Steel Sharpens Steel

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I was thinking today that the problem is we tell kids that they should choose something they love as a job. Then they’ll “Never work a day in your life.”

Leave aside for a moment the fact that you can’t always pick what you work at. People don’t seem to realize that, or that the circumstances of your job aren’t always under your control. When I was in trapub people kept telling me to take charge of my career or write what I was most passionate about. And I kept going “you do realize that’s not how any of this works, right?” I mean I could choose not to accept contracts — except for this wicked addiction to eating and a roof over my head — but I couldn’t choose to make the house publish something they didn’t want to.

The job market is kind of like that. Frankly, no one cares if you are the most talented cat rotator in the world. If the cats don’t want to be rotated, and the owners of the cats won’t pay you to rotate their cats, it is at best an aspiration, but it is not a job.

I just realized this is where all the aspiring poets come from whose real 24/7 occupation is screaming on Twitter that capitalism has failed because no one is paying them to write poetry written entirely in Gzoffian, their invented fantasy language.

If there is no market for what your “dream job” is, ain’t no one going to pay you for doing it. And I should know because when I started out there wasn’t much market for my writing. Partly because my writing was of the kind people didn’t want to read. Partly because if there were people eager to read it, I had no way to get at them.

So I spent decades, fighting and working and–

And I realized today that minus a few utterly disgusting periods where I couldn’t win for losing, because of other circumstances independent of my control, and as hard as things were at times, I am who I am, and as capable as I am because …. I worked every day of my life.

That is, I realized the problem with “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is that if you’re doing something you love and are already good at, if you’re “playing” every day, you’re going to get bored. You’re going to get sloppy. And then you’re going to be bad at it, very very bad. And then you’re going to end up resentful, because your dream job turned into a nightmare. (This is also known as the Gifted Child’s Curse and why so many of us have interesting trajectories.)

Or, you’re going to try to coast through life without ever doing anything that is unpleasant or challenges you. And you’re going to fail. And again you’re going to end up bitter and blaming everyone for your failure.

So… Instead of doing “what you love” find something you love enough — a purpose, a job, an avocation, even an hobby — to struggle to do it and do it well even though you objectively aren’t very good at it, or need to learn it from scratch, or about a million other people would be better suited to it. (But they ain’t doing it.)

Note that a purpose is not necessarily a job. This crazy idea of subordinating everything to your “career” is not only a modern thing, it’s a crazy thing. Man — and woman, for that matter — is more than an economic production unit.

Sure, you need to do enough to keep body and soul together and that’s sometimes very difficult. Sometimes that’s the challenge. Other times?

Your purpose could be to keep your family fed. Or to give your kid, sibling, friend, the life they only hope to become accustomed to. For that you’ll have three jobs, and struggle, and work hard and hustle. It’s a purpose. It’s a challenge.

Or your purpose could be to become the best d*mn poet possible in your invented language. To be so good other people will want it. I don’t think it’s possible, but who knows? Prove me wrong. Your purpose will require you to work and keep body and soul together and in your spare time to study how languages work and get a good self-taught (or not) knowledge of linguistics and–

Or it could be a job you want to do badly enough that you fight through not being particularly good at it and replace your native language with another, and learn all cultural things needed to “ping” right to people in your new country, until you can be published and more importantly sell.

Is it sane? Is it even vaguely something you should do? Probably not.

But if that’s what you need to do and need it badly enough…. it’s a good goal to strive for, a good impossible line to work towards. Who knows you might get there. (I surprised myself.)

The point of this? Man is made to strive. Woman too. And those of you who just looked down your pants because you’re not sure which one you are this morning? You too.

Human beings weren’t made for easy. Evolutionary, for most of our history on this ball of mud, we were one step ahead of total extinction. Each and every one of your ancestors was one step ahead of starvation and enemy attack every minute of his life until fairly recently.

That is what your body and nervous system and brain were designed for.

Historically, everyone who didn’t “work a day in their lives”: the pampered princelings, the parasites, the people who were at the apex of the money their daddy or granddaddy made? At best they were just wastrels. At worst they were…. well, dangerous to themselves and others. And in some cases — I’m looking at Karl Marx — they became dangerous to the whole of mankind.

So–

Choose the difficult. Do the difficult. The more difficult the better. And then fight for it.

Fight hard. It will change you, and you will change it, and where you arrive might not be where you’d planned, but it will be be interesting. And sometimes it will be better than what you were aiming for.

Yes, it will hurt. it won’t be easy. And you know a lot of it won’t be fun. You’ll work every day of your life, and eat the bread you earn with the sweat of your brow.

And in the end? Whether you get there or not? You’ll be better.

Reach high. You might not get there, but you’ll end up higher up than you were to start with.

234 thoughts on “Steel Sharpens Steel”

      1. Eh, my goals are small. Care for the old folks till they die. Keep the cats entertained. Nothing big. No kids to raise, no wife to care for. Finish books, start new ones.

        My readers are like to kill me though with how slow I am with new stories.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. The Reader has looked carefully at pictures of cats and failed to determine any primary axis. He votes for picking an arbitrary axis. The cat will do the needed transform.

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      1. For polar cats, the axis is fairly obvious.

        For rectangular cats, there is a choice, but they can be both wrong or both be right.

        Hyperbolic cats are a very tricky matter indeed.

        Hypergolic cats should be kept at a distance and left undisturbed.

        Liked by 4 people

          2. Ah then perhaps you have met my cat Mack (of fond memory). We joked that he was a 10kg spherical cat with a negligible coefficient of friction, perfect for physics. He was, however, unfond of our physicist friends. Cats are highly dubious of physicists ever since Dr. Schrödinger, even if it was just a thought experiment. They are extremely serious animals, and that was not funny.

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            2. Cat? The Reader is not owned by such and in fact is normally disliked by same. It is possible that the spirits of the dogs the Reader grew up with surround him and repel cats but that is only speculation

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              1. Which of course leaves the question of why there’s a hamster ball in Reader’s house, with or without Schrodinger’s cat in it. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong house?

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                  1. That wouldn’t be that surprising. Returning to one’s own universe is relatively easy. After all, lacking any intervention, the multiverse law of conservation of position forces you back to your original space-time-energy state. It’s parsing other universes, where the differences are so minute that most people would say they are identical, that even an itchy nose can distract you enough to miss your target by a dozen universes. Let’s just say that it’s not a good idea to sneeze when crossing a brane.

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        2. All cats are potentially hypergolic given certain conditions. Like Russian roulette or dating at the outer edges of the hot/crazy matrix, it’s part of what gives life its spice….

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            1. Same. There’s a reason I don’t date. And especially not the twentysomethings that come sniffing about (look younger than I actually am by a bit). No teenage drama, do not want. No nutso drama, BTDT got the physical scars. Lazy days with good food, cat herding, book reading, and book writing.

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          3. There’s something wrong with your cat if it has exploding hairballs or diarrhea.

            On the other hand, with a little editing of the meme from MeWe I can give you this.

            My renegade vet told me. “The secret to a long life for your kitty is you’ve gotta sprinkle a little gun powder on their food, see. If you do, they’ll live to a ripe old age.” So, I did this religiously every day, and sure enough, my cat lived to the nice ripe old age of 30. Since he wasn’t fixed, he left 4 litters, 8 grand litters, 15 great grand litters … and a 16-foot hole in the wall of the pet crematorium.

            Everyone needs a little, Boom Boom.

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  5. I agree. I’ve always noted how so many great directors work to finally get to make their passion project movie, and it ends up mostly dreck. The liberation of poetry from rigid forms to free verse has also led to so much careless junk as to make the word “poet” an insult. When you had to struggle to express yourself well in a rigid form like a sonnet, you had to hone your skills.

    Still, there’s much to be said for making money doing something you enjoy even if you don’t “love” it. I was fortunate to have something I love and something I enjoy. The latter of which they paid me well for. The other I’m again pursuing now that I can indie publish. I hope that doesn’t lead me to writing poetry in Gzoffian, but, “I used to be much older then. I’m younger than that now.”

    Wednesday, I publish my first novel and second book. I’m still in love with it, and that’s good, but I still have far to go to establish an audience. One step at a time.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. I always thought that “never work a day” was GROSSLY oversimplified.

    If you find something you love enough to get SO good at it that people will pay you for it, you will work very hard. But you will ENJOY that work. And maybe not every day, since some days won’t achieve much, and that will be frustrating. One of those few who got paid for what they really loved was a canoe racer. He had worked three jobs so he could afford to get really good at canoe racing. Until he finally got so good, a canoe company hired him to head their team. And advise their engineers on canoe design. And go out and talk to people about how cool the canoes were (which he had been doing for FREE for a while…). He was STILL busting his ass every day. But most of those days were GREAT, because he was totally immersed in doing what he loved. I’m not quite THAT lucky, but I enjoy fixing things and messing with computers and learning all about them, and a lot of my days involve that. The cleaning and repetitious testing and busy work can be boring and annoying, but it is all part of the journey. Just stay focused on the fact of more good days ahead, and slog through the mires that WILL be along the way. If the job can’t be the dream ( and that canoe racer spent many years doing those kind of jobs before he finally ‘made it’ ) do the jobs so you can spend some of the REST of the time working at what you are actually attracted to. Let THOSE be the days that make it all worthwhile. We live in a blessed time, and that possibility is open to MOST of us!

