but business correspondence, cover art to evaluate, contacts with editor doing Witchfinder, stuff that needs to be put up — that sort of thing. Oh, yeah, and working on novel for delivery.
Which brings the question again, when did we all get so busy?
I was talking to my sons yesterday, and all of their friends (and they too, if in odd freelance areas) are doing thirty things at once. Two part time jobs, more than full time studying, and a couple of volunteer gigs on the side because it’s something they want to do.
Okay, I’m a terrible example of this, because I took a full load in college, took private language classes on the side on stuff the college didn’t offer and taught part time. But that’s not how the movies show my generation. It certainly isn’t how movies show their generation.
There’s a bit of selection bias there, granted, and granted, they know people doing half time in college, and then spending the rest of the day getting baked or playing computer games. But these aren’t their friends.
Among my friends, too, I can only come up with one, off the top of my head, who has only one “regular” job and nothing else. I will grant you selection bias. Being a writer is sort of like being an actress in Los Angeles. Half the waiters you know are really “actors” too, and then there’s the girl down at the copyshop, who’s hoping to be discovered.
Of course a lot of the people I know are… whatever they are and indie writers or aspiring writers on the side. But even taking away that component, most of them have third jobs too, something that brings in “a little cash” – whether it’s doing the accounting for a company, the research for another, or more homely stuff like office work for a friend on the off hours, or crafts you sell on the side, or… both for cash of which we are all short, even those of us working like crazy, what with the price of everything always going up, and for well… when we’re working we’re not reading the news. Right? It serves a purpose. It could be argued my younger self took those extra courses because the labor market in the late seventies in Portugal was tighter than a miser’s purse and also because being so stupidly busy kept me from worrying.
But all the same, when did we all get so busy? And where are the people who must – perforce – be doing nothing?
To an extent this is the evolution of the “job”. I remember in my parents’ day a job was something you got and you stayed on until you got your retirement party and your retirement. There were signs of anxiety about that model before I left elementary. My brother’s generation, ten years older than I, all seemed to be getting “gigs” to “make do.” Six months here, and they let you go before they were stuck with you for life (European labor regs are fun.) People would do six months as teachers, six months as mechanics, and then rotate to working in an office for six months. The jobs that remained sinecures were either government or “someone got me this job because my uncle owns the company.”
Coming to the states after college didn’t seem to make much difference for those prospects. All of our friends were getting temporary jobs. And honestly, throughout our working lives, except mine, which is of course weirder than that being a freelancer, all our jobs have been “a few years.”
Part of this is how industry changes. Dan has worked all over the place. So have I, when forced to get honest jobs. In my case, I’ve ranged from retail to a chemical plant, to colleges. Nothing is permanent, and you really don’t expect your employer to have any loyalty to you, so you don’t really consider yourself bound to stay with them for life.
In fact, most of my generation has suffered more or less prolonged bouts of unemployment. We’ve been lucky and ours have been minimal, though we have this thing that if I’m having trouble selling (so far only ONE dead year, back in 02/03) it will be at the same time Dan is laid off. Because misery loves company, I guess. We’re speshul that way. Never mind. I’d rather get my misery over intense and quick than light and prolonged.
But now, and yes, partly through the completely stupid law that shall not be mentioned, we seem to be parting ways with the full time job, even the temporary one. Or the full time job just doesn’t pay enough. Or it’s shakier than a guy who guzzles whiskey for breakfast. Or whatever… and then people have these “I also do this—”
Is it a great strategy? Oh, heck yes. One of my friends who was laid off stands a good chance of replacing his traditional income with income from his other sources, just amped up a little. And of course, he now has more time to pursue them.
But time is the thing. I mean, I’ve not got to the place I was in college, where I slept only on Saturday (– and slept like sixteen hours. The rest of the week I made do with two hour catnaps per night. Good thing I haven’t got to that point. I don’t think I could survive a month of that, much less four years, at my age.) but I dream – DREAM – of taking two days off and just sleeping and reading.
It’s a pipe dream.
