"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
I really need to get a job. Never mind paying the bills, keeping my ass off the streets, and being able to go out once in a while. I need a job so I have something to talk about. I started writing this week’s column, got three-quarters of the way through it when it started to seem familiar. I checked the Monkey House archives and found out I’d written almost the exact same column almost exactly a year ago, only that time I had a point. Screw the more practical reasons for having a job. I’m nothing if I don’t have any new stories to tell. I’m like a grilled cheese sandwich that’s missing the cheese. Without that it’s just plain toast. And plain toast is pretty boring.
Down and Out This is the longest I’ve ever been unemployed. There were long stretches in college, but my classload hardly made it feel like unemployment. The only time prior to this that I spent a significant period out of work was about six months before I moved here. The call center I had been at for months finally realized that they didn’t need someone to answer that one call a week they got in the middle of the night. So I got the boot and spent a couple months living off the meager unemployment I got.
But just as that third month was starting I became fidgety. I was hanging around with a friend of mine who was also unemployed. However, he had the luxury of living at home and not having any debt. For him it wasn’t any big deal. It was like a long summer vacation. But for me I started getting a twitch to get off my ass and actually do something with my day other than fuck around. The fact that the unemployment wasn’t nearly enough to cover my bills didn’t hurt as incentive either.
Three years later I guess I forgot how much being unemployed sucks. It makes me wonder if some people don’t just have jobs so they having something to do with their day. At this point I can’t image what rich people who sit on their asses all the time do to keep themselves from going stir crazy. It probably has something to do with a bin of money and swimming around in cash. Not that I wouldn’t like the opportunity to try that lifestyle out, but right now contributing nothing to the world is making me feel like nothing.
I think, after having this experience, even if the book situation works out, that I’ll still maintain some kind of day job, even if it’s only part-time. The first month after I quit my job I managed to bang out half a book and only wrote for three or four hours a day. With such a small amount of time spent on writing I don’t see why a regular job would get in the way. And any kind of workplace is always a good source for inspiration. Sitting alone in my apartment the only thing to inspire me is television. And with all the ‘reality’ shit that’s on there now, I’m finding it a little hard to come up with new ideas. Certainly bitching about how wrong it is to show people eating horse rectum on television doesn’t make for good chatter over a couple Heinekens on a Saturday night.
And there’s another way that having a job helps my writing beyond just inspiration. Being forced to drag myself into the city every day helps to regiment me. Without a set schedule my ability to do anything falls all to hell. I can keep the ball rolling for a little while, but eventually it grinds to a halt. As I said, in the first month of unemployment I wrote half a book. In the following two and a half months I’ve maybe written a fifth of another. Part of that is the lack of motivation brought on by the calamity of my editor being fired. But another good chunk of that is because I don’t have a regular schedule.
Job Search So now I’ve begun looking for a job. Prior to the New Year I made a few half-assed attempts to find employment. Someone at a party said that nobody hires people in the last two weeks of the year. That must be true, because it was slim picking on all the job boards and classifieds I looked through. With the start of 2003 that has changed a little, but not much. I told myself that once the New Year started I would really put some effort into finding a job. But with this economy it’s been pretty rough. On top of that, Watts and other former co-workers from Ballantine have suddenly started sending me a steady stream of proofreading work to do. So I’m limited by how much time I can be out pounding the pavement (not that anyone really does that anymore) because I’m getting paid to sit at home and read the novelization of the upcoming Hulk movie.
When I do look for a job, so far I’ve been sticking with my experience, publishing. Ideally I’d like to get into Editorial, which would mean starting as an Editorial Assistant. This would probably involve a bit of a drop in pay from my last job, as Assistant is basically the bottom of the ladder. But I tell myself that with the proofreading jobs to augment my income I can handle the dip. Of course, if a nice book deal were to come along it wouldn’t hurt matters. But now I’m at the point where even a good book deal would just go to filling in the hole I’ve dug for myself these last three months.
