Career suicide?

Carl, can you still write at your current stop?

If so, be selfish, find a great clip, a great piece of enterprise to write and make it sing. Use it to try to find another job as a writer. You've got to give a prospective employer evidence that just because you've been on the desk a lot that it doesn't mean you can't still write.

 

That's actually how I got my current job. I left a job, working 55-60 hours a week at a small daily (6,000 cir), because I had maxed out and could not get any more raises. I left to take a part-time gig at the state's largest daily newspaper. I worked there for 11 months and got a call from a publisher of a bigger small daily (17,000 cir) and was offered the SE job. The publisher had a subscription to the state's largest newspaper and had read some of my stuff and he wanted me to work for him.
I'd say go for it, if you have confidence in yourself and you can hold out until the right job comes along. I turned down two jobs before I took this one while working as a part-timer. I don't know if I would do it again, but it got me about $125 a week more than at the first small daily. Not having insurance for a while was hard, but I got through it. It was career suicide for me.

 

I don't like giving the impression I'm allergic to work. And it is in the upper 50s, not the lower 50s, in terms of hours. And that doesn't bother me if I'm doing something I love (writing, covering a beat) as opposed to doing those things in addition to the red tape duties performed as an SE.

 

Could you explain that to my SE? There's only three of us at a 23K. We think he maybe puts in 40. It's hard to keep up when he takes three-hour dinner breaks and tries to leave by 10:30 every night.

 

Hey Crimson Tide, I think I've worked with your SE's clone. I worked for one once who would leave after prep games kicked off on Friday night and let everyone else put the Saturday morning paper out during football season. I wonder how he kept his job, I think he was related to the publisher.

 

Oh man, never ever pass up benefits.

Take it from someone who is paying off thousands of dollars in medical bills when she didn't have insurance for just a few months.

Don't fuck with your insurance.

 

Well, this guy was under the impression that he'd be a story planner/editor/writer and he's stuck at the desk every day laying out pages. So he puts in a half-ass effort. Some days, he's in around 2, takes off at 5, shows up close to 8, out the door by 10:30 at the latest. Right now, he's on vacation for the weekend.

The ME is clueless and said he's a "hard-working son of a bitch." I kept a straight face.

 

Let me guess, a dislocated tongue, an unfortunate Nipplegate-related complication? Yeah, I know all about it -- thank God for medicare in Ontario.

Just kidding. ;D I hope all is now well health-wise.