If you want to eat, you've got to earn a bob

[sovay]

Dear internet, talk to me about jobs.

Please note that this post is not a request for money or offers of employment. The situation which I'm reviewing is the fact that my Nokia job is not sufficient income for half a household. I could afford last year's six-month apartment with adrian_turtle partly because it was a smaller place and partly because I had built up savings. It is in the nature of savings to be finite. As things stand now, we are secure only if derspatchel remains responsible for two-thirds of the rent and similar expenses, which is really not a long-term option. I had been meaning to ask for advice on this front at the beginning of the year, but the beginning of the year was rather more medical than planned—it took until this past week to feel that we were starting to stabilize again after the whole exciting bone-break experience—and now some developments have made the question particularly acute.

I have pretty much no fucking idea how to find a more than part-time job with my scattershot qualifications and physical limitations. I am aware that I am almost certainly overestimating the degree to which I am unemployable: I have two master's degrees and I'm very good with the written word, even if my resume displays almost as impressive a break after 2006 as Rob's ankle in January. I also have several chronic health issues: I fail to sleep on a regular basis: I have real reservations about any kind of work that requires me to be on my feet a lot of the time or holding down a fixed schedule. The Nokia job is great because it's work-from-home and doesn't care what hours I work so long as it's the same number every week, but it does not suffice. I have been recommended teaching and I worry about my stamina. I have been recommended editing and I don't know that my previous experience is professional enough. I'm sure there must be other options that are not retail, but I don't know where to start looking. I mean that almost literally.

And I know the economy is garbage right now, as it pretty much has been ever since I needed a job rather than a graduate student's stipend, but there must be something I haven't thought of. Hence leaving this post unlocked. I am trying to cast as wide a net of other people's opinions as possible. I will try not to bristle if you suggest things I have already thought of, or know for one reason or another will not actually work. Telling me that you would set me up for life as a writer if only you had the resources, however, is probably not very helpful to me.

(We will return to your regularly scheduled reportage of New York City sometime after I have slept and this migraine-like headache has stopped flickering at me. I am very pleased with how my portion of the reading went. It was cool to hear rinue perform and meet marlowe1 in person again now that his hair has changed color. Someone asked me to sign their copy of King David and the Spiders from Mars afterward and I had not been expecting that. There was currywurst. Definitely worth the trip.)

Comments

[weirdquark]

I would usually look here, when I didn't have a particular place in mind, and actually, a quick search (limiting to part-time) turns up a part time job at the rare books library at Harvard wanting someone to update Wikipedia pages on topics relevant to Houghton collections, which could be right up your alley. It's a three month term position, but it would get you library experience, and it looks like you can work any schedule while they're open. At Houghton!

[sovay]

a part time job at the rare books library at Harvard wanting someone to update Wikipedia pages on topics relevant to Houghton collections, which could be right up your alley.

Dammit, that job wants a fusion of derspatchel and me—I am not a registered Wikipedian in good standing or otherwise, but I'd love to work with early modern books and manuscripts! I wonder if it would be legitimate for the both of us to apply.

[weirdquark]

If derspatchel is a registered Wikipedian and would be willing to let you use his account you could ask Houghton if access to someone else's account would be sufficient or if it needs to be in your name since you're doing the job. There could be reasons that wouldn't work, and if there are applicants with Wiki accounts than they'd probably get priority, but it would be worth checking.

[selidor]

If you want any pointers on all things Wikipedia, I used to edit there extensively (only stopped because it started feeling too much like, er, my day job, ironically enough) and would be happy to walk you through things.

And getting a Wikipedia account is the work of thirty seconds, becoming one in good standing a matter of ten edits to fix punctuation. Building community recognition as a person who knows what they're doing can be done by as little as producing quality work on a single article.

[sovay]

And getting a Wikipedia account is the work of thirty seconds, becoming one in good standing a matter of ten edits to fix punctuation. Building community recognition as a person who knows what they're doing can be done by as little as producing quality work on a single article.

This is useful to know. I am afraid that by the time I have set up an account and messed around on some articles that require fixing, I'll have lost the window to apply for this particular job; but since it hadn't occurred to me that having a Wikipedia account could be a marketable skill, I am thinking I might as well try it anyway.