Expertise, Or Not

The past few days have been hard. Reminds me of once when I was really, really sick and opened a bottle of cranberry juice only to find, "You are not a winner," imprinted on the inside of the bottle cap. I burst into tears and took to my bed.

Observations from Craigslist:

• I appreciate job notices that make it clear this silver-haired white woman need not apply: Women and men of color, bilingual candidates, and first-generation college students encouraged to apply.
• It is sometimes a good thing to not be qualified: Do you suffer from bipolar disorder/schizophrenia/depression?
• If only I didn't live in Oakland and was not such a scaredy cat: Many pleas for drivers from Uber and Lyft, the new entrants into alternative urban transportation. I know someone who recently used the former to get around Seattle and found it to be the way to go.
• I'm running into some that I just can't figure out what qualifications are hidden in the job description: native american proofreader. On further investigation, the poster was not looking to recreate the Navajo Code Talkers. 
• Finding out what knowledge and abilities I don't have: Expert knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style (what's wrong with the global standard of the AP Stylebook, anyway?), Adobe Creative Suite (at work, first we had to go with Corel Ventura, much more publishing capability than we needed to produce four- to eight-page fact sheets, then we all got trained in the aforementioned Adobe Creative Suite only to then find that there was no money to buy the licenses).

Somehow, I stumbled across Elance, What Wikipedia describes as, "... an online staffing platform." (So glad that the AP Stylemavens finally consented to "online" and "website". Much faster to type than "on-line" and "Web site" as it originally ordained. I signed up, worked a bit on my Elance profile, partially populated by my LinkedIn profile, then took a number of the imbedded expertise tests.

It turned out that I scored barely proficient at all the stuff I fancied myself to be quite the expert. Okay, I had mononucleosis when I should have learned the terms for grammar (what the hell is a predicate, anyway, and why should I care?). I am also way behind on the current jargon for everything. Who knew that a journalism "deck" is a subhead? I figured it was a couple of PowerPoint slides breaking up the text, infographically. 

Bring back the second space after a period and a colon, gonzo journalism, and the Oxford comma.

I need a nap.