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    1. The flip side is that because you have to do it as work, it becomes tedious. What is fun when you can choose grows dreary as mandatory.

      Also, improving your skills means improving your critical judgment, and what you used to enjoy in other people’s work no longer passes muster. Or in your own past work.

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      1. One reason why, though I have literally hundreds of sport SCUBA dives under my belt, one to 178′, I have never seriously considered becoming a professional diver or diving instructor. I would never want being underwater to become drudgery.

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        1. I will never take a job in a gun store or a Ham radio store.

          I used to enjoy building and playing with PCs at home. Until I worked at a computer store and went into IT support. Now a computer is just a tool I want to use and not mess with.

          I used to have all of my books shelved and organized in a way that made sense to me. When I got my first PC I started building a database of them. Then I got a job working in a book store. The first thing they have newbies do is shelve books. And shelve, and shelve. Even when you move up the food chain, if you have a spare moment, you shelve. I still have books in boxes from when I moved in here (at the same time I started working at the book store) 30+ years ago.

          Not going to ruin another hobby/pastime by working in the field.

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          1. I don’t do computer work outside of real work for anyone beside my spouse and I. Not friends or family. Never ever. Nor do I make many software/hardware recommendations in person any more. Everything people need to know is on the internet of lies.

            I also don’t cook outside of very close family gatherings. Everyone is like, “You have a large smoker? How much to cook a brisket for me”

            I respond, “$50 per lb, minimum of 40 lbs.” Then just glare at them. Or just tell them to go to the nearest best BBQ joint. Or just get food at the local pub since it’s still really good and has draft beer.

            And I couldn’t work at a gun store either. Too many dumb, unsafe MF-ers. And as a ham, I only like a subset of operators, the rest of the folks in the hobby are cheap a-holes.

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        2. I stopped working up the chain of SCUBA certs when I realized that “rescue diver” would be more accurately termed “recovery diver”

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      2. It can depend on what it is. I know someone who worked in Outdoor School jobs—that’s the sort of thing where you have a week of schoolkids in the outdoors and teach them things. In his case, it was a historical park, so there was even costumed history interactions. Sometimes he even got to teach rock-climbing.

        He really and truly loved doing it, because the interactions were always different. Or, you know, what teaching *could* be if it weren’t constrained by the rules and regulations.

        He’s the one who once wrote me, worried, because “I’ve been out of college for over a decade now and I don’t have a grown-up job.” I wrote back that most people worked all week to afford the fun stuff on weekends, and he was getting paid to do stuff he considered fun.

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  7. I did crafts on the side after work when not busy. Already knew how to knit, crochet, sew, and embroidery. Expanded on that. Gave away as gifts. Then suddenly someone wanted me to do all this for money …. Did a few pieces on commission earned more than the materials. I hated it to the point I stopped after those few pieces.

    Programming. It absorbed me. The times I finished something challenging, not even a full project, were fantastic. Finishing a project finally was great too, but challenges were more fun. OTOH there were times I hated the thought of going into the office … might have been the office too. But sometimes just didn’t want to code. I think the latter is why I haven’t coded for almost 10 years, and don’t miss it.

    Other topic. Guess I’m not the only one who can’t sleep tonight. Based on early postings. Slept decent from midnight to about 3:30 AM (PST). Bathroom run. Toss & turn. Another bathroom run, plus take dog out (possums under shed so she has to go out on a leash in the dark), can’t go back to sleep. Try 1/2 hour later, toss & turn, other half snore (not bad, just a buzz, but if I can’t sleep …. screams silently). Okay part of the problem is it is still 78 in the house. Just now cooling down enough outside that even opening the windows will help. Opening the windows means someone has to be up. Oh, well. Can’t sleep anyway.

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    1. 78° in the house? That would keep me awake too.

      The only solution is an air conditioner in the bedroom. Don’t have to cool the whole house, just one room. The window in my bedroom is badly placed for an air conditioner so I cut a hole in the wall, made a steel frame and bolted in an air conditioner. Then made a small sheet metal roof for it. Works great. I installed a cat door in the bedroom door, but usually just leave it open a bit.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. 78°F in the main house. Bedroom, first floor, and upstairs “cooler” (for definitions of cooler) because window open. But hall has no windows, and front of the house windows are not open since we are not up. Also have a fan moving air in the bedroom, but still not cool enough to sleep well. Yes, window (or if you will, bed) poorly placed for any type of air condition. In addition, noise is a problem. Did take an early nap (7:30 – almost 10 am). Nap was happening today regardless, better early than later, I’ll (should) sleep tonight, will be too tired not to.

        Forced air conditioning is on the list, but not until the furnace dies. Furnace is EOL and could die anytime. Did look into adding air conditioning, but old furnace = void new air conditioner warranty. Meanwhile floor to window vent units until lights out. Only had the house breaker kick off the south wall twice.

        Note, mom & dad used to retire to their RV when summer heat hit before they got home air conditioning, because the RV had air conditioning. Our problem is even when we had an RV running the air conditioning plugged into the house triggered the entire house breaker. Immediately with one RV, after about 45 minutes with another.

        Oh well, a few days and we have “cooler” weather hitting again. Lower to mid 80s. Which means already 70’s or lower before bedtime.

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      2. I spent last weekend camping in heat that got over 100º during the day and mid-60s (temp and humidity) overnight. This is one reason I have a four-season tent, because after changing I basically unzipped the sides and had a mesh sleeping area. Still not easy to get to sleep.

        (Canoe campout, so at least our Saturday had plenty of water to soak your swim gear in.)

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        1. Not something we had to worry about on the campouts.

          National Jamboree, that was a problem, both times. But that is what happens in W. Virginia in August. People told me I had no idea what I was getting into regarding the humidity. Easier at age 42, than it was at age 47, but OMG! (Yes. Oregon has humidity. It is called rain! It isn’t hot. You don’t breath it.)

          Local campouts, it can be, um, warm during the day, locally, even at the coast (beach itself can be down right cold, but Baker is east of the dunes and hwy 101, and not on the beach). The mountains get down right chilly at night. Can even have snow, unpredictably, any month of the year, including August.

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    2. A less drastic alternative to imaginos’ suggestion is a window fan.

      When my first husband told me of them, I was skeptical that it would be all that much of an improvement over just setting a fan on the windowsill.

      I was wrong. The specifically-engineered window fans are orders of magnitude better at shoving cool outside air in through the window (than an ordinary fan set on the sill). If you can’t afford an AC unit, see if you can get a window fan.

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      1. This summer, we’ve had days in the mid to high 90s, and the house was hitting 82 in the main portion, but “merely” 80 in the bedroom. Forget sleeping under a sheet. We don’t have AC, nor a swamp cooler*, but the fan works. Saved us this last few days.

        We turn in early, and when it’s too damned hot (or my body is hurting), I’ll wake up for good at 2AM. That’s 5 hours; my standard sleep time is 6 hours, but a couple-three days of 5 followed by a 7 hour sleep-in seems to work. I’ll set a floor fan in the window once I’m up, it’s a close enough fit that maybe 60% of the opening is fanned. Never got around to doing a baffle. If the morning temps go down to the mid 40s, I can cool the house to 70F. The past few days have featured monsoonal moisture, so I’ll start at 60F, and maybe get the house to 73 degrees. Best I can do, but I don’t have to get everybody up until after 7:30.

        (*) Evaporative cooler. It works well in dry climates (the usual case here), sucks raw eggs when it’s humid (like now), but they don’t winterize well. We skipped it. $SPOUSE dislikes window A/C, and my last unit (circa 1995) didn’t cool well at all. The neighbors have a multi-station minisplit. I guess it works well to cool, is expensive in heating, and is hideous due to outside refrigerant lines in a retrofit installation. Pass. Most years, we’ve had a week or two really hot. More this year. Sigh.

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      2. Yes. The fan sits on head board right where the window opening is. It pulls in more cool air. We’ve used fans in windows to pull warm air out too. But in this case not what is needed.

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    3. I have a fan set up to blow hot air out the kitchen window, and draw cool air in the front door and window. I start it in the evening, as soon as outdoor temperature is lower than indoor. Last night it got the house down to 75$#176; by 7 AM. That’s still too high for decent sleep, so I run the bedroom air conditioner from 11 PM to about 6 AM. It works.

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    4. Then suddenly someone wanted me to do all this for money …. Did a few pieces on commission earned more than the materials.

      Seems to me – based purely on my own personality – that the way to do that and still enjoy it would be to make all the things you would normally make, and once you had a pile, sell them.

      Y’know, rather than making things specifically for the purpose of selling them, or because someone had already paid you to make them.

      I’m sure that wouldn’t work for everyone though.

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      1. Sister tried the latter approach.

        What would have worked for me was to make something I wanted for myself. When someone saw it, wanted it, sell it. Make me a new one, or not. Or make another project. Repeat and rinse. Instead I got into programming (creative). Haven’t made anything crafty since.

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  9. Even the most enjoyable job, whatever it is necessitates a lot of drudgery. Just looking for the right thing or doing the right thing could mean picking up and discarding a hundred other things. Sometimes its just plugging away.

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    2. Re: having a career you love: I lay claim to creating the philosophy of meteorological scatology — into every life, a little sh!t must fall.

      Even the best activities have off moments.

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      1. Thank you.