Heck, take the Texas trip: when I started going there, five? Years ago to teach the workshop at Bedford Library, we thought “Why not cut it so it’s two weeks, and I can attend Fencon.” And it worked fine. Oh, I didn’t work on schedule while there, but that was okay. I could take the weeks to read and research and work around the edges.
Objectively, I was doing a maximum of three novels a year, blogging once a week (if that) and maybe doing five short stories a year.
This year, for good or ill, I seem to be on the short-a-month treadmill, and of course I blog for PJM, and blog here every day, and I’m trying for at least four novels trad and a couple indie a year (not that I’ve done great at that) plus I’m working with Goldport at bringing out my backlist, and I’m doing cover design for Naked Reader (and man, is that a steep slope) and because of all my new duties, I’m taking classes and…
And if I take a day or two off, I end up having to make it up, so taking time off NOT worth it.
Of course, this is also the fault of technology. Not that way. It’s obvious that when technology makes it easier to work from home and to learn new trades part time, the ones who will do it are not the ones who are doing nothing, but the strivers, the already over busy, the chronically curious and insatiably interested – us, in fact.
And all my friends – except those who are ill — are the same – when they’re not worse.
So, when did we all get so busy?
This is a question a friend asked. She said “So, traditional publishing is dying and we all thought we’d be vegging in front of the TV and instead we’re all going crazy. When did we all get so busy?”
When indeed? And how?
Atlas isn’t shrugging. Atlas has taken a part time job lifting Jupiter and Mercury, and he’s juggling all the asteroids on the weekend.
Is it useful? Well, it gives us more skills. And it can cushion you when the main job falls. But this resting from a job by doing another, only works for a while, right? Maybe the completely insane drivers (No, worse than normal. FAR worse) on Colorado roads these last few months aren’t just because of pot legalization and driving drunk and/or importing Californians. Maybe they’re all sleeping behind the wheel.
Take me right now. I have to finish this blog post – late, because I actually crashed and slept 12 hours, last night, perhaps logical after illness/trip/cleaning house and catching up on business stuff yesterday – and then do the post for MGC. And then I need to do three covers for Naked Reader. And then I need to get the first two musketeer books in shape to reissue. And then I have a story that MUST be delivered by Friday. And somehow there in the middle, I MUST do my posts for lifestyle, since they very kindly put up with my going AWL while sick.
And there’s laundry and dinner and the chores of daily life.
The question I have is – where are those people who aren’t doing this? Do they exist? And what do they do all day? Surely you get tired of watching soaps after a week? No?
When did we all get so busy? And where are all those zombies?
UPDATE: a different post is up at Mad Genius Club: A Self-Doubt Called George.
According To Hoyt 
Been there, done that, juggled a whole handful of part-time jobs at once. Yep, sales in a high-end ladies’ clothing franchise, a once-a-week gig announcing on a local radio station, delivering a weekly newspaper, and inputing data to an on-line catalog for a tiny bidness selling classical CD recordings … and the odd voice-over job. I went in one day with five different paychecks, and the bank teller said, “Lady, is there a place in this town that you don’t work for?”
Yes, the scheduling is a chore, but on the upside, you never get bored, and you certainly don’t have all your economic eggs in one basket.
I’m slacking off a bit, currently – only the writing, managing the Tiny Publishing Bidness, and some occasional office management for my friend the World’s Tallest ADHD child.
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I’m always in awe when I think about how much you do. I always *feel* busy, but never feel like I’m doing anything. I don’t know what’s up with that. Yes, full time school since I went back and I have bunches of responsibilities but it’s not as though I’m on top of any of them or actually do anywhere near the homework I ought.
Sometimes I really wish that I just had a *job*… 9 to 5 and as boring as possible.
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There is a reason that my favorite character by Lois McMasters-Bujold is one who dies early, Sgt. Bothari. He had one memorable line that endeared him to me forever “I like boring.”
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Sometimes I think: a week of boring would be so nice.
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Boring is good. Dull, uneventful, quiet flights are the best kind.
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“Adventures are somebody else in deep trouble”. (Cleaned up version). [Very Big Grin]
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We’re having an adventure at work. 12 hour days for the foreseeable future.
