Multi-talented woman seeks to recover pride

I am a woman of many talents. I can wiggle my ears and sing. I can make a tube-like shape with my tongue while I write. My vacation-taking abilities are out of this world. However, none of these skills makes me necessarily employable.

So, I guess I shouldn't feel bad that tomorrow will be my first day of training of a job with the U.S. Census. It's not that the job is beneath me; I have enormous capacity to irritate people, and am completely qualified. It's just that it wasn't something I envisioned for myself. It doesn't feed my ego one little bit to have this little, temporary position as an "enumerator", even if it does pay more than my unemployment benefits.

I'm not even sure what my job will entail, since the census isn't really happening until next year. I suspect I will be seeing if there are families really living in the addresses from which the census will be expecting information. I can do that. I can walk up and down the streets and count. It will be the realization of yet another talent, and all this time I thought I hated math.

When I was laid off last year, I told myself that I didn't have to be defined by what I do for a living. It was a way I could feel better about job hunting in areas of maintenance or delivery services, I suppose. I believe that there are other areas of my life where I can express the real "me" that don't necessarily have to bring in the bucks. Employment would sustain me financially, writing and things like thumb-twiddling could sustain everything else. I decided that I would rather have (what I would have earlier considered) a menial job than to make an insulting amount at something I love to do, such as writing.

If only I was qualified to get a maintenance job! It was a rude awakening, this jobless period of mine. A completely humbling experience to see that I never acquired the experience now necessary to get a job mopping floors or emptying the trash.

Okay, the condition of my home would explain all that, but I can usually lay the blame for that on my dog and get away with it.

Friends send me scads of writing ads, where sometimes, they're paying upwards of 35-cents per word, if you become a member of their site, enter contests and mostly write "sample" pieces for which which they'll claim the rights and then not pay. Publishers know that many people will write for free these days, as is evidenced in this very blog. Nobody would pay me to write this kind of tripe now, although I have gotten a pretty penny for it in the past. Actually, upwards of 150 pennies per word for some articles. Those days might be over, unless I can re-convince Wine Enthusiast Magazine that they still need a columnist who barely can purchase a bottle at Big Lots for $4.

Oooh, and there we have it -- another good idea for a column. I'd better get to pitching the editor. If only I could remember his name. I do remember that he used to be the editor of Chocolatier Magazine, and I asked him if he got to wear a perky hat and eat sweets all day. What a job that would be! It's difficult to imagine why he left.

But meanwhile, I will drag myself in the required business casual (if they only knew what that really means to me) replete with sack lunch to the census training tomorrow and learn new skills for some pretty decent nose-counting money.

Pride or paycheck. If only it were easier to decide ...