        This hits me very close to home because I really tick both the boxes you mentioned. I fell in love with computers in the early ’80s in high school (TRS-80 Model I gang gang represent) and so I pursued them; got a business degree because I didn’t want to screw with the advanced math in a CS degree. And I’ve been in corporate IT for thirty-eight years now, switching halfway through from programming to quality assurance. And it’s my nightmare, sort of. I still love the creative side of testing software but the technical side kind of left me behind. Plus, wrong sex, wrong color, wrong age, wrong nationality. That doesn’t help. I can’t deal with the stupid at Job. Or the fact that I can’t get a promotion while demonstrably inferior people to me have shot by me. Or the fact that I am completely burned out and can’t focus, can’t think, can’t seem to get my mojo back.

        The other side of Gifted Child Syndrome is being able to coast. I coasted through high school, coasted through community college, coasted through most of undergrad, until I just stopped caring and almost didn’t graduate as a result. But I never learned how to dig in and work hard. If I meet resistance now, I stop. I still hear the words of my mother, “you can be good at anything you want to be,” so if I take something up and I’m not good at it (which, y’know, nobody is good at things right off the rip), then clearly it’s my fault and I’m never going to improve and should abandon it.

        Your late fifties is awfully damn late in your life to learn how to struggle.

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        2. “Your late fifties is awfully damn late in your life to learn how to struggle.“

          –

          Ouch.

          Lucky, in that at least I learned that lesson at age 17 (okay, almost 18). First term of college. Got it down but lesson was despite HS I had to work at it and I wasn’t going to be at the top of the class (on a curve, I’d be middle to upper middle; straight curve low 90s). Well I could be, once I learned how and what to study VS trying to remember everything. Learned that lesson hard. Still got that sinking feeling when I felt a test, especially a final, was not as bad as it could have been. Only to hear the “top students” commenting on “how hard” the test was. Last few of those I pulled A’s out of the classes so I was more right, but never get over that feeling. Once I was done with the CS degree? I was done with classes at a university. A seminar? Fine. Classes? Hell no.

          “want to screw with the advanced math in a CS degree“

          –

          I hear that. Despite having a scientific degree already with a lot of math, I had to take as many math classes as I did CS classes. Frustrating because some duplication. But since not labeled the same, had to take. (Seriously. Linear Algebra was 3rd term Discrete Math! The other math duplication was integrated into the Forestry classes and thus didn’t count as taking the math.) Sigh. Made worse because when I started it was one class a term, so the first 6 terms were math, not a single CS class until I started back to school full time (company I was working full time for moved out of town to get in on hardware release. They were also paying for successful class completion, which went away. That sucked.)

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  11. things you have a passion for tend to be hobbies … nobody really makes a living at hobbies … tens of millions of people absolutely LOVE golf … there are about 200 professional golfers on the tour and maybe another 10,000 teaching pro’s …

    I’m lucky because my career has landed me in work that I enjoy doing that pays very well … (No I don’t love it … would choose to play golf everyday if I won the lottery) But I ended up in this line of work via years of gaining skills in each job I had, getting better and better until companies are willing to pay me well to help them …

    My advice to kids would be to cast about and try lots different “jobs” early, find something that you “enjoy” doing (enjoy not love), then figure out what skills are needed to increase you value to companies and hone those skills …

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    1. I’ve told it already, but when I was getting my master’s in night school, I was usually the oldest student. Most of them were younger, married, with kids, working full-time. (Heavy admiration to them and their spouses). One class, the professor was a bit older than I and somehow the topic of what people wanted came up. All the “kids,” made statements about wanting work that was, “fulfilling,” personally satisfying – and yes, paid well but that wasn’t their first thought. I broke out with how I’d been brought up – if the job let you pay your bills, every month, and kept you out of debt, it was a “good job,” whether you liked it or not.

      The professor looked at me and said, “Your parents grew up in the Depression.” When I said, “yes,” he replied, “We understand.”

      I don’t think any of the younger students did.

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      1. When Mr. Lemke got out of the Army, after the war where he spent a lot of time “stringing wire through the jungle,” he got a job with the state power company as a lineman. “It’s really easy without anyone shooting at you.” And his father told him, “You have no idea how lucky you are. You give them 8 and half hours work for 8 hours pay and you’ll be set for life.” He retired from the state power company in the mid 1980’s and enjoyed life into the 2020’s.

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      2. “if the job let you pay your bills, every month, and kept you out of debt, it was a “good job,” whether you liked it or not.

        The professor looked at me and said, “Your parents grew up in the Depression.” When I said, “yes,” he replied, “We understand.”

        I don’t think any of the younger students did.”

        –

        I was the older student too, the second time around. There were about 1/2 dozen of us. Yes, huge difference between us oldsters (30+) and the, um infants. (Hey, once upon a time, my first degree, I was one of those naive infants. My classmates then weren’t necessarily oldsters, although a few were (older 20 somethings). But younger 20 somethings who were fresh back from Vietnam. “Let’s go study at the bar.” Was a common theme. Me? I couldn’t get out of a car without getting carded, let alone walk into a bar, well into my 30’s, let alone at 18 to 22.)

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        1. Hehe. I was well into my 20’s, standing at a bus-stop when a cop car pulled up. He asked why I wasn’t in school. I told him I was waiting for the bus to take me to the U.

          He didn’t believe me. I think he was still skeptical after seeing my drivers license, but he didn’t push it. :)

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    2. When I announced I was ready to retire my boss told me to have another job or a business to start. He said he’d seen too many co-workers who said, “When I retire I’ll play golf every day,” or, “When I retire I’ll fish every day.” And when they retired, they golfed or fished one day….and realized they’d lost the desire. Then i. Six months he’d be attending their funerals.

      My beloved dragged me into volunteer work, but I understand now where he was coming from.

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      1. We retired early (dot com implosion), but getting a wooded property on 13 acres that needed outbuildings has generated enough of a round tuit list to last a lifetime. I put cleaning out the taken-down trees (and winter damaged) on the back burner, got the winter-semi-destroyed dog kennel to barely usable condition. The next project is to redo the siding on of the outbuildings. I’ve done more construction (carpentry, electric, tiny amounts of plumbing, painting and other finish work) since I’ve retired than I expected, and that was with a couple of DIY house renovations before retirement.

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      2. I remember once meeting a retired guy who was hugely into RC airplanes (nowadays I suppose he would be into drones, instead). His wife said that right after he retired, he sat around all day long, and basically started to fade away. But then he discovered the RC airplane hobby, and suddenly came back to life.

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      3. Have a purpose for retirement. It will help.

        Avoid telling folks you are retired. They will volunteer you for every dumbass thing under the sun.

        Looking forward to saying this in the not tooo terribly distant future: “I have a new contract based gig. I am highly selective of my work. No, not looking for anything to add.”

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        1. Hm. Yeah. When my family found out I had quit my job to focus on my writing, I suddenly became a full time unpaid babysitter. When I had to put my foot down, it didn’t go over well.

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  14. When I was in high school, I was going to be an astrophysicist. Meanwhile, I stayed up all night programming on my TRS0-80 Model I, because I loved it. This was not going to be a job, though, because programming as a job was working for an IBM or other monstrosity where you never got to choose your own projects. My actual job at the time was as a paperboy. It sucked getting up before school every morning to deliver the paper, but it kept me in spending money and even allowed me to save a little.

    In college, I realized that astrophysics was not (yet) Star Trek, and I pivoted to psychology, which, sadly, was. What I loved about college was gaming any night we felt like it and programming that TRS-80 and writing joke programs on the mainframe all day and all night. Neither of these looked like an interesting 40-hour-a-week job to me, however. My actual job was filing microfiche. It was incredibly rote work, but it helped pay for college and kept me in enough quarters for the arcades.

    After my Bachelor’s I wasn’t quite ready to devote several more years to graduate school, so I pissed around for a few years, upgrading to a TRS-80 Color Computer and driving across the country to spend a year at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood. GIT’s philosophy at the time was, we’re going to provide amazing instructors and you can go from office to office and learn what you want. At the end of the year, we will give you a series of tests so incredibly easy that as long as you just pay attention to the very basics, you can’t fail. I spent far too much time on Chas Grasamke’s fingerstyle and far too little time on funk, and failed. It was an incredible year, but I very clearly was not going to make a living doing what I loved if what I loved was playing guitar. My actual job was working retail, on a commission. It paid for that year of vocational guitar school and I learned that I would never be a successful salesman.

    From Hollywood I moved down to San Diego, where a college gaming friend got me a job, possibly the most boring I’ve held, changing backup tapes in the middle of the night. I had to bike to work by midnight on San Diego streets and then come back at 8 to sleep. But it was money, and I was able to stop asking my parents to help support my aimless wanderings. This was 1994. One night he called me up and said, hey, you’ve got a lot of free time between changing tapes, and there’s this software I’d like to get running on the school’s servers. Do you think you could compile it? Well, I’ll take a look.

    The software was httpd, i.e., a web server. Because I was the one who installed it, I was automatically the expert in it. Web programming turned programming as a career on its head, at least at my level. It was lucrative, it was interesting at least a third of the time, and it was definitely a career I could do, and do well.

    But I would never have got it if I’d turned down babysitting giant tape machines for minimum wage in the middle of the night.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. My husband is 24 years into a career because he got a job in a warehouse back when he was in college. Turns out that when a particular computer company wanted to start opening storefronts, everybody applied for the up-front tech positions, but what they really needed was someone who had experience with shipping and receiving. As his was pretty much the only resume out of a thousand that had that listed (and listed as “I want to do this”), it got him an interview.

