Just got an "inspirational message" from the woman who owns the site where I do my chocolate writing. One of the editor/writers there just moved on to greener pastures. She makes more from her freelance writing in a month than I've ever made in a year of doing pretty much anything.
It's not the money. I like being broke. It's very freeing. It's the one thing no one can take away from me.
No, what sinks me is the fact that what I'm doing now with SHM is the first job I've ever had that a high school student couldn't do just as well as I could, if not better. I've worked behind the counter and I've nannied and I've done back-breaking, heart-breaking work with multiply-handicapped children. That's it. That's pretty pathetic, when you think about how I used to ace those IQ tests.
As hard as I try to remind myself that the world's idea of success has never been my own, still sometimes it's hard not to feel like a loser.
But then I think about the freedoms I have, and the traps I haven't let myself fall into, be they material or spiritual. And I realize that I'm not failing; I'm refusing to succeed on anyone's terms but my own.
And looking at where it's led me, I think that's not such a bad philosophy after all.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
I Has a Wishlist...Nooo they be stealin' my Wishlist
(My son suggested this caption. I think he was trying to cheer me up. I also think, given what I'm writing about, that it's ironic to have a caption to which I can't find any author to credit. I may be able to narrow down the pool of candidates to no more than a couple of billion by making the possibly unwarranted assumption that whoever came up with the phrase was probably -- and I say this with all due respect -- a guy. If you have no earthly idea what this caption is about, please visit www.ihasabucket.com)
Thanks, first and loudest, to everyone who wrote such kind things in response to my last posting -- and to everyone who didn't drop a note here, but instead quietly went home and wrote about the wish list saga there. (Home Education Magazine, to whom I've sold a few articles and whose faith in my writing was a large part in my having the confidence to start my own magazine, blogged most indignantly on my behalf, which I greatly appreciate.)
I can't get past a lingering sense of ickiness about the whole incident, so I'm just going to quickly sum up what's happened in relation to the list since my last posting and then get on to happier subjects, such as the fact that issue #2 of Secular Homeschooling Magazine has finally come home from the printers and is available for sale.
I went ahead and contacted the server of the people who posted the list. They worked quickly, and within about a day I received an email from the man I'd spoken to on the phone. He wanted me to please get in touch with his server and assure them that the list was posted with my permission.
I told him that I could assure them of no such thing, as it wasn't true. He had posted the list without asking or notifying me; I had requested that he modify his posting, and he had failed to do so.
He would now be happy to do exactly that -- or to pull the list, if that was what I wanted.
You know what bugs me? When someone won't do something just because you ask them nicely; and then, when you legally require them to, they say they'd be "happy" to do it if that's what you'd really like. "Happy to do it" implies that both the choice and the idea are theirs.
That bugs me.
I had a choice. It's possible that it would have been the best business decision to have them trim and link, as I'd originally requested.
I hated that idea now. At this point, it would imply (in my mind) that we were in some kind of happy agreement, some kind of amiable business relationship.
The fact is, I had gotten so sick of seeing their blog's name attached to my writing that even if it meant throwing away publicity, I didn't want anything to do with them.
So I had them take it down.
Then I Googled the woman whose name had been on the wish list on that site. Their defense for that had been that they never said she wrote the list; they said right under her name that they'd found it in a magazine.
Listen. If you have the title for a piece of writing, and right under that you write, "By H--- R----," that looks an awful lot like good old H.R. wrote the danged thing.
I'm not the only person who thought so, either. Several blogs had the list posted with her name credited as author.
Two people I contacted about their blogs being in error on this point stick out in my memory. One was a guy whose contact information I couldn't find heads or tails of, so I just posted a comment explaining the situation and asking him to please correct his posting. Several days later, when he hadn't, I posted another comment. I told him that I'd had a lot of trouble with the people he was crediting, and that it had been really unpleasant for me to take legal measures, but that was ultimately what it had come down to.
I checked his site not an hour later and the whole page was gone. Not just my posting, but everything.
That was weird to me. I felt like the Enola Gay of the Internet.
The second person who stays in my memory was very pleasant to deal with. Her name is Lisa Crews, and not only did she write a profuse apology, but she actually contacted everyone she knew who knew about the list or had it posted and let them know about the authorship-credit issues.
Kind of gives you hope, doesn't it?
And now, if you'll excuse me, someone just walked in the door with chocolate for me.
Thanks, first and loudest, to everyone who wrote such kind things in response to my last posting -- and to everyone who didn't drop a note here, but instead quietly went home and wrote about the wish list saga there. (Home Education Magazine, to whom I've sold a few articles and whose faith in my writing was a large part in my having the confidence to start my own magazine, blogged most indignantly on my behalf, which I greatly appreciate.)
I can't get past a lingering sense of ickiness about the whole incident, so I'm just going to quickly sum up what's happened in relation to the list since my last posting and then get on to happier subjects, such as the fact that issue #2 of Secular Homeschooling Magazine has finally come home from the printers and is available for sale.
I went ahead and contacted the server of the people who posted the list. They worked quickly, and within about a day I received an email from the man I'd spoken to on the phone. He wanted me to please get in touch with his server and assure them that the list was posted with my permission.
I told him that I could assure them of no such thing, as it wasn't true. He had posted the list without asking or notifying me; I had requested that he modify his posting, and he had failed to do so.
He would now be happy to do exactly that -- or to pull the list, if that was what I wanted.
You know what bugs me? When someone won't do something just because you ask them nicely; and then, when you legally require them to, they say they'd be "happy" to do it if that's what you'd really like. "Happy to do it" implies that both the choice and the idea are theirs.
That bugs me.
I had a choice. It's possible that it would have been the best business decision to have them trim and link, as I'd originally requested.
I hated that idea now. At this point, it would imply (in my mind) that we were in some kind of happy agreement, some kind of amiable business relationship.
The fact is, I had gotten so sick of seeing their blog's name attached to my writing that even if it meant throwing away publicity, I didn't want anything to do with them.
So I had them take it down.
Then I Googled the woman whose name had been on the wish list on that site. Their defense for that had been that they never said she wrote the list; they said right under her name that they'd found it in a magazine.
Listen. If you have the title for a piece of writing, and right under that you write, "By H--- R----," that looks an awful lot like good old H.R. wrote the danged thing.
I'm not the only person who thought so, either. Several blogs had the list posted with her name credited as author.
Two people I contacted about their blogs being in error on this point stick out in my memory. One was a guy whose contact information I couldn't find heads or tails of, so I just posted a comment explaining the situation and asking him to please correct his posting. Several days later, when he hadn't, I posted another comment. I told him that I'd had a lot of trouble with the people he was crediting, and that it had been really unpleasant for me to take legal measures, but that was ultimately what it had come down to.
I checked his site not an hour later and the whole page was gone. Not just my posting, but everything.
That was weird to me. I felt like the Enola Gay of the Internet.
The second person who stays in my memory was very pleasant to deal with. Her name is Lisa Crews, and not only did she write a profuse apology, but she actually contacted everyone she knew who knew about the list or had it posted and let them know about the authorship-credit issues.
Kind of gives you hope, doesn't it?
And now, if you'll excuse me, someone just walked in the door with chocolate for me.
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