On the plus side, there aren’t as many radiological controls technicians furloughed today as there were yesterday.
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You know the idea that working somebody 12 hrs a day 6 days a week is cheaper than working two somebodies 40 hrs a week; is asinine. Especially in what I assume is a union environment.
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asinine but true, when you consider that wages paid are only about half the cost of an employee; the average employer pays as much in taxes/benefits as they do in wages. So if an employee is making twice as much on overtime, they’re still costing far less than a second employee.
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If your union (this varies from union to union, so I am just going off a couple I am familiar with) the employer has to pay time and a half for retirement/benefits also. Many unions get double time for Sundays or Holidays and at least a couple of the Laborers Unions I am familiar with, and the local pulp mill that is union (no extra for Sundays, they run rotating 4 on 4 off shifts, but double time for all holidays) if you are working overtime on Sunday or a Holiday you get time and a half OF YOUR DOUBLE TIME.
For non-union private sector what you said is often true, but Jeff is working for the government. IT IS ALL TAX MONEY! Taxing somebody on wages paid by taxes is simply a shell game, On paper they may have to pay more, but all those taxes they pay as an employer… yeah they go back in the pot to be doled out to whichever agency is deemed worthy. Kind of like taking money out of your savings and splitting it between your checking account, an IRA, and your safe at home. You may have withdrawn it from your savings, but you haven’t actually spent it, just moved it around.
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On the one hand I am mindful of the ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
OTOH, I suspect all times are interesting if you’re paying sufficient attention. These days it is easy to pay attention.
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Yeah, but it’s also easy to turn your attention to other things.
I mean, I spend so much of my time staring at devices and screens, and I determine what those show and where they take me. It’s so easy to feel busy while doing that while not accomplishing anything.
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I have a button:
“Dull is fine. I like dull. I could use more dull in my life.”
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Given Bothari’s past I can see that.
Me? Hold my beer, watch this.
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I often have people I encounter on security patrols express sympathy for the tedium of what I do. I always tell them the same thing: “In this line of work, boredom is a good sign. If things get exciting, something has gone horribly wrong.”
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“I like boring. Boring lasts.”
And my own, “Excitement is overrated. It generally leads to someone screaming. I hate screaming.”
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Nothing in life is as the media portrays it. I guess I’m one of the unbusy. I’m not working a traditional job. My husband works crazy busy hours at his job. One day last week he worked 24 hours in a row. Now he’s only working 14 hour days.
I don’t veg in front of the TV. I buy my tv shows from Amazon and watch them on my kindle, or my desktop, or on the tv in the living room through our Roku. I do as much as I can but sometimes just doing domestic stuff wears me out even I though I have a cleaning service that comes in once a week. Usually I’m alone at home with hubby coming home on the weekend. Of course now I have our puppy as well. I do needlepoint and coloring and am reviewing math so that I can understand David Berlinski’s book about Euclid and his Elements. I also bought a book to teach myself elementary physics, because I realized that I don’t know much about electromagnetism.
To make a long a long story short, I don’t work and have time on my hands because I don’t have kids and I take meds for my chronic medical issues that make me sleepy (I nap in the afternoons).
I do realize that I’m lucky to have a hubby that makes enough to support us and also have a small private income.
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I keep cutting out my distractions and it doesn’t help — new obligations bloom in their place. Maddening.
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I write, I’m running a business that is nominally supporting me, and I’m in school full time. Of course, after hearing about your eldest’s credit hours, I look at mine and think I’m slacking… Yes, I’m insanely busy most of the time. I’m also used to it at this point, although I keep thinking when school is over, and I start a new career, at least then I won’t be self employed (except the writing) and I will surely have more time!
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I’m finishing one book (Sharpe’s Gold), starting another, doing some writing, watching one movie (Master and Commander) and laundry. Not all at once. Also, I’m watching the drama at the Barrack-ades at the WW2 Memorial with great interest.
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They usually leave the memorial open, unmanned, for hours every day. That is, their response to government shut-down is to gratiously spend more money out of spite.