      His career job is on the corporate side now, managing shipping and receiving at the warehouses across the country. And walking people how to fix things when they screw up the inventory.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. My job 1996 – 2002 the whole company center on hardware and software for inventory. Which did also get into shipping and receiving applications. Technically the job 2004 – Jan 2016 had software sections related to inventory.

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        1. Worked factory or “fab-tech” jobs in college. All involved computer-controlled systems. I could make them sit up and beg, they worked, fixed for others. Wrote job processes for the new stuff. Got offered a try at database work (MS Access). Made users happy on day one, something very simple that predecessor had blown off for 9 months. Then we got sold out from under LargeCorp and they needed a one-man-band to run IT for the whole small shop. “..and you learn this stuff pretty quick…”

          Rode that pony until the shop folded. Contract work for 2 and change years. Mostly IT but some odds and ends, including “personal security consultation” (heh). Then got called back to a prior interview place to try again for an IT gig. Interview was recovering a site after a lightning strike, with the CEO due later that evening, and they had just fired the guy who repeat-failed to recover it. By the power of Swiss Army Knife …. WE HAVE A NETWORK SITE!!!

          Got the site back up in a few hours. Got job. Got paid for the interview. Here 22+ years and counting.

          What a ride.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. I never thought about the whole “programming as a job was working for an IBM or other monstrosity where you never got to choose your own projects” when I switched to computers, early ’80s. 100% true. And I despised working on mainframes.

      Got into Forestry mid-’70s because no way was I going to make it through college to get into pre-med and out do the actual pre-med GPA’s. I wanted veterinarian. The fact that veterinarian school was also out of state (before the tri-state option was setup) tuition.

      Forestry was fun as long as “walking in the woods” working (hard work, but fun). Wouldn’t have stayed that way. Besides timber crashed.

      I got lucky programming. While didn’t exactly get to pick my own projects, I was never just a cog in the wheel of programming. I got to work from concept to maintenance. Not on the last two systems. But the upgrades (which weren’t minor) on the next to the last one. And even with the last job, not overall design on most of it, but did get to go pick and do, out of the list with no oversight. As long as my code worked. As long as the clients I worked with, very few of whom I ever met, were happy. As long as I didn’t quit (more than a few times tempted, until I did). I was golden.

      I repeat. I got Lucky programming.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Capvideo my story is in some ways similar to yours. I aspired to be an astronomer in High school. A pair of kids I knew from high school had a dad who was a professor of Astronomy at Yale University. I got to talk with him (this is c. 1976). He explained that this was a long haul, bachelor in physics with astronomy minor (almost no one graduated Astronomy majors), Doctorate in astronomy or astrophysics and 2-3 postdocs taking 3-5 years. He also explained that time on instruments (radio or optical) was scarce and he was discouraging all but the best of his grad and postdocs. Remember this is 1976, Ford post Nixon , Proxmire and acandidate named Jimmy Carter who was also kind of anti NASA. To a 14 year old kid a job that I wouldn’t really have until the (to me ancient) age of ~30 was pretty unthinkable. Honestly his best guess is I had a good chance of doing it.

      So I went off to think, (come on I was a sophomore in high school I had time to burn). While ruminating I stumbled onto something else, a Magazine called Byte and got bitten by the microcomputer bug. I wanted a Sol-20 or an Imsai, but those were like $2000 which was more than many new cars, not something my blue collar family could afford especially with sending me to a private school. That year the school also got in 4 ti-59 programmable calculators. and some of the printers that went with them. I had a ball programming them in essentially assembly. Summer of ’78 I worked like a dog painting our house and garage. My pay for this was to be $500 which with ~$300 I had saved from various odd jobs would cover a Commodore PET or a TRS-80. Except when I finished there was an issue with the house (don’t rightly remember what I think the electrical box got fried by lightning) and my $500 (and more) gotten eaten by that. In addition even senior year at high school was iffy as money was tight due to limited overtime for my dad from the Carter Malaise (though someone at the school found me a generous donor to give a scholarship, so I got to finish).

      But I definitely had the bug for programming so off to an engineering school I went enrolled as a CS student. To be honest freshman year I struggled. There were only so many CS staff and as was the style at engineering schools the freshman classes were weed out classes (look to your left look to your right, one of you will NOT be here next year) mostly as they took too many incoming freshman (especially those that were paying full loads). I made it out in 4 years (not a forgone conclusion) and managed to get a job at DEC. Except I had really wanted to work on an OS (VMS or Tops preferably). I ended working up on a strange application library called FMS (Forms Management System) running tests and answering SPR’s (software problem reports). Was it fun? Not directly, the people were fun, the culture (DEC in 1983 was a bunch of 22-35 year old nerd go getters with occasional older folk) was great. And suddenly There was a new project that needed a test and SPR guy. It was GKS (graphical Kernel System) a 2d device independent graphics library. Was that fun? Kind of, but I worked like a dog. I was a newlywed in 1984, but my wife didn’t mind the long hours, she was a Chemistry Grad student so I beat her home most days. Ultimately in the 1990s I got my dream job doing low level (kernel DMA and such like) graphic drivers. That was fun but mostly because of the awesome people I worked with. That ended late 90’s as Graphics cards did more and more of the work (e.g. lighting and transformation) that used to live on the software side). Ultimately I retired in 2024 after being laid off for the third and finale time (Once in 2005 from HP, Once from Raytheon in 2011, and then from the little job shop who were having issues getting enough work). Id had a 40 year career after only having been unemployed for about 10 months total.

      Was it Fun? Well sometimes, even often. But it was the people that made it fun. The work was interesting at times, although at other times programming can be sheer drudgery (i.e. writing/fixing unit tests). It fed and housed me and my family (In combination with my Wife’s job as a Chem Prof at a local state college). It put no undue strains on my body (except making my posterior larger and a bit of arthritis in my hands from 40 years of typing :-) ). It also permitted (combined with frugality on my wife and I’s part in saving) to let me retire at 63.

      Would I switch it for that other astronomer me? I don’t think so. It is in hindsight tempting, with the Keck and similar large computer controlled observatories (as well as Hubble and a bunch of other space based observatories) there is almost too much data to process. But I miss meeting my wife at the Engineering school, I miss a bunch of friends over 40 years. And honestly given my performance in freshman Calc and Physics I wonder if I really could have done it. I have had amateur astronomy as a hobby so I did get some of that and got to enjoy the changes to astronomy vicariously without dumping 12 years into the process.

      I do not know if my road was Mr Frosts “road less travelled by” but truly

      And both that morning equally lay

      In leaves no step had trodden black.

      Oh, I kept the first for another day!

      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

      I doubted if I should ever come back.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I finally pulled the trigger on a nice dobsonian two weeks ago. This weekend, I saw the rings of Saturn (well, the straight on edge of the rings, since that’s how Saturn is positioned right now vis-a-vis the Earth) for the first time “with my own eyes”. Insanely inspiring and moving.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Enjoy! I have a Meade LX-90 8″ Schmidt Cassegrain with which I’ve gotten to see many things. I do need to take it out again but hefting its 35+lbs onto the tripod is getting harder and harder. There is a book called Turn Left at Orion that gives things to see even in smaller (70 mm) refractors and gives great signposts to help find things.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. “But I miss meeting my wife at the Engineering school, I miss a bunch of friends over 40 years.“

        –

        I understand this one too. Would I’ve been better off skipping Forestry and going immediately to programming? No. Not the least being that my first computer class (’76) was a disaster and a half. Came out of that swearing off computers, never ever. Besides would have missed out on 4+ years of friendship with my husband to be, before we started dating. Married 11 months later. Married for 46 years and counting.

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      3. The drudgery part of programming, like writing unit tests, just happens to be the one part where AI-generated code is actually useful. Most other parts of your system, the LLM can’t understand well enough to write correct code. But unit tests are so common in the training material the LLMs were trained on that prompting the LLM “Write a set of unit tests for this class” will usually produce almost-correct results, that take less time to edit into correctness than it would have taken you to write them from scratch.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Makes sense that Unit tests are something an LLM could do. Maybe they could also fix the Unit tests when some idiot has to go and change the interfaces and this cascades through a couple sets of tests.

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      4. The shop that first hired me as a do-all IT guy had VAX/VMS systems for their CAD/CAM systems. (And one VAX/Alpha). Somewhere I still have a box of the jumper/plugs for selecting DSSI bus drive channels.

        I have only met a very few folks to have ever worked DEC hardware.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “I have only met a very few folks to have ever worked DEC hardware.”
          Raises hand.
          Well, not hardware as much as software, but very close to the machine. We had our own custom OS for the VAXs.

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  16. When I was 56 I was laid off from a high-paying job at Boeing as a rendezvous-navigation engineer. It was not my ideal job. (I wanted to stay away from space after unpleasant experiences working there previously.) I took the job after being unemployed for nine months after my previous employer closed down after 9-11. (It paid well and I was broke. I literally emptied my savings account into my checking the month I got the job and had enough in checking to pay the next month’s bills. Plus I had a massive credit card balance.)

