Cold Foggy Sunday

We're not going to let that stop us, though! Us being me. 

I'm not great at reading directions before I dive into something. Or testing the water, for that matter. On an EPA-paid trip to Hawaii to facilitate and lecture that state's environmental protection agency employees on risk communication, I found myself at the beach with other instructors. My favorite co-instructor, now owner of San Francisco's Pet Camp, and I decide to try out snorkeling. I donned the mask and snorkel, then dove in to the chest high water. Arising coughing up water, I turned to see Virginia, carefully submerging only her face to take measure of the activity and plan her approach to it. Another instructor, observing from the beach, opined that this one simple act spoke tomes about our respective personalities. She didn't say, "... spoke tomes...." She's an engineer, you see, so whatever she actually said was totally literal.

I've been getting email alerts from the freelancing website Elance. I submitted a couple of proposals, having no idea what I was doing. Yesterday, I took the time to go through the tutorial. Interesting and informative, and left me feeling like a very small fish in a very large pond. Enough of that! Followed by meditation/nap outside.

Despite the dankness of the morning, I performed the ritual of going through job listings that had come through email. I found a couple that I've tabbed to get back to later today or, more likely, tomorrow. Painting the bathroom looms large on today's agenda.

Niece Nat informed me that she applied for a couple of jobs in Oregon this week. I'm glad for her. As you can tell, her Tempe, Ariz., experience is less than satisfying. She also made a "zonie" friend with whom she was hanging out watching an awful documentary about eels. "Zonie" as in Arizona inhabitant, although Nat noted, "But he's not a native, praise be." 

Loved that kid since the very beginning.

My First Proposal

That would be freelance writing proposal, just to set all you clever, if somewhat dirty-minded people straight right off the bat.

 *** DISTRACTION ALERT! ***

From whence came that particular idiom? I figured that it was from baseball but had to find out. Wikipedia comes through for me again with its entry for, "Glossary of English-language idioms derived from baseball." Fifteen, count them, 15 mouse wheel scrolls of American literal and metaphorical baseball references. Including, for you aforementioned lovers of sexual innuendo, "In interpersonal relations, an individual who can't get to first base with another person is unable to achieve some initial goal or to establish a relationship. A kiss might be first base in a romantic relationship." Mercifully, neither Wikipedia declines to define either second or third base in similar fashion. 

Somehow, in some previous yarn ball unwinding distraction, I came upon a website called Elance that connects clients to freelance writers. I put together a profile and filled in the other recommended information, including signing up for a daily email containing Latest Job Recommendations For You. Every time I see that subject line, I hear the end of an, "As Only Seen on TV," ad - "But wait! There's more! Order now and you get two of these probably worthless devices...."

Clearly, focusing is an issue for me this morning. So. Back to Elance. I rapidly developed for myself more filters; lenses, if you will, through which to distinguish what scares me and what does not. For instance, working for someone on a distant shore, whose cultural values I know nothing about, appeals to me not at all. Nope. No Nigerian princes for me.

I found a job yesterday that appealed to me. Blog writing. I kept the tab open for 24 hours, as I often do for potential jobs, to let my reptile brain process the possibility. This morning, I went for it.

The site has you make a proposal. Slightly intimidating to a life-long bureaucrat, even one who has many friends in consulting. So it took me a couple of hours to construct what I'm guessing a viable proposal looks like. So satisfying to hit, "Submit."

Now it is time to stop thinking about fixing the bathroom wall and do something. It is going to be too hot to play outside, anyway, much as Merlin enjoyed watching his Shorter Mama and me Sawzall pruned branches into green recycling bin friendly lengths.

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.