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I understand if the GOP doesn’t give in, next they’ll hold their breath!
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Quick everybody call your senators and congressman. Tell them to HOLD THE LINE!
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I scared the sweet kid that answered my (democrat) Rep’s phone– I was using all the Dem buzz-words, but was angry that he’d voted against the House’s measure.
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good
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Then they really will be blue-staters!
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Funny thing about the WWII memorial: it is PRIVATELY funded, fully:
Thus far there have been no explanations offered about the authority of the Feds to close the memorial.
In a similar tale:
“You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they don’t have the money to pay to evict visitors from a park site that operates without costing them any money.”
No, actually you don’t have to wonder, they have just proven their wisdom, or rather lack thereof.
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When do you think “the veterans will have had enough.”?
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I don’t know. In Starship troopers it started with a private act — in Scotland of all places.
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Depends on what they are after. If they were out to maximize the pain, clearly they are achieving their objective. What the pain is supposed to accomplish is another matter.
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In their blinkered worldview, the only possible response to hurting the voters is to force the voters to tell those nasty holdouts to spend more money right now.
They didn’t even think of vets knocking over the barricades. They really, really didn’t think of the groundswell of people who have had enough. They absolutely didn’t think of this as incentive for people to demand park running be privatized, and for people to lose what little respect for King George and his flunkies they had left. After all, those “patriot” rabble-rousers up in Boston hashing out their Declaration of Independance may be annoying and wanting to drag the rest of us into a war… but given how the Hessians and the rest of the troops have been acting lately, and the tax collectors, and the stupidities of the stamp acts, well maybe we’ll just whistle and look the other way when those ragged boys go by, and hand out plenty of food and supplies, ’cause they sure could use it.
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One of my acquaintances was defending King Georgie-Porgie in a comment thread on a post about the WWII Memorial closing that Michael A. Williamson put up yesterday, so he still has his supporters. Of course, she left after getting thoroughly spanked by several of them there.
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They have closed many parks that produce net income (aka, cut off noses to spite faces.) I can’t be sure what the pain is intended to accomplish but believe the phrase ” … why we can’t have nice things” is in there somewhere.
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The “Shutdown Theater” pain is supposed to rebound on the Republicans, but the malicious, petty and vindictive nature – not to mention overreaching as they “close” things that require no staff or operations budget – is quite apparent.
Grocery stores on Army bases are closed but Andrews AFB golf course is open. Guess who plays golf there?
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To be fair– the grocery store, AKA the Commissary, is supposed to sell at cost and is part of appropriations because it gets hit by furlough; the BX (or whatever exchange), sports centers, bowling alleys, and other stuff are MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) which have no funding and in fact pay for upgrades.
They might’ve tried to increase the pain that way, but the broken contracts would probably be prohibitive.
I know some military bases shut down the churches.
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You are of coursre 100% correct, but Obama has ordered the closure of parks that have no appropriations like living history farms that have been self-supporting (like MWR) for decades.
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From Protein Wisdom who got it from Right scoop.
“We will march on Washington against your tyranny. You’ve been warned.” – See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/#sthash.WYI5cD2z.dpuf
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Mark Levin’s speech on youtube:
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Subbing, writing, trying to research another history book, helping my parents, and applying for academic jobs (why? Because I’m a masochist who likes pounding her head against ivory towers.)
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Damn those blooming obligations…August and September were so crazy for me that I nearly walked out in front of a bus, just because I didn’t see it. One of the obligations was a one off, but work, my major volunteer commitment, and family continue…I have had to cut back on the major volunteer commitment a little. The Borg (my family group) says that I am a commitment and clutter junkie…doesn’t matter how much I pitch stuff, declutter and cut back all of the time sucks in my life…there’s always more stuff and another task I am unable to refuse (I learned it from my mom.)
Slowing down is good. Just keep repeating that.
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1. I like the title.
2. We’re not living in the Midas Plague, that’s for sure.
3. I’d rather get my misery over intense and quick than light and prolonged.
Too many people believe “recovery” politicians who promise light and quick misery but deliver it light and prolonged, if not intense and prolonged.