    It wasn’t my dream job. I stayed there 11 years and it got worse and worse as Boeing slipped into Woke. But I stayed with it because it paid and it allowed me to provide for my family. Plus, as the Shuttle program wound down Boeing had a retention program that paid out three weeks pay for up to eight of last eleven Shuttle missions I supported if I got laid off when the Shuttle program ended. I could not walk away from 24 weeks pay, no matter how much I disliked the job.

    At the same time I knew severance pay would run out eventually, so I needed to land a new job – outside aerospace – to survive.

    As the end of the Shuttle program ended I asked myself three questions:

    1. What was I good at?
    2. Of the things I was good at, what did I enjoy doing?
    3. Which of the things I was good at that I enjoyed doing paid well?

    The intersection of those three questions was technical writing. I was good at writing, including technical writing, and I enjoyed writing.

    My dream job would have been freelance author, but that failed the third test. As far as pay went, it sucked. I could realistically expect $10K-$20K annually because I was already making the low end of that writing weekends and evenings. Maybe I could push that to $40K if the stars aligned, and that wasn’t enough.

    So I became a tech writing, mainly in the oil bidness for 10 or so years. I ended up earning as much as I had been at Boeing, even during the worst years as a tech writer. (It turned out I was very, very good at it. Better than I expected. It was also kind of fun. Not very stable. I kept working myself out of jobs, but there was always another one.)

    I eventually returned to aerospace to work on a Lunar program. (That had been a dream since I was a kid,) The work was okay, but the problems leading to my dissatisfaction with NASA were still there. (Too much abby-nay, kul an’ hazar-ho, for one. Look up Kipling’s poem, “The ‘Eathen” if you don’t get the reference.) So I am leaving at the end of September.

    Why? So I can do my dream job: write full time. I can afford the indulgence now. Between savings, pensions, investments and Social Security, my bills are paid. The kids are grown and the house and car are paid for. Plus, over 25 years I have built up a demand for my writing.

    My point in all this is not “quit your job and write full time.” It took 25 years of effort for me to reach that point. Rather, it is to ask the same three questions I did, and to find a job at the intersection of those three questions. It may not be your dream job, but it will be more fun and more remunerative than a job satisfying two of the three questions. Certainly more fun and remunerative than a job satisfying only one of the three.

    Sarah is right. It does not matter how good a cat rotator you are or how much you enjoy rotating cats, if there is no remunerative demand for those services. And no one owes you a living. That’s on you and only you.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. “I took the job after being unemployed for nine months after my previous employer closed down after 9-11. (It paid well and I was broke. I literally emptied my savings account into my checking the month I got the job and had enough in checking to pay the next month’s bills.“

      –

      Similar to where we were Sept ’02 through Jan ’04 after my job went away under company bankruptcy. Or why the other half had to accept the transfer to nowhere Oct ’03. Both of us couldn’t be without a job. I was 48 looking for work in tech. We cut back everything we could, enough that unemployment covered the short fall until it was gone. Good news is we did NOT have credit card debit. We had savings we could tap for the shortfall without tapping retirement or educational fund savings with penalties (too many others I know were not that lucky, if they had extra funds). We all but drained those savings before I was offered a job that offered a salary less than I’d made 14 years earlier. FYI, moving was not an option. Paid more than non existent unemployment. Took another 12 years to work back up to the annual salary I was making in 2002. I didn’t quit looking for work. Got other offers over the next 6 years before I did stop looking. Nothing better than where I was. Could have stayed longer. Won’t go into why I chose not to. Let’s just say when we talked it over, the other half’s response was “Quit. Now.” Glad I did.

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  17. I’ve been very lucky that I found an occupation that has stayed interesting. I suppose having something open ended where there’s always something new or something to get better at is what’s important. I’m retiring the end of this month and am struggling to figure out what will replace it. The markets are always there , of course, but filling the day is harder

    Liked by 2 people

    2. I … can’t understand “retiring.” Husband can, because he wants to do his music, more writing and some incomprehensible stuff with math and AI.
      BUT other than “I need time for other projects” I don’t get it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. It depends a lot, I think, on how you define “retiring”. My dad told me that once I retired, all my free time would disappear. He was right. I had all these things I wanted to do, and there isn’t enough time to do them all. At the same time, there are no more excuses. Music, writing, math, and AI? I suspect Dan will have the same issue.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. not sure I understand it either. I’ve been working since I was 14 and full time at the banks and later since I was 20. I have a job thats actually interesting. On B the other hand my add has always had the job to structure it. Don’t know how it’s gonna go

        Liked by 1 person

        1. My BIL and his wife “retired” to RV life, camp hosting at bigger campgrounds. She worked hospitality (she’s chatty). He took care of the small mechanic stuff, and clammed or fished, depending on location. They’ve had to stop this when her mother went into medical decline (broken hip will do that). Her mother is now 95. They are 78 and 73. BIL is recovering from his own serious medical brush with almost death. They still live in the RV, but they’ve sold the means to move it (parked in her mom’s backyard) and will not be moving it until it is sold (likely when he passes first).

          Hubby retired to play golf and play with the stock market (nothing drastic), and work with the photos. Me? I read and do this and that. Was taking the dog places including agility classes and practice but she can’t do that anymore. I’ll find something to do.

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          1. Oh. SIL stays busy by taking care of her mother, her husband, and works for the sample people at Costco to talk to people. She’ll stop doing the latter if it is no longer fun.

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      3. The Reader retired from the Great Big Defense Contractor at the point that the actions of the executive management no longer made sense to him. Supporting his disabled son, not financially, but with his household and medical issues has been major part of his time over the last half dozen years. The Reader’s wife has also had a serious set of orthopedic issues over the last couple of years so the Reader has lapsed into the role of caregiver (one for which he is uniquely unsuited by temperament). The Reader had plans 7 years ago. All have been overcome by events. Now that his son has passed, he is trying to make sense of it.

        Liked by 3 people

      4. Everyone at work wants to throw a retirement party before I leave in September. I cannot convince them I am not retiring, since the reason I am leaving is to write full-time. So I am not trying to convince them. Besides, who am I to spoil an opportunity for a good party?

        It does show people do not really think of writing as a job. Rather, they treat it as a pastime. I put two sons through college with this “pastime,” working weekends and evenings. Fulltime? I am willing to bet in a couple of years it will pay all the bills. It does not seem to matter. To most of the world sitting at home writing isn’t “work.”

        Liked by 1 person

        1. You are retiring from that job.

          Besides, they all probably know of a dozen people who claim to be writers rather than admit they do not have a job.

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          2. They didn’t understand Bookonic Posession. It won’t LET you let go. At least book (or series? completion) resolves that – for a while anyway. I am dealing with that with $HOUSEMATE at the moment. Generally, “spare” time is spent typing as the book is flowing through and will overspill the dam if the gates are closed too long. Or for anything other Official Work, Civil Duty, and Biological Need.

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              1. TC: “GUNNER CARP PUNSTER!”

                GNR “IDENTIFIED!’

                LDR “CARP UP!”

                TC “FIRE”

                GNR “ON THE WAY!”

                TC “TARGET CEASE FIRE!” 

                Like

      5. Yeah, the stereotypical “retirement” thing sounds pretty strange, internally. But my first big experience with this odd, highly not-ideal model-of-life was in… the middle of elementary school.

        Though I don’t remember being particularly bothered, my parents (at the least) noticed and asked and found out quickly it was because, in the school of that time (and even parochal not public), I was not being challenged, as in half-bored to tears (or so it was perceived).

        (Evidently, I was “coasting” — except it turned out I just can’t. Constitutional inability.)

        The immense relief, on being told I could either read ahead (and do ahead), is scarce describable but that is something I remember very well, oh so well. Find your own problems and challenges, do as well as you can on them, with no-one requiring this and no grading system but your own.

        This has stood me very well, at the other end of decades, in an Internet age of a “library” you can access from anywhere, in which the biggest access barriers are the never-enough-accursed paywalls. And of course now there’s writing — which is plenty hard enough.

        (Oh, and today’s Starship Show should be minutes away.)

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  18. Am saying this with all due affection and respect: I never noticed before how much ol’ Winnie looked like a cross between WC Fields and Peter Lorre.

    More on topic, a motto I had for a while on my checks was “I don’t live to work, I work to live.” My employer doesn’t own me. I just owe it X amount of labor in exchange for Y amount of money and Z amount of health benefits.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I have zero use for the UBI ‘then I would create good art’ argument.

    When I was not deeply driven by something, and constrained, I have always failed to intentionally create good art.

    I may have created good art, but not to plan and to intention in those circumstances.

    A job is a direction, and a set of constraints to create art in. If one tries to practice the art of the possible.

    If pushing limits, to realize something in the face of finite schedule, budget, and manpower is a never ending struggle.

    “Do something you love”? I do not know that I have ever had a good work life balance as an adult.

    When work, and other life focuses bleed into each other, it can be bad for all of them. For example, one’s recreation can fail to catalyze recovery.

    Chasing psychological highs, managing one’s work goals around the internal sense of whether magic is happening with the thinking, can completely detach productivity efforts from any real evaluation of tasks and completion, and from any hint of what others might find useful.

    If one works oneself into such a disaster, weaning oneself off of the highs, and doing the organizational work to acheive improved quality, can be a bit difficult.

    The plus of chasing the mental hits, is that nobody can take anything away by refusing to hire you, or pay you.

    The minuses include that the isolation continues and entrenches the crippling effects of not being able to communicate with customers, supervisors, and colleagues.

