An underemployed workaholic.

Let me start by saying I’m well aware that one entry a month is not the recipe for a successful blog. It’s definitely not enough to increase readership or even hold on to my existing readers. Well maybe it is, since my existing readers are mainly family members (love you guys!) and close friends (like you guys!). So for the rest of you unknowns, I offer my apologies and a promise to work harder and write for free more often.

I promise that in part because I designed new business cards for myself, and that fancy square on the back leads potential clients somewhere very important. Scan it for yourself and see. Here’s a sneak peek:

I wish I could blame a busy schedule on my lack of recent activity away from the computer. As some of you know I accepted a municipal job and assumed my freelance work would become supplemental income. As it turns out, my municipal job is supplementing my freelance work. They wouldn’t call it “freelancing” if everyone made a fortune at it. It’s a grind and the hours you spend searching for more work typically outpace the hours you spend actually working. We freelancers can trace our title to Sir Walter Scott, who first coined the expression in his novel Ivanhoe to describe unbound mercenaries who pledged their allegiances to nobility for a fee. How proud Scott, himself a writer for hire, would be to see us modern day word warriors eking out a living. Many days I might prefer to impale myself on a lance. If I could afford one, anyway.

Getting back to this city job, I was and still am excited at its potential, don’t get me wrong. However, it is definitely not what I expected. My city, like communities across our nation, is struggling to stay in the black and balance its checkbook. And like communities across our nation, it has been forced to make cuts to do so. And what, pray tell, do you think gets cut in the winter months? Park resources, park hours and of course, park payrolls. After a month my hours are fewer and farther between. There is always hope my hard work will leave a good impression on those that sign – or at least approve – the checkbooks, but “part-time” has really just become a synonym for underemployed. And what do you get when you have an underemployed workaholic? One hell of a missed opportunity for previous hiring managers who passed up the chance to interview that candidate.

But who has honestly ever met an overachiever who works in human resources?

Underemployment is something we’re simply supposed to settle for. Underemployed Americans help lower the unemployment rate, which doesn’t matter now that the election is over. And hey, at least we’re working, right? I drive 25 minutes to get to my job. For the amount of gasoline I’m buying to drive an extra hour a day to and from a very part-time job, I’d probably be just as well off being unemployed and not driving anywhere. The only difference between unemployment and underemployment, it seems, is that little “der.” Which is like “duh.” Or “doy.” Basically, we hard- and hardly-working Americans are supposed to say, “Duh, no shit having a job is better than not having a job.”

 

Driving through my city to work I laugh at that notion when I look around. Why am I stuck in traffic at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday? At 1:45 p.m. on a Thursday? These people stuck in front and behind me clearly aren’t full-time employees. I hate traffic, but I’d be content being stuck in it if it were actually rush hour and I had a salary to drive to.

So is underemployment a step in the right direction? Perhaps. Is it better than no employment? In my case, yes it is, because I like where I’m at even if I’m only there a few hours a week. Will I stay here forever?

Ask me again in the springtime.