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If the Austrian Economic School of Thought is to be believed, we generally don’t even have to suffer the misery of business cycles. According to their theory, the business cycle is the result of over-extending our resources when we are convinced, by the interest rates of loans, that there’s enough resources for our projects…and the reason that we are convinced, is that interest rates are pushed artificially low.
(Education is probably an excellent example of that!)
So all we have to do to eliminate the business cycle, would be to eliminate the manipulation of interest rates. Politicians being what they are, however, there’s a fat chance of that happening. Indeed, it’s my understanding that the current Economic Wisdom says the Fed Reserve has limited the effects of the business cycle. Ha!
Having said that, I am determined to limit the effects of the business cycle as much as possible: I intend to get out of debt (although it feels like that will never happen), have a hefty emergency fund and a lot of food, and NEVER go into debt again if I could help it. Well, maybe a mortgage or medical debt, but regardless of what debt I’d get in, I’ll be doing my best to get out of it.
Perhaps, if enough people adopt the mantra “Neither borrower nor lender be”, we could largely escape the nasty effects of the business cycle!
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I wonder if part of what so many of us are doing is a reversion to the historical mean. For centuries, the majority of people worked very hard, in bursts, then did something different in a burst, and so on. The difference being that 1) a great deal of what we do is less tangible than it used to be, and 2) the shifts are weekly instead of monthly.
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Aaand, 2900 words and two miles.
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Oh, yeah, no idea of miles yesterday — I cleaned the whole house and washed rugs because of the dread kitteh marking, though and when I went to bed at night, my body HURT.
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You win. :)
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7 miles.
100 words and 100 antiwords. (An antiword, when written, annihiliates the nearest word leaving no trace expect a possibly improved manuscript. Writers have yet to produce anitwords in isolation.) I’m wrestling with a story dragged off the back burner.
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The question I have is – where are those people who aren’t doing this? Do they exist? And what do they do all day? Surely you get tired of watching soaps after a week? No?
Mother of small kids, upkeep house, basic repairs…. and so many things I should be doing instead of reading blogs…..
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You’re still doing a thousand things, Foxfier,even if none for “tangible” pay. TRUST me, been there. And we appreciate your presence here.
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Ah, but I know more is POSSIBLE because you did it!
Part of why I like coming here is that y’all don’t make me feel like I’m worthless, but you also don’t indulge my tendency to melodrama/martyr in my own mind thing.
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When I had small kids it was always playing catch-up, always. Nothing was ever done, nothing accomplished. And then…
Someone would come over and ooo and ah and wonder how I ever got so much done because I’d painted the trim in the kid’s rooms pretty colors. What they didn’t know is that it took me *three months* to do one room (just the trim, not walls!)
I once sewed the girls pretty sundresses. *Once*. They wore them for about three years. (They just got to be *short* sundresses.) So how many times did someone say “Oh, that’s so cute” and I say “I sewed those” and they say “OMG how do you do it?”
You see… other people see your accomplishments all at once… and you see *their* accomplishments all at once. You know the truth about you, but you don’t see the truth of them. But we know because we’ve been there. ;-)
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Traditional 8-5 work week here with two students, slacker and overachiever. “slacker” is taking 3 classes at community college and hangs out with friends all night. His schedule is 2PM to 7AM. “overachiever” is only taking 15 hours at university including organic chemistry with lab and is going nuts with the load and the inevitable cold/stress. Friends are two working full time jobs, one house wife and one free lance IT guy. The free lance guy spends more time out of country than in.
We used to think having 5 different jobs in 10 years made you a “migrant tech worker”. Thankfully for us they’ve all been in the same city. One friend has worked for 4 or 5 different companies while sitting at the same desk.
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of course, I’m also juggling kittehs.
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Two robins and a bluejay are fossicking around outside my office window the the Mighty Huntress is curled up in a catball on her window seat, totally asleep. The jay just flipped her the middle feather.
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Grrr. ” . . . office window, and the . . .” Blagh, I’ve been writing too many Azdhagi words: I can’t see problems in English.