    The expectation of having to satisfy someone else, somewhere, is stimulating.

    It is also potentially freeing. Because quite a lot of ‘magic’ grows mundane and pales.

    Brains as fancy neurochemical systems, the feed back and balancing effects make certain sorts of internal chasing potentially dangerous or destructive.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Boredom really is the death of any job. It’s a sign telling you it’s time for shake things up and move to something different. One of the biggest changes the western world has brought to humanity is the ability to live long enough and healthy enough that you can actually have 3 completely different, 20-year careers in your lifetime, or even 4 if you win the longevity jackpot.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. And if you do it right that last 20 year career of the three can be a man (or woman, or even housecat, I won’t judge) of leisure. The lefties do a lot of complaining for no valid reason, it can be a very good life.

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    1. I picked up a ca. 1950s First Year Latin textbook four years ago at a school book sale. From context, it’s a middle school textbook.

      I am currently about 20% of the way through it. You have my sincere respect.

      Like

    1. ‘Struth. Once per quarter, unless there is clear evidence that emergency rotation is called for. (If the cat is less than 1/2 inch thick and covers more than a square yard/meter, rotate that kitty!)

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  23. People forget the “Get paid!” part of working at one’s passion.

    Its -really- important to Get Paid. If you are not getting paid, you are doing a hobby. Get Paid!

    My then fourteen year old Niece figured this out. Wants to be a type of artist. But stated – “…but I have to make a living at something while I learn to make a living at (art). And to do that I need to accomplish X, Y, Z….”

    Fourteen.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. In that case, you need a job that doesn’t drain all your time and energy needed for the art. (And what drains the energy varies from person to person.)

      Like

  24. In 1947, we renamed our “Department of War” to “department of Defense”.

    Note, we have a rather poor track record ever since.

    President Trump has stated he wants it renamed back to “Department of War”. I highly concur, although I would prefer “Department of Victory”. Of course, “Federal Armed Forces Organization” might be useful. (grin)

    Seriously. Look at our pre 1947 record, then our post 1947 record. Ouch.

    If the mission is -War-, and the goal isn’t -Victory-, what side are you on? Simple, eh?

    I highly concur in the effort to revert the name.

    Liked by 5 people

    2. The name change was a compromise. Before 1947, we had the Department of War, which was the Army, and the Department of the Navy, which was Exactly What It Says on the Tin. (h/t TV Tropes.) The departments were being combined, but naming the new entity the War Department would have implied Army supremacy over the Navy, and the Navy was having one metric none-o’-that.

      Any possible success in restoring the Department of War name depends on how touchy the Navy feels like being about the matter. Inter-service rivalries being what they are, President Trump may find this at least as difficult as unilaterally banning flag-burning.

      Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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      1. “Admirals, shut up and get along with your fellow warfighters. A Navy that isn’t primarily about war is called the Coast Guard. They don’t need carriers or boomers.”

        “War it is, Mister president.”

        Liked by 1 person

  25. My wife decided at 12 she wanted to be a writer. Her mother told her she didn’t look like a writer. At 15 she told her mother she wanted to be a chemist. Her mother told her she didn’t look like a chemist. So she said, “Well, what do I look like then?” and got no answer. So she decided to pursue a practical profession with a PhD in Chemistry while she kept writing on the side.

    God refused to give her an easy road, and she ended up leaving UCSD with only a Masters in Chemistry because her dissertation adviser insisted she lie about his using funds from a grant for a different project and being late on the work required for the grant. She went to the administration and was told, “But he’s up for tenure next year.” What’s a poor grad student (with an even poorer spouse) to do? She refused to lie and left with just her Masters. We found out however that a Masters entitled her to a life-time Community College teaching credential, so she got jobs teaching chemistry labs at night while working as a copy editor for an academic press. Meanwhile I gave up on tradpub and went to grad school to learn programming, fortunately finding I had a real knack for it.

    Of course God wouldn’t let it be that easy for her though. She ended up being let go from the publisher because she insisted on actually copy-editing articles that were written by foreigners with poor English skills into something comprehensible. Doing that upended the pay-for-play way the academic journals did business. Give us your paper and your money. We’ll pretend to put out respectable science and everybody’s happy. Still when God closes a window, he opens a trapdoor. A private high school was looking for a science teacher in the middle of November. Why in the middle of a semester? Because their science teacher gave his required 45 day notice, and they didn’t bother looking until the week before his 45 days were up.

    They interviewed her and one other woman on the Thursday before the old teacher’s last day on the next Tuesday. When she didn’t hear by Friday, she figured they gave the job to the other woman. Then they called her Monday afternoon asking if she could start the next day. She found out later that the other woman had indeed been hired, but the departing teacher had humiliated her by exposing her limited knowledge of science, and she ran away crying. (She had apparently skated by with a C average in college unlike Sharon who had graduated with honors in 3 years.)

    The resigning teacher who quit to become a cop because he wanted to bust heads rather than teach science to teenagers had told his students that their next teacher would be just as inept. So Sharon had one day with the leaving teacher to show her where the supplies were and introduce her to her classes. Talk about being set up for failure. With her diligence and ingenuity, she succeeded of course, so much so, that she had more students sign up for her classes the next year than she could accommodate, including enough for two periods of a class she created called Science Literacy for Non-Scientists to supplement the standard Physics and Chemistry classes. Of course the principal disappeared over the summer and the administration assigned someone else to teach the classes she had created, so she refused to commit for the next year.

    That was hardly enough to fulfill her quota of suffering though. She loved a quote by one saint whose road for a pilgrimage to Rome was blocked by a flood, “God, if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.” She also learned it was best not to be too curious about things God-related when she had, as a teenager, wondered how it was possible for the woman to have bled constantly for 12 years and still survive. Yep, in addition the fibromyalgia that plagued her for 30 years, she also had to deal with that for 12 years (the Big Guy has a really precise sense of humor) until I had to rush her to the gynecologist and from there to the next door hospital for emergency cancer surgery.

    The year before, her health had deteriorated to the point that she had to give up teaching. Instead she embarked on the story a week discipline. Except that the 12th story kept getting longer and longer until she had a 420 page novel. She finished it the day after Christmas. The next day our eldest cat and her constant writing companion passed away. Six months later, she had the emergency cancer surgery. Recovery was not easy (she did live another 25 years though). That led to 13 year chase of trying to find a publisher. She told my best friend who was one of her early readers that she should probably go back to teaching to which he replied, “No, you’re a writer!” Everyone who read the book was blown away, but one top agent said she couldn’t sell a 420 page book by a newcomer and added that there was nothing that Sharon could cut from it. One publisher had 3 of his readers read it, and all 3 recommended he buy it. Of course he didn’t. Finally, by 2010, I had her publish it online with Amazon along with a collection of her short stories to fairly minuscule sales, but it was still better than 13 years of rejection for arbitrary reasons.

    When God blocks every road you tried to use to be practical, what you gonna’ do? Just keep going until he decides to take you back.

    If you’re curious, you can go to my website and click on her picture to find her stuff to read.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Yep, St. Teresa of Avila. My patron saint.

        I retired this year. Not because I had ever planned to, what possible reason would a librarian ever need to retire? I mean, what more awesome job can you have besides middle school librarian? Life does not get better than that. All day sitting in peace and quiet, mostly, its middle school after all, surrounded by books and awkward kids.

        But, it it can, however, get worse. I had a stroke, survived, kept going. Got a weird mutation that causes a strange blood cancer, not fatal but I will be on oral chemo until I die, eventually.

        Survived, still kicking. But then there MS I’d been dealing with since 1982, decided it wanted some attention too.

        So, with the brain fog, exhaustion, and general stupidity of all this, it was time to throw in the towel.

        But 7-year old me would be thrilled to know that I did go on to not only find the love of my life, be a mom and grandma but as a LIBRARIAN!!!

        I have been blessed without measure and looking forward to doing whatever I can to pass on my blessings to everyone.

        May everyone be able to look back on their struggles with pride and with hope for the future however long it may last for each of us.

        So prayers up for you all, and for all people. Everyone is going through their own trials, but how wonderful to look back on things and see how it all turned out in the end.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. Thank you!

            I always say, people aren’t battery posts. We get to choose whether we are positive or negative.

            Choose wisely. 😁

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      1. Not yet. This is the first one I’m trying to do print on demand as well as ebook, and I’m seeing complications about needing to purchase ISBNs and UPCs. I have the ms. formatted and the cover likewise. I understand I have to check on what price I’m charging before I can get the UPC. I hope to have all this sorted by tomorrow, then I can go live and be able to provide the Amazon link for the Sunday preview.

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      2. Sorry, you were talking about Sharon’s book of course. I’ve done that twice in the book promo, but it didn’t generate any sales.

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  26. Anyone have an idea as to why is Trump pushing a ban on flag burning at this time? He’s not stupid. He knows this is a red button topic. He knows the Supreme Court already ruled on it. What is he trying to distract us from? Epstein? Illegal Immigration? Ukraine? Law enforcement in high crime cities?

    I personally find burning the flag to be abhorrent. After all, I did spend 22 years defending it. And spent too many years of my youth reading about military heroism and people dying for this country. But I’ll also defend the right of anyone to do so to protest government tyranny.

