8-29-31 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #193 (Absence Makes the Parting Pondered)

And now, for a change of pace. Has absence made your reader-hearts grow fonder? Hmmm. Well, please just don’t forget me and this incredibly ambitious effort to reconstruct a life lived in the best possible intentions and with such optimism that the disappointments never linger. . . there’s always a bright new hope, somehow, a bright new hope that God and the fates will again smile and say with a pat on the head, “That’s nice,” like an indulgent Auntie Mame type. 

I’ve been trying to figure out a really smart next move for a survival job. While I believe that my music and writing -- my creativity -- is always going to be my vocation and life quest, living in semi rural Connecticut is not yielding me the kind of half decent white collar survival work I’d come to rely on in NYC. And the education field I’m finding more and more tedious. . . besides, it seems they only want my subbing help. While I’d be happy with a teaching assistant or para job to work days while I kept up with music and writing, I apply along with 50+ other applicants and somehow I’m left swimming in the applicant pool without a prayer.

I just don’t have enough friends in the right places here, either.

I am always striving to balance the practical along with the creative in my life. So. . . . I was absent for almost two weeks trying to figure out my next move. I thought I should go back to school. Another Masters degree, maybe? (I already hold one I’m not using, a Masters of Science in Education, Secondary English concentration.) Southern CT State has a great Information and Library Science program.  . . but no, that would be a dead end for employment and so much stress, so costly, and so many hoops to jump through. Cannot do.

With a little help from my friends, I am looking into a way more practical course of action, now. Will let you know when it’s ready. . . 

9-11-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #206 (Remembering 9/11 on the 11th Anniversary)

(The following was written last year, for East Haddam patch.com
the original patch.com article  -- below photo of me was taken around 2002)

Horror, awe, and curiosity motivated me that gorgeous late summer’s day. I can’t say it was the smartest adventure ever, but circumstances compelled me.

In 2001, I was living in downtown Manhattan and working uptown – at a media planning company in Worldwide Plaza, at 8^th Avenue and 50^th Street. When the first plane hit the World Trade Towers I was underground, riding the “E” train subway.

I didn’t know what happened until I was at my administrative assistant desk and I saw a swarm of worker bees on the other side of the cubicle farm. Whispers in fearful tones jabbered around me, then—

You know the story.

We were all sent home from work. Bridges, tunnels and subways in Manhattan were shut down, so it left walking home as the only option. Home was four miles, south. My friend, Levi, lived on 47^th and Seventh, so I tried calling on my cell phone but couldn’t get through (jammed signals). In an emergency, you crave the company of friends.

He did answer his apartment doorbell, though, shock on his face.

“I’ve got to walk home,” I said, “Or find somewhere to stay.”

“We have to go there,” murmured Levi – another writer, another glutton for unusual experience, Life full-on.

Intending just to walk with Levi until we reached my home (two neighborhoods north of the World Trade Center), I started walking south with him down the West Side Highway. I’d have been content to watch the disaster on TV at home, but no.

Looming directly in front of us, billowing gray smoke oozed from the flames of the crumbling Twin Towers.

“Unreal,” we muttered. Who could believe this was happening? The most brilliant, cloudless cobalt sky was being smoke-smudged. In my platform sandals and long work dress I wasn’t exactly dressed for hiking, but on we trudged, closer to ground zero.

In a series of zigzag maneuvers, we managed to walk to South Ferry in four hours, then come back up to where we could see the smoldering skeletons of the fallen Twin Towers up close. Gray flakes of burned papers and other debris fluttered down. . . I wrapped a bandanna around my nose and mouth, hoping to block any toxic debris.

Really, what WAS I thinking? Levi didn’t talk much while mulling over the enormity of the situation. I kept thinking of the many temp jobs I’d worked at the World Trade towers during the 1990s. . . all the times I stared out of the windows on the 101^st, 102^nd etc. floors while doing data entry and answering phones.

Finally, close to the Hudson River on the west side, rescue workers spotted us. They practically tackled and threw us onto an ancient tugboat that was waiting for people who genuinely needed rescuing.

We were shipped across the river to Jersey City; eventually found PATH trains to Penn Station in Manhattan; had an argument on the train; went our separate ways. I went home to be with a wiser friend, to cry and pray for the many murdered, innocent souls.

To this day I wonder if I’d have been one of them, in pieces of fluttering gray ash, if I’d taken that office assistant job at AIG on the 102^nd floor of WTC One. . . .

8-28-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #192 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 5)

Besides asking me to frequently update his list of many and sundry possessions for insurance company updates, Raymond Joslin had a little side project going (besides spending time on reviewing his investments -- he’d get Wells Fargo Bank statements that I’d file for him, in the filing room behind “my” desk).

He was working on his memoirs: apparently, he was seeing a psychotherapist who told him it would be good for him to reminisce about his early life and write it down. So, being an old school kind of executive (who didn’t type), he’d dictate these reminiscences and have his assistant type them up. Since his usual assistant was away, he readily dumped those microcassettes on my desk and had me transcribe for him.

Admittedly, I like to transcribe, but I couldn’t help smirking at the stuff he was saying and having memorialized. I guess it was the tone of the memoir, not the content: he sounded very first person Dickensian-cum-Horatio Alger. You know, the poor little waif who, by dint of pluck, hard work, and luck, pulls himself up by his bootstraps and makes something of himself. A sour note of resentment ran through it, though. . . maybe his parents rejected him and his grandparents raised him, maybe the people in his church didn’t give enough of a helping hand. . . I just thought some of it sounded unbecoming.