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Better watch it, Steve Martin will come after you for that. :-)
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I’m not that busy. Of course, I don’t have kids and I have a 9 to 5 type job. I like boring though. And the depression and anxiety keep me feeling like I should be busy.
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Eh, I work second shift at the Big Airplane factory in Washington, and this is the first time I have any confidence in having a long term job. In a former life I was a programmer, and I was lucky that my longest gig for Claris (curse you Steve Jobs) lasted 4.5 years, since the average was two. During the Bush years, when everyone else was doing well, I was out of work suffering the remnants of the Tech Crash. I started an unsuccessful woodworkng business, and eventually gave up on my career to take a job assembling office furniture (Which I turned out to be very good at) to save my house. But the current economic woes nuked the furniture market, and I jumped ship after four years to my current job. I still officially have the woodworking business, but I haven’t done anything with it.
I should write more, but I’m usually pretty beat when I get home. I do manage to read a lot of blogs though.
Don’t ask me about my housekeeping though….
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“Don’t ask me about my housekeeping though….”
Seconded :)
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Thirded.
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Here’s a hint, cover the living room floor in cardboard boxes. The cats love it, and nobody can see that you haven’t vacuumed.
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I do that. Not because I have cats, but because I can’t be bothered to break down the boxes and take them out. I challenge anyone to match my house(un)keeping. I had a pile of laundry waiting to be folded literally for years.
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There was the year that I forgot to adjust my clocks to daylight saving time.
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Sure. That makes you the lone ranger. Eight years from Marshall’s birth. it only changed when we moved. It was in my bedroom. We called it the quantum laundry pile. You made a wish and thrust your hand in, and you always got what you needed.
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Sadly, I have to refute that one. When the living room floor is covered with cardboard boxes, gun cases (pistol and rifle, stacked in piles), ammo, magazines (paper and “not-clips”), a couple suitcases, lighting equipment, some .50 cal on a tripod, a few gun rugs, and a couple range bags…
No, I could still tell by the cat hair that he hadn’t vacuumed.
The cat was quite upset when I broke down & threw out boxes, moved the empty rifle cases to the garage, and the suitcases to the bedroom, the lighting equipment to the studio, the range bags to the office, and stacked the rest to clean and vacuum. He crouched in the middle of the clean expanse of carpet and looked like a jungle creature stranded on a featureless white plain.
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My kids pee on cardboard. This would be inadvisable.
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And exactly who did they learn that from?
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By kids, read “cats” — I didn’t realize I’d typed kids. ick.
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That’s hilarious. Freudian slip?
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fur kids?
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I’m sure her sons shave regularly …
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For some of us, merely shaving the face is not enough to remove the appellation, “furry”.
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I like my man furry. Makes him warm and cuddly.
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Ditto.
I also annoy him by calling him fluffy.
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Nah, just Dan’s sloppy language. He refers to the conglomerate of cats and boys as “kids”
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So you are saying he got the toilet training and the litter box training applied to the right students respectively originally? ;-)
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When my Calmer Half hasn’t shaved for long enough the emergent-beard gets to the prickly stage, I go to kiss him and then pull back, saying “My favorite hedgehog! Prickly!” (Usually this is before my morning cuppa. It’s as coherent as I get before tea.)
He likes kisses, so he usually shaves soon thereafter. As for the rest of him and the amount of body hair, that’s for me to know and you not to find out.
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Nice to know your young goats are properly trained.
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This has been one heck of a day for me– started when the internet went out, then I realized I need to call my insurance company, and had a dental appointment. Now I have to decide on several things including if I should get a tooth pulled… I am so screwed and I haven’t even written anything or done any dishes or cleaning or ARG– I need a rest.