    Like

      1. I think you are correct. Apparently, Tim Walz has already taken to the microphone to rally the troops for a rousing burning demonstration to show that red-hatted fascist they can burn flags if they wanna and no orange Hitler can stop them.

        🤦‍♀️

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Good. I’d rather Walz and Co provide the SCOTUS case than me. I don’t have that deep of a pocket.

          Mind you, I was considering burning an upside-down U.S. flag in protest of Trump’s EO, and posting that on-line. However, there are some significant nuances to the EO, primarily in when the intent of the flag burning is to incite violence, not necessarily unlawful for the intent of protesting.

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          1. I think “Fighting Words” where recognized, covers the Flag nicely.

            And yes, this is Trump maneuvering the opposition into doing Stupid Bad Optic Sh!t right before midterms.

            OMB: “And next, I am going to ban peeing on electric fences….”

            Donks, unison: OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

            Liked by 1 person

          2. “The only conduct targeted is burning a flag in circumstances designed to provoke lawless action, for example at a rally where the clear intent is to inflame a mob into violence. This is the narrow terrain where the Court has said the First Amendment does not apply, and that is the terrain Trump’s order aims to police.”

            The problem I see with this is it is too easy to weaponize. And too easy for the government to apply their own interpretation of intent. That’s what got us the J6 political prisoners. Granted, the majority of flag burners are not Republicans or conservatives, but almost entirely Democrats, liberals, Marxists of all stripes, and various enemies of the United States itself. However, I can easily envision a GOP protest against say a bad immigration law enacted by Democrats, where someone burns a flag, and then Antifa does a smash and grab and burn of a business to implicate the flag burner.

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            1. I think the ‘Far-Right Radicals’ would be unlikely to burn flags in protest over an objectionable law. My preference would be to burn a copy of the law, to demonstrate opposition to a specific act by certain politicians and bureaucrats, not a hate-on against the United States itself. We leave that to the Leftroids.

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            2. then Antifa does a smash and grab and burn of a business to implicate the flag burner.

              Any law / regulation on the books can be turned into a false flag — remember “Three Felonies A Day”? Especially when blue jurisdictions are involved.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Yeah, I have a copy of that book. One take away from it was we need to stop allowing the government to make themselves more opportunities to control us. And to take away as many of the ones they’ve invented from them as we can.

                Like

        3. That’s my governor, demonstrating once again how feckless he is and making me glad the nation was wise enough to kick his worthless behind to the curb. Now if we can only get rid of him here . . .

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I saw a note where someplace (Australia?) folks were adding raw bacon bookmarks to library copies of the quran. They start easier with a bit of grease. I suppose.

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              1. I usually put my freshly cooked bacon on paper towels to dry and drain and soak up the excess fat. The only time book pages do a good job of soaking up fat is when it’s a brand-new copy of your favorite, and you accidently brush the page when turning it at the breakfast table. I swear the bacon grease jumps from the plate directly to the page. And I’ve yet to find a copy of the Quran printed on Bounty paper towels.

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            2. Ixnay on that. Unless you own it, don’t do it. Put bacon in a copy you bought yourself, not a library book. I can sympathize, but that’s not going to help the cause, in my opinion. YMMV.

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        2. Yep. Free Speech as long as they aren’t confiscating books to burn in order to silence the book.

          But as an incendiary review, free speech like bra burning or 1 star Yelp reviews.

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        3. If you own either item, purchased or made it with your own funds, and you are not 1) causing harm to others or 2) starting a brush/grass/forest fire or 3) inciting riot, then what you do with your property is your business. Start a range fire, gin up looters and rioters, or cause harm to someone? Completely different story.

          I’ve added especially lousy books to a bonfire (to cook sausages et al) with only a mild twinge of guilt. Couldn’t sell it back, was already used, did not want it in my library, so it was trash or toast. Toast was a far better purpose than adding to the landfill. Would I burn a flag? Only if I was properly, with full respect and ceremony, disposing of a worn-out flag.

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          1. The law is troublesome. It means I can’t go to the next CAIR rally and counter demonstrate across the street by putting a slice of ham on top of the Quran.

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            1. Executive Order, not Law.

              He is lawfully telling his various subordinates what he wants done within existing Law and precedent. From the wording, its macht nicht new.

              In other words, it is pure outrage bait. Feel free to rant, but nothing that matters has changed. He is, once again, trying to goad the opposition into doing stupid stuff on camera. Because midterms are coming up, and we need new meme-fodder.

              Carnival Barker. “This way to the Egress!!”

              Cmon. Laugh. This shit is -funny-. Troll Level Orange

              Liked by 1 person

              2. Yes, that EO reads a lot to me like, if someone is rioting, murdering, burning, and generally breaking the law left and right, they don’t get a pass on the real crimes just because part of it involves protected speech.

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              3. The Reader notes that those of us in the Commonwealth (of VA) need those images this fall to help elect our first black female governor and first gay lt. governor. Neither of which is as important as the fact that they are Republicans and 2d amendment supporters. For the unfamiliar do an image search for Winsome Sears and AR15.

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    2. He’s eighty, so there will always be potential that this time he has had a psychotic break, or that some age infirmity has caught him.

      However, checking every time is a bad filter, that wastes one’s time and energy. The information from before is that he does a bunch of surprising stuff that does not immediately make sense, but eventually one sees enough pieces to guess at what the sense may have been. A severe and sudden disability would become clear in the long run, over a number of trials.

      Mostly, what Sarah says sounds plausible to me.

      I would reiterate a couple of models I have previously floated.

      One is that the Biden players were a Gu jar of vicious morons.

      The second is that certain surprises desync the communists, and they faction, and some factions are facist. Big desync of the 1920/1930s seems to have been Lenin’s death, and the Stalin/Trotsky stuffs. Right now, the left are leadership magic oriented, and they have had some weak horses.

      No doubt someone here can tell me that the summer’s riots were super impressive, I’ve kept deliberately underinformed. So, as far as I know, fizzle.

      Anyhow, the left is maybe angry, and somewhat motivated, but short of leadership and decisions. They probably have some wannabe Bonapartes, but the shooters to back such an opportunist seem scarce. It is one thing to face the left acting on a plan. It is one thing if the left or the getalongs surrender. But, high energy, no plan, risks invention, and maybe someone is clever enough to find something very stupid.

      Heading into fall semester at some universities, weather is cooler. Protests for a while will be at campus. If protestors burn flags on campuses, there is maybe grounds to deport international students near by, which could shit test a remarkable number of people.

      Myself, given all the idiocy with campuses, I find myself feeling sorry for the international students. Not the ones who willfully protest, of course. But, a student does travel on campus, and one certainly cannot start out planning so carefully that one would never be photographed near idiots behaving visibly.

      Iowa State University left the Association of American Universities in 2022, IIRC. I find myself wondering a bit if there were some communications inside AAU that may have been reputationally damaging, or criminally liable, given the full cluster of modern tertiary insanity. Frankly, it is a little interesting that three out of five universities to leave that, left within a twelve year period.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Apparently the EO is very carefully worded, which makes it likely that Trump’s trolling. He wants the appearance of a flag burning ban without instating a real one. Why do it? Sarah’s explanation makes the most sense. Why now specifically? No clue.

      Like

        2. That exact same picture also occurred to me, in this connection.

          Like thoroughly evil cats to a darting laser pointer, but still…

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        4. The Reader believes that comparing Democrats to cats is an insult to cats everywhere. More like moths to a flame.

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    4. If you read the EO you will see it doesn’t really do anything substantial. I could be overestimating Trump but I think it is a “SQUIRREL!” for the Left. Keep the TeeDeeEss Brigade distracted with trivialities while real work get done where they are not looking. Really the Left should read the Art of War.

      On second thought, no they shouldn’t. Too many big words.

      Liked by 1 person

  27. I’ve gotten kicked out of my comfort zone this year. I don’t really like it, but I suspect it was necessary in the long run. That applies to Day Job, writing, and RedQuarters in general. So I’m making myself learn new things, and approach old things in new ways, because unsharpened iron rusts if you are not careful. (And heck, the politics and machinations of people in Southeastern Europe during the Byzantine Era make US politics calm, tame, and gentlemanly by comparison.)

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Steel does not sharpen steel. Abrasive grit, properly applied, sharpens steel. Steel polishes that sharpened edge and takes the burrs off.

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        1. Well, currently it’s showing a message from Kindle (Whiskey Tango Photon Torpedo???) that they’re sorry they can’t load the preview.

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  29. I coasted in grade school as a smart kid, but was miserable due to bullying and non-popularity. I hated high school, had a D average, but was good at metalwork and was going to be a machinist. After graduating, aced the apprentice program at a local aerospace firm… and was fired, and told “come back when you have your degree”.

    I had always liked things involving roads and highways. But I knew engineering was mathmathmathmathmath so I never seriously pursued it until I had no other options. When applying for community college, I was asked if I had calculus, to which I responded “At home, but it doesn’t have batteries.” I ended up in Algebra for Idiots, and has an excellent teacher who finally got me to understand all that X-rated stuff. Plus paying for my own credit hours helped me focus.

    7 years of college later, I got my engineering degree and worked at a state DOT for 31 years. And got to do exactly what I wanted to do as a kid. But it was a lot of detail-focused work and 60-hour weeks at low pay. But it was and is satisfying to see my designs in traffic signs used in my state and across the US, plus research that still defines critical roadside safety features for all users.

