You're Semi-Hired!

(Hire me! I can make rainbows fly out of my butt!)
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In the immortal words of the Talking Heads, I ask: "Wait... how did I get here?"

Where's here? A desk- in an office, actually. A real, live office. My first ever. When I was at Former Fashion Magazine they kept me in a storage closet which, given my aversion to people, really worked out nicely for me. Not today, though. Today I have a desk in an office with a door that (blessedly) shuts.

It's sort of like this-- as Renton told Spud, you can't try too hard, of you'll end up employed. You can't not try, or they'll know you're not trying. It was a fine line to walk, and I walked the wrong way. And ended up with a job. Sort of.



So, I guess I am employed. As Beloved has been pointing out, I've been fairly employed for a while. (Hence my lack of blogging. I felt like a Funemployed Fraud!) I have been taking any freelance I can, doing maternity fill-ins as a copy director and going to school so that I can continue towards my goal of becoming a high school English teacher.

I am employed, but-- I am kind of barely so. The new-fangled job market in advertising means that I have been hired as a perma-lancer. What's that, you ask? It's a person with all of the responsibilities, less of the perks. At the New Fashion Magazine where I am semi-employed, I have an office, but no healthcare. I filed for that from the Freelancers Union who, it turns out, are kind of crooks, just like every other insurance based entity. I have a regular gig I can depend on, but no recourse if they decide one day they don't need me. Also, I have a fairly steady paycheck, but no vacation days... so if I do decide to take a day off for, say, Thanksgiving, I won't be paid for it. Of course, the office is closed on Thanksgiving or I'd probably come in, being the cheap bitch that I am.

It's sort of crazy being back. I am thrust back into my same self-loathing, fueled by the matchsticks that ride the elevator and load up on lettuce leafs in the cafeteria at lunch. I realize my attention span in meetings has been drastically reduced by 18 months of unemployment and Maury Povich reruns. I can barely make it through a brainstorming without shouting "You are NOT the FATHER!" Yet at the same time, it comes back, like riding a bike. (I should probably mention I was hit by a car riding a bike in high school, so this isn't the best analogy, but you get the point.) In this part of my life I am responsible, and organized, and at the risk of sounding conceited, quite good at what I do, which is writing ad copy. There's an energy to it that I thrive on, and I missed that. I work hard at it and I nail it down and I deliver within deadlines-- just like I always did. It kind of makes me wonder what made me so expendable to begin with.

So that's where I stand. Do I need to change the name of my blog? You tell me, but I don't think so. I think Semi-Employed doesn't convey the fun I have being barely employed at the lowest possible level.

You'll hear a lot more out of me now, because after some time I have finally decided on the new direction for this blog. Just because I am semi-employed doesn't mean I am not a deadbeat, so we'll see where it goes, but honestly this blog was always just an outlet for me to write about what I wanted, what I saw, what was important to me, and it will continue to be the same thing. So expect lots of posts on inane things. Um, I didn't ask you to follow me, you got yourself into this shitheap yourself.