miss manners is out of her 40’s and may be looking at retirement at some point.
eve, i know where you are at. i’m in the same spot; i’ve been at my job for way too long and no one can see me doing anything else. of course, the things i see me doing require independent wealth.
i’m hunting hard. i’m considering temping (i’ll be able to cobra my benefits) or even taking 2 or 3 part time jobs just to get away from the company i work for. that dang regular pay check and benefits are the heaviest ball and chain.
philly does have running press. they are a nice little publishing company.
“Miss Manners? I’m your biggest fan . . . I’ve been following your column for years, and all I want to do is be your assistant . . .”
What I’d love to do is start a monthly magazine called Obit (“the magazine people are dying to get into”). Each issue would highlight the most interesting deaths of the previous month, with differen sections on show biz, literature, science, politics, sports, etc. After all, People’s tributes issues and the NY Times and Life’s year-end issues are always popular . . .
Sadly, it’s completely unworkable. Magazines make their money not from newsstand or subscribers’ sales, but from ads. Who the hell is going to advertise in Obit?
Mortuary supply companies, for one grin. Memorabilia retailers, for another.
Moreover, the industries your profiled celebs are drawn from could be approached about purchasing full-page ads to pay tribute to their fallen comrades.
AND… and… and it could be an adjunct to a profitable TV show, perhaps airing on the History Channel, whose revenues prop up the print pub.
I think this is a GREAT idea. Don’t forget a section called “They Won’t Be Missed,” featuring recently expired scrofulous cretins whose own mothers would be unlikely to mourn.
??? You leave the Maitre’d alone, he works hard enough.
I feel your pain Eve. We’re all feeling so lucky to get a paycheck that nobody in the industry is leaving to go anywhere, so no one else can get to movin’ up. More and more I feel stuck. If I didn’t need health insurance I’d be off faster than a prom dress.
As for starting your own pub, can I volunteer to be your art director? Huh, huh, please? I promise not to be temperamental unless you want me too.
Seriously, you want to talk selling power? It’s an entire year of special issues. Give it the cover of someone who died that month in history. Lucy. Elvis… save that one for a special time. Uncle Milty. Judy Garland. JFK. RFK. Black History Month.
You could, of course, consider taking a position as a worshipful fan of an actress who is famous yet insecure about her fading looks, then claw your way to the top through blackmail and subterfuge with the help of the venomous yet influential newspaper columnist, Addison DeWitt, finally ending up as a successful actress in your own right, graciously accepting the Sarah Siddons Award for excellence in the dramatic arts.
But seriously, don’t limit yourself to one industry or job description. The 21st century to market oneself is to assess your skillset and then find positions where you can use what you know. You can do copywriting, advertising, archiving, research, TV production, theatre historian. Good lord, you live in the capital of Earth, you have a wealth of options before you. If Rudy Behlmer and David J. Skal can make a living as experts on film history, you should be able to wipe the floor with them.
I was there and decided to tell them to shove it and move on. I’ve been out of work now for 9 months. It would have gotten super ugly if I had stayed. Owner wouldn’t listen and the bookkeeper was hiding money. But if I could have kept my mouth shut (doubt it was a possibility) I’d still have an income today. It wasn’t a bad one, but I was also doing three jobs and only got a check for one.
I didn’t think getting another job was going to be this hard. Please think about what you would do if you didn’t have an income for the next 9 months to a year. If you seriously have enough money set aside (plus several hundred for an emergency) and you can afford your own health insurance, then make a break. But if you don’t and aren’t sure how you’d survive now is not the time to make a major, unknown career move.
Ditto what 1ofthegulls says, Eve. Mr. Pug was laid off last August, and is still looking. He’s 51, older than we are, true, but there isn’t doodlysquat out there. It’s not a good time to hunt for a job, unless you want to join the armed forces, I guess.
Obit mag sounds great! I’m sure it would sell, as would the TV series, say half the hour on some big name, and the other half on the freshly-dead (as morbid as that sounds). Maybe put a section in the mag for historical figures whose anniversary falls in the current month. That might get ads from publishers who have full biographies of those people.
I’d be glad to work on either, even though my publishing and TV experience are non-existent. At least I can lift things (if they’re not too heavy) and put them down where I’m told.