    But then being a bit too honest on a national stage put me in the doghouse for the final years of my first career, and the Boss From Heck and impossible deadlines were sending my blood pressure ballistic. The job was literally killing me, but I wanted to stay to finish one last big project. And I did, and then got out as said boss was running me through a HR wringer for “poor attitude”.

    Took me a year to get my head on straight again, then set up as a one-man consulting firm. Work was slow for several years, but we had saved up for a while. Now, I have a bit more work than I want, but it’s flexible and the hours aren’t always full-time, and in fact I’m now getting paid verrry well to update that last big agency project I worked on. Mostly on my terms. Plus I have time to volunteer for what I want to work on, help out my wife, and still keep the wreckage of my sanity. Heckuva journey so far, but can’t complain.

    Liked by 3 people

  30. Well, retirement went well (full five years now) and everyday is Saturday has also been nice. I found much to my surprise that I was able to (and still am) sort of coasting along. Wife and I would do little spur of the moment things and life was good.

    The loss of Wife in February put a real kink into the whole daily life thing but we (me and little dog Boo) have done okay so far. I’ve got little projects I mess with now and again but no big involved things. I’ve returned to reading and that has been good too. This winter will be interesting as I will be less mobile and I’ve also become a bit less motivated these last few months about much of anything.

    I signed up for a ‘grief workshop’ that starts next month and will run to the end of the year and I expect that will help me focus and stay on track. I’ve known several who retired out of law enforcement/criminal justice jobs who were buried less than a year later so, I dodged that bullet – now, death of spouse is one I have found is a much bigger issue than ‘not working’ which is taking a lot more to manage. Anyhow, having people to go see and things to go do is great while along with that there are these wonderful ‘friends’ I have in my computer too – Thanks!

    Liked by 3 people

    2. My hobbies since loss of Spouse are swords, guns, and funding lawsuits and ballot measures and a few politicians.

      I just moved to Oregon, darnit, I won’t give it up!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m 4th or 5th generation (not sure if great-great-grandpa was one of the 10 children that came on the wagon train in 1843 or one of the 4 born after the wagon train got to the Willamette). I’m not giving Oregon up. Double darnit. (That makes my great-nieces and nephews at least 6th generation.)

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    3. Mom lost (we all did) dad 16 years ago. She’s kept busy with all the lady Shriner organizations volunteering for the various specialties each group is for (one is diabetes research). She complains as the younger crowd are not stepping up (they will). I tell her she has to learn to say “No”. Some she has to say no because she is restricting I-5 driving.

      In addition there are the great-grands. She regularly travels to and from youngest sister via train. It’s working. Oh, she’s 90.

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      1. A real problem is when the spouse is very ill and requires care before dying. Or being sent to a nursing home. Then that can eat up all the time, bit by bit, and suddenly all that free time. . . .

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        1. When the headwind stops you fall down and go what happened? And takes time to start moving forward again. Between dealing with the grief, and then relearning the rhythm of life and doing things for yourself after several years of not doing much is….hard.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. A woman I know spent the first weeks organizing the funeral and stuff and then working out how to donate the left-over supplies. Some she could have returned, but she decided to donate them.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Hospice did most of that for mom and more recently aunt. Most the supplies came through them which helped. There are even ways to donate remaining prescription medications depending on what the prescriptions are.

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          2. My mom went through this. She did try the grief groups. She did not stick with them.

            Aunt (by marriage) is going through this now. She lost her second husband last December. Just recently helped her children bury their father (dad’s younger brother) and her first husband. Really a long story. In the end they were able to talk and make things better between them good enough that even her surviving siblings were at the larger memorial. Internment was the day before, private, only family, including her. What she is doing to deal with the dual grief? IDK. I know she and mom talk a lot.

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    4. The biggest hazard for widowers—as opposed to widows—is that their wives usually managed all the social connections. Losing all the social opportunities is what kills people off, so getting into grief counseling—which is a social thing, TBH—is a good move. Also, keep interacting online if nothing else.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Guess in which way our household is reversed. G’on guess. If Dan goes before me, I’ll wander around the house, subsisting on popcorn, whiskey and strong coffee when I remember I need to eat.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Remember the chocolate, too.

          Basic four food groups: fat, sugar, alcohol, caffeine. Irish Coffee FTW!

          —

          I hate therapy groups. Do nothing for me – ‘internal locus of control’, don’t give a rat’s patoot about what others think.

          But it does get lonely here some days.

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        1. I retired before my wife did, so I did almost all the cooking. (My wife’s dad pretty much did all the cooking at his house. She told me she thought I might work out as a husband when she saw that my dad cooked.)

          Pretty hard to get motivated to cook for just me, though. I’ll sometimes make something big, like lasagna, and have 10 leftover servings to freeze. Lots of red-lidded Rubbermaid in my cupboard and freezer.

          My son just moved up from California to Springfield (about 20 miles N of CG); with his current schedule, comes down here on Mondays, does some laundry and has dinner with me. There’s motivation to cook!

          Liked by 1 person

  31. Musk seen wearing Nuke Mars t-shirt.

    Sources speculate that either he has found the old IMAO.us, or that he came across or invented a different source of the same cool idea.

    Like

    1. Another launch delay, weather, may try again tomorrow.

      Musk had a lot to say during the Pre-Launch, and there was a lot of other ad copy for SpaceX, Tesla, and Starlink.

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      1. Yes. Having an “anvil” (thunderstorm) cloud too near the launch site Is Not A Good Thing.

        Maybe there’s enough fuel / oxidizer left to fill ‘er up for tomorrow..?

        “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt due to weather. Starship team is determining the next best available opportunity to fly.”

        https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1960130754714935426

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        1. They should have enough, they sounded confident on the stream.

          Apparently, the thing that is hard to replace is the water that cools the pad, and they explicitly did not use that up.

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          1. Although there’s no “official” announcement yet I’ve seen, the countdown clocks and launch time titles on SpaceX’s Web site do indicate a launch (attempt) at the same time tomorrow. So, we’ll see, once again…

            And that “water cooled steel plate” right under the rocket has the interesting design feature that once you trigger the cooling water, it doesn’t stop; essentially it runs until empty. That’s a LOT of potable water that has to be trucked in from the mainland, every single time you “fire” it.

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            1. That’s a LOT of potable water 

              Is there a reason it has to be potable? It’s not like either the rocket or its crew are going to drink it, and it’s going to be boiled anyway. Filter out the solids and go.

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              1. What do the superheated contaminants do to ….. everything? everyone?

                How hazardous is vaporized sewerage? It wont all boil. And what boils is not long enough.

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    2. Hoping they have a good launch, flight, and recovery this time. Or if they don’t, they get 100% of the data they need to make sure the next one is good.

      Like

  32. In retrospect, my job was a dream job – 35 years at the same place. Of course there was grinding routine, but almost every day brought new adventure and excitement. PhD in chemistry (specialty seldom used) but I enjoyed solving technical problem and puzzles (I would come in on weekends to run a grinding tedious set of calculations just to see if the results produced what I expected [like reading a mystery to see how it ends]) and knew something about a lot of things (coupled with imagination and a farm boy practicality). Avoided going into management like the plague. Eventually became one called to sit in on meetings where a potential client had a “hot potato” project (something we had never done before) I usually had an outline of a plan ready (unlike our rather bovine engineers) that for the most part worked. Success and a satisfied client are a big thing. Moments of quiet pride was when I was summoned to the Precincts of the Office of the Director on Mahogony Row (5 management levels up) to sit in on a meeting with a potential client and offer advice. Finally retired at 66 of my own choice. Fun times riding the Tiger.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. I learned something new this last week. Visited daughter and granddaughter. Daughter wanted to be welder but pregnancy intervened and she majored in mothering. She has a tat of Rosie the Riveter on her shoulder. I never noticed it before, but her welding torch is “warming” a sandwich of a fellow male welder who told her she “belonged in the kitchen, so make me a sammich.” I am glad I never asked her to make me a sandwich. That I remember.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. “I just realized this is where all the aspiring poets come from whose real 24/7 occupation is screaming on Twitter that capitalism has failed because no one is paying them to write poetry written entirely in Gzoffian, their invented fantasy language.”

    The Tousle-Headed Poet from A Great Divorce!

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  35. “Per The Hollywood Reporter, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and Justice League: War director Jay Olivia is now helming an animated adaptation of Citizen of the Galaxy.To be penned by Red Sonja‘sLuke Lieberman, the film will follow a young slave whose destiny will see him go on to shape the galaxy at large.”

    This sounds cool. I’m a little leery of how many liberties they’ll take with the material though.

    Like

    2. Having seen his prior two efforts, I’ll reserve judgement. They were both fairly good, but I downcheck Flashpoint Paradox because I have an inherent bias against time travel stories. They rarely deal with even 5% of the possible paradoxes.

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  36. Hmm. TLDR version for those trying to catch up with Sarah (like me, after the trip for son’s wedding) – “career” is what you must do because other people require it to keep feeding you (directly or indirectly). “Purpose” is what you must do because you require it to keep feeding your soul.

    Or so I read this as.

    Liked by 1 person

  37. The parody of a Democrat talking point would be ‘look at that fireball, such a disaster’.

    They got it down, apparently under control when it hit the water.

    Very well done.

    Though, I would have to get my hat, and put it on, to take it off in respect.

    Liked by 1 person

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