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I’m not necessarily busy, but my days seem to be full. There are a hundred things I really NEED to be doing, but either don’t have the energy to do, or they require doing things I’m no longer physically able to do on a regular basis. I am busy researching and writing something for Sarah, working on my current novel, doing some research on two other novels, trying to put together a coherent story line for a novel I WANT to write, and doing a few other things. I’m also trying to get the number of postage stamps in my office down to a reasonable number (definition of “reasonable” is up for grabs at the moment…), shipping the excess to a friend in Idaho to sell for me, and putting together a short historical piece I want to try to publish on Amazon. There’s also housework, working with Timmy on his homework, and the rest of the normal progression. I also spend a lot of time here, on Facebook, on a few other weblogs, and trying to keep up with current events. Luckily my volunteer activity is currently at a virtual stand-still.
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Yes– I get tired a lot too– so things I used to be able to do, do NOT get done.
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Variety is the spice of life! I’ve been a delivery boy, carpenter, sonar operator with a top secret clearance, diver, diving safety officer, marine biological technician, tuna trainer(!) architect, boat designer, fishing gear designer, deckhand, captain and navigator, shipwright, hangglider pilot and instructor, and still build and design boats. Retire? Not likely. As Heinlein said, specialization is for insects
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Right now I only have one job, that varies from 4-11’s to 6-12’s, depending. Oh, and beta reading, which I’m behind on. And writing cover copy / blurbs / finding / approving cover images for Calmer Half. And trying to stay current in the airplane. And failing yet again to grow a garden successfully. And housekeeping, somewhat more successfully.
So I’m really one of those one-job people, more or less. The extra time dissappears into books, blogs, forums, IRC chat (back when I had more time), the odd road trip here and there, projects around the house, tinkering on the airplane… Stuff expands to fill the space available (especially in purses and backpacks), and little things expand to fill all the time available.
And a cat just wrapped her front legs and paws around my right foot and bit my ankle, to let me know I’m letting a blog fill the time she feels should be allotted to retrieving the toys she batted under the china hutch.
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Well, my contract job just finished, and now all of a sudden I have… time that is being filled with a whole bunch of other things and a near-terminal inability to say “no” to things.
And a 14 year old daughter who seems to have a never-ending stream of school and church related activities.
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I haven’t held a steady job for 7-8 years, because that is the way I liked it and didn’t want a steady job. Problem being it used to be that I knew if I wanted one I could have one tomorrow, or at the very least within a week. Now I’m not sure I could find one in a reasonable time, much less one that would pay a decent wage.
I worked a high hours (60-70/week summertime, 45-50/week wintertime) job, mostly all out-of-town where the boss payed all expenses, plus an out-of-town bonus, for a few years until I could afford to buy a piece of property and build house with cash. Then I quit the job and moved here, while building the house. Took another job with more reasonable hours, local work, and only steady for about 9 months out of the year. It was an hourly wage pay cut as well as an hours cut, but if I managed my money I could still make enough to live on. (no house or car payments make a HUGE difference) Over the next couple years I built up various seasonal and odd jobs, as well as other sources of income (all legal) so that I no longer had to work a steady job. Now I am busier than ever, but with somewhat flexible hours. Just the way I like it… except the economy tanked and everything costs more, while I work harder for less. Because the bottom line is people just don’t have the money to spend, so I can’t raise my prices or people simply couldn’t afford it, but I have to pay more for everything, so the margin gets thinner and thinner.
Of course I’m not busy enough, so I think I just bought myself a bunch more work today (a wrecked pickup to fix up) at least if the seller accepts my offer; which after having made it I am half hoping they won’t.
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Sarah, here is a way to ease the juggling: divorce Dan.
Why Divorce Attorneys Will Love Obamacare
Jacqueline Leo
The Fiscal Times
Someone in the White House thinks marriage is a bad idea.
Earlier this year, TFT showed that a high-earning couple, each with incomes of $400,000, would save about $27,000 annually if they divorced and filed their taxes separately. Now we learn that the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, is dangling a similar fate in front of middle income earners.
A typical 40-year old couple with two kids could save $7,230 a year by divorcing if one partner earns, say, $70,000 and the other $23,000. Sixty year-olds earning $62,041 each a year would save $11,028 annually if they broke up.
This analysis below, written by Tom Blumer, a blogger at PJ Media, points out the unintended consequence of what Obamacare will do to marriages and families. He used this calculator from the Kaiser Family Foundation to run the numbers.
