Personally, I would pay good money to see MM handling calls for QVC. And make popcorn.

BWAH. Oh yeah, baby.

I'll chip in when I get back down that way!

whee! sprog co-op!

So, naturally, we chose the one state from which all Buffistas have fled screaming.

Yeah, we didn't quite thik that one out, did we?

Hindsight.

Hindsight.

It's 20/20.

I'm thinking we should get Lasik for our foresight.

No one wants to come to Utah.

Not that I blame them.

Like a decent diner, the Eeyore tag never closes.

I'm working from home for a few hours today, or at least I will be in a few minutes now that DH and AB are out the door. And I guess I should remember that as frustrated as I am with my job right now, it's better than the last one in that I never could've worked from home, and my boss's attitude was more "get back in here, you slacker" than "do what you need to do to get healthy before you come back."

MFNlaw

I'm going to be blunt as well, but I keep getting the feeling that you place more stock in being published than you do being a writer. You're no less a writer if you self-publish than if you're signed to a multi-book deal with a mainstream imprint. You're letting an external thing define what you are rather than letting YOU define what you are.

Well...I have Issues about self-publication after having met a few too many self-published writers who couldn’t sell to a paying publisher, large or small press, because their work is crap, but they’re completely blind to that fact. And they waste their money trying to publicize the thing and can’t seem to understand why they’re not the one in a million who actually succeeds through self-publication. Now, I’m 99% sure my writing isn’t crap...but I’m sure they feel the same way, or they wouldn’t have gone that route.

As for the larger issue, well, I’m not writing just because I want to be published. If I didn’t love telling stories and care about the craft for its own sake, I never would’ve made it this far. And I don’t think it’s wrong for a writer to want to be published any more than it’s wrong for a doctor to want to practice medicine or someone with a PhD to want a professorship. The storytelling process isn’t complete without an audience, IMHO.

What I do need to work on, and know I need to work on, but struggle with because it’s so deeply ingrained in me, is the idea that I’m a failure because I don’t have the prestigious career that everybody predicted for me when I was younger, and that the one way I can redeem that and prove that I’m not a waste of a brain and an expensive education is by publishing a book.

Cashmere:

Lots of good advice has been given, Susan. I think you're making strides to cope with this issue (go free career counseling!). I also think that it's important not to look at it as an either/or situation. Working on your authority issues and/or the self-esteem issues that come from being a worker bee in combination with a job that may be a little less restrictive might do the trick. It's a matter of balance. You're never going to find the perfect job that offers you absolutely everything you want out of it. But you don't have to be miserable, either.

Yeah, that’s the main thing I’m looking for--not being miserable. I just don’t want to spend the next 30 years of my life dreading Monday-Friday the way I have for so much of the previous 15.

Jessica:

Now I work for a tiny department within a huge lumbering dinosaur of a company, and it's probably as close to the best of both worlds as I'm going to get. I still have to deal with a lot of political bullshit of working for a company this big/old/stodgy, but within my little department, I have a fair amount of autonomy and flexibility. (Which also has a lot to do with my specific job - since I'm the only one who knows how to do most of the things I'm responsible for, I get to decide how to do them.)

Well...the thing is, I thought I’d found that with my current job, and the new director has changed the atmosphere so much that it’s not the same place anymore. She wants hierarchy. She wants order. She wants dotted i's and crossed t’s and all of us marching in step with the larger organization. FWIW, I’m far from the only one who’s unhappy with the changes. Pretty much EVERYONE is unhappy, AFAICT.

the new director has changed the atmosphere so much that it’s not the same place anymore.

Ugh, I so feel your pain there. Though my department has mostly adjusted to work around her managerial style (rather than work with it, which would make us all crazy).

ION, the single-food restaurant fad has officially gone too far.

Mmm, potatoes.