One problem that I’m worried about when applying for an Editorial Assistant position is that my resume makes me look overqualified, which is far from the case. There are a lot of nice titles on the list, but if anyone asked what I really did, I’d tell them I took up space at several companies. I have this keen knack for finding jobs that sound good, but don’t actually require any work. So, in that respect, my resume works against me when looking for an entry-level position. It’s a tricky balance making it look like I’m competent but not too experienced.
On the job boards I’ve found a few open positions, but I tend to find them a day after they’ve been posted. That means that by the time they get my resume they’ve probably already received a few hundred others. The early bird catches the worm and all that.
One spot I thought I’d be perfect for was as the Assistant to the Editor-In-Chief of a new magazine called Radar. Beyond the usual list of duties for a job like that, they were looking for someone who could write and knew a lot about pop culture. So that’s, ya know, basically a couple hundred thousand twenty-to-thirty something males in the New York area. Needless to say, I got a polite e-mail telling me that their decision was tough but they went with someone else.
The other day my friend Moby, who is employed but seeking other opportunities, sent me a link to an Editorial Assistant position at Marvel. I almost laughed. From what I’ve heard, any time Marvel posts a job listing for a position like that it’s already been filled by someone with connections inside the company. Listing it is basically just a PR gimmick, showing the world that Marvel is ‘always looking for new people’, or whatever. I’d rather not waste my time replying to a stunt. Besides the fact that I’ve heard from more than a few former Marvel employees and let’s just say I’m not all that keen on walking into a powder keg.
Watts has her ear to the grapevine and has heard about a couple possible positions. The problem is that the jobs she’s told me about are in Production, which isn’t really what I want to do, and only part-time, which isn’t financially viable given my present residence in the credit dog house. Still, she’s my mole inside the publishing industry and has far more connections than I do. I wouldn’t be surprised if my return to publishing has something to do with a tidbit of info she heard.
So I’m trying. But you can have the best bait in the world and it don’t matter if there are no fish in the stream. I know that eventually something will come up, I just hope it’s soon. At this point I’m even contemplating going back into the service industry, although not as a waiter. From experience I know that I’m not the kind of waiter people want. They seem to want a chuckling idiot with a big toothy grin to entertain them. My style was always to be polite, accurate, and deliver the food in a timely fashion. Sort of the no-frills approach to table waiting. That’s how I like my waiters to be and so that’s how I tried to be. But, as I realized long ago, everybody else is happier when they’re living under the delusion that the guy serving their food is actually happy to be doing it instead of something more meaningful with his life.
But there is one form of service where having an attitude can actually work for you. No, not prostitution (though I wouldn’t rule it out right now). Bartending. I honestly think I’d be pretty good at pulling off that bartender mystique. And I’m well organized and work great under stress. Only problem is, I can’t mix a drink to save my life. I only drink beer and can’t stand the taste of hard liquor, so I never learned what’s in what. I could get Watts to teach me, since she spent years mixing drinks in New York bars, or I could find out what bar Mr. Jones apprenticed at and try something like that. But the problem is that all those things take time and I need a job right now. It might take me months to become a good enough bartender to even think about applying somewhere in the city. And then I imagine I’d have to pay my dues by working the dead lunch shifts for a while. So bartending isn’t exactly the best option I’ve got.
And so my search continues. I don’t really feel too much like a failure trying to get back into the workforce. There is a certain amount of pride I have to swallow, but it still beats living on the streets. And, if anything, proofreading shitty books only gives me hope that someday mine will find its way into print as well. But when it does, maybe next time I won’t be so quick to dump my day job.
From The Money House a/k/a Simon Good with his hands
The Random: When I say ‘shitty books’, I don’t mean the Hulk novelization. Peter David is a fine writer and his wife, who works at Del Rey, is a nice person. And if she’d just decide to stay home and take care of her newborn child instead of returning to work, then I could have her job. And everybody would be happy.