THE BABY BOOMERS
In January 2010, two months before Obamacare’s passage, Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation gave the impact a name: the “wedding tax.” To illustrate, let’s start with the 60-year-old married couple with no children.
[SNIP]
If they have identical earnings totaling $65,000, which will usually net down to $50,000 or less in adjusted gross income after all income and payroll taxes, their Obamacare exchange Silver Plan premium next year with the same earnings will be $16,382, or about one-third of what used to be their take-home pay.
What can this couple do? Well, they could decide to earn a few thousand dollars less, which will negate the five-figure premium hit. …
The “easiest” solution would be to avoid the “wedding tax” entirely by getting divorced while still living together.
[SNIP]
Let’s look at the situation of a 40-year-old couple with two children. The spouses’ annual earnings are $70,000 and $23,000, respectively:
The couple’s annual unsubsidized premium while married is $11,547 (“tax credits” disappear at $92,401 for married couples with two children). But if they divorce and shack up while giving custody of both children to the lower-earning spouse, their combined annual premiums, at $4,317, will be more than $7,200 lower. That’s over $600 a month.
[SNIP]
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They can go fock themselves is what they can do. This law MUST die.
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Zachary Ricks is *almost* On To It: In order to have time to oneself, one must learn the most powerful word in the English Language, the word whose power parents have known up until fairly recently:
“No.”
I learned really quickly myself: If I was doing something, and I wanted to get it done, then when someone else came along and said “Can you do this?”, the first word out of my mouth had to be “No”. (Usually followed by “I’m already overloaded.”) I had great fun telling my parents “Nope, sorry, can’t do that — ass-deep in homework. Have a problem with that? Take it up with the school — nothing *I* can do about it.”
In some cases, this led to the second-comer trying to *force* me to do the thing he anted — at which point, I went full-throttle “Bartleby the Scrivener”, and stopped doing *anything*. When, inevitably, both sides started screaming at me about not doing what I’d been told, I would point out that between the two of them, one of them was going to get shorted — and if what they wanted done was So Fucking Important, then *they* could hash out between them which one was More Important. Until then: “No.”
(If I could have found a way to get them to pay me for going to school, I would have — “money flows to the Worker”….)
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And I look at some of you with your schedules and wonder whats wrong with me. I work about 50-60 hours a week, and my daily commute is 3 hours a day. I’m working on all my stories, supporting a critique group, and trying to actually spend time with my spouse. For me cleaning is something we do when either a) no clean dishes, b) people coming over. I’m almost at the point I try to invite people over once a month to get the house clean. And I fee like I’m lazy. I don’t want to volunteer my time anywhere, what little time I have for myself I’d like to keep. And at this point in my life I’m selfish. Between how much I lose in taxes, how much I work and over think spending to make sure our bills are paid I don’t care about anyone else. I give a bit of money through work and the annual giving drive (about 5 dollars per paycheck).
And now I feel like a crappy person, and I’m not sure I care. I’m just over trying to be everything to everyone.
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I don’t volunteer anymore. The kids do. I don’t, because I can’t fit it in. Mentoring and teaching the occasional workshop is my “volunteering” and it only happens sporadically. As in I’m “the world’s worst mentor.”
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Lol, mentor me. All I need is the regular – “No really it doesn’t suck THAT bad. It can be fixed, I think.” ~snickers~ Writing is hard when it all ROCKS in your head, and is total crap on the page. ~le sigh~
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You’d probably feel less like you’re lazy if you broke those items up into more detail. I’m not really all that good at doing so myself, but I have learned the difference in how much it sounds like is going on between a generalized one and a detailed one.
Mind you, I AM lazy. I know this in my bones. I also cannot keep as many things going as several of the people here are doing. It almost feels like it builds a pressure in my head when I’m trying to do too many things, even in sequence, and I have to stop, or I get the shakes. And it takes me longer than a lot of people to recuperate from that. So I don’t get as many things done as I potentially could.
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Uh, if that first paragraph wasn’t clear – that was supposed to be “a generalized description and a detailed one”.
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