I did hope that he was going to do a LOT of editing. Or, I hoped that he could change the way he was thinking about things from his past. As Epictetus was teaching me by reading my little book of the Stoic philosopher’s quotes, daily, he points out how we’re powerless to change anything in life but our attitudes towards it and things that happen in life. . .

If that’s not invaluable advice, nothing is.

8-27-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #191 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 4)

I’m getting a little fed up reading -- and writing -- about this temp job so I’ll recount two little anecdotes about that time and then (thankfully) move on.

Because Joslin was so connected and knew so many interesting people in entertainment and in syndication, one day his lunchtime visitor was a woman who wrote the “Heloise’s Hints” column. Only, the latter-day Heloise was the daughter of the original, who wrote about all kinds of household hints back in the sixties, and was syndicated by King Features (a member of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication Group).

When I met the woman -- a tall, slender, striking looking lady in her early forties who had flowing, straight, mostly white hair -- I got up from my desk and extended my hand: “I’m your biggest fan,” I enthused.

She reacted with mock horror. “I hope not!”

In a split second, I realized she was referencing the Steven King movie, Misery, where the Kathy Bates character tells the writer she idolizes that very same thing and kidnaps him, for starters -- then it all goes downhill from there.

“Uh, okay, well, not THAT big a fan.” We both had a laugh, shook hands, and I knew that this new Heloise was a very cool person. When her mother, the original Heloise, died in 1977, daughter Klah Marchelle Heloise took on the mantle and kept the column going. Now she has a website, of course: http://www.heloise.com/index.html

I was very excited to meet Heloise, just because, I mean, here’s a person who’s kept a very useful brand going for quite some time. . . she’s successful at doing something unusual AND she seems very happy. Hooray for Heloise!

http://www.heloise.com/watch_heloise_hints.html

8-26-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #190 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 3)

My first day there, I noticed some blunt yellow No. 2 pencils in the out box. “Clarice, what do we do with these?” I asked the other assistant. Mr. Joslin was out at a meeting at the time, and I was barely on speaking terms with the old grouch, anyway. He made it known that you only spoke to him when spoken to. . . 

“I dunno,” Clarice shrugged, going back to her work, which was mostly as a Portuguese/English interpreter, as far as I could tell. She fielded a considerable volume of phonecalls from Brazil for Mr. Joslin. He had some businesses going in South America as well as his work at Hearst, as far as I could tell. . .

I took those blunt yellow No. 2 pencils from his out box to my desk and sharpened them, one by one. I then placed the sharpened pencils in his in box, awaiting a reaction.

I also put a draft of some typing I did for him along with the pencils in his in box. Later on, when he came back from the meeting, I heard him say, “Sharp!” in his office, with a happy tone to his voice.

I never knew by that monosyllabic reaction if he meant, 1. The pencils were sharp, which pleased him, or, 2. That I was sharp, for sharpening the pencils, or, 3. That I was a “sharp” temp who could type well. Beats me. . . other than that, he was truly cranky and deserved every mean wrinkle on his wizened-apple face.

8-25-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #189 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 2)

So, I was sent to the corner of 57^th and 8^th, to the ultra plush offices of Raymond Joslin, President of Hearst Cable Network. I remember meeting him and feeling both scared and full of pity. He was about 5 foot 7, probably in his sixties, but his face had so many wrinkles. . . and they weren’t happy wrinkles by a long shot. His wizened-apple face had the angriest, nastiest look to it of anybody I’d ever seen up to then. I heard a distinct “Look out!” warning in my head.

This angry older man had the largest office of anybody I’d ever worked for, consisting of a large reception area with two separate desk spaces (and an impressive 8’ X 10’ filing room behind the desk where I sat), a waiting room to the side, and finally, Joslin’s “inner sanctum,” an office that resembled one for the president of a prosperous small country.

He had plaques all over celebrating his status as a “Cable TV Pioneer.” Wa hoo. He had weekly meetings with LifeTime, ESPN, and a variety of other cable channels, who all reported to HIM.

His impressive office reflected the life of a man who had it ALL: The wood paneling/plush carpeting/leather furniture/manly book and photographs-with-famous-Republicans in his inner office. The leather-bound in and out trays on his massive desk were all that we, the two assistants, were supposed to attend to. . .

8-24-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #188 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man)

As for the typing, there were different kinds of machines I’d work on. First, for a brief few years, on a typewriter like a large, clunky, loud IBM Selectric. Then came the in-between choice, an electric typewriter with memory that they called an early “word processor. . . “ the text showed up on a small screen above the keyboard and you could backspace and erase before hitting the “print” button.

Once actual personal computers with floppy disks did the work, using MultiMate or WordPerfect, soon enough Microsoft Office Suite took over and it was MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint. I’d say that was in the mid to late ‘90’s, though.

Right around that time, one of my tempjobs took me to work for Hearst. A super conglomerate communications corporation, Hearst at the time had several successful magazines and cable television companies that ran under its legendary umbrella.

(Hearst was the company whose founder, William Randolph Hearst, the Orson Welles movie classic, “Citizen Kane,” was based on. I used to walk the halls of the building I worked in whispering, “Rosebud. . . “)

When one of the Presidents of the Cable TV operations, Raymond Joslin, needed a temp because one of his two assistants had to take a few weeks leave, I was called to fill in. I was warned from the outset, “He’s a very demanding boss -- with a very short temper.”

Optimistic to a fault, and philosophical too (this was when I started reading Epictetus, the stoic Greek philosopher, and carried a tiny book of his quotations around with me for inspiration), I took the assignment, knowing it wouldn’t be a piece of cake but probably incredibly interesting. . .