Music Sunday: The Looking for Work Edition

This is going to be an unusual Music Sunday, I think, because I haven't had the time to focus on music very much this week.

You see, I'm looking for work. I have been for a few months now, and so far all I've got is crickets. Part of this has to do with the fact that I'm not what you'd call a traditional professional. I'm a writer, editor, and proofreader, and while there are other things I can do, I don't have the on-paper qualifications a lot of employers think they need from their employees. I'd like to think that the fact that I am very good at the things I do would at least partly make up for that, but with the economy as it is, job-hunting is kind of a crap-shoot. Right now I'm convinced that the odds of finding a real job are worse than the odds casinos offer to gamblers.

The result of all of this is that I start to feel guilty if I'm not actually engaged in looking for work, or doing my volunteer hours at Central Valley Professionals, where I recently took a week-long seminar in job-search techniques, or doing something else to actively find work. Even though I know that I can only spend so many hours a day working on the search, I still feel guilty when I'm not either looking or thinking about looking. That translates into little time and little inclination to think about music.

Being a writer, however, means that I've also got writing projects going. I've written a little bit about those here in the past. One is a non-fiction project and the other is a novel. I don't feel quite so guilty when I'm working on those; I'm working, even if there is not an immediate pay-off for those projects. At least I'm doing something productive.

And this is where the music comes in. There aren't many songs about writing, really. But there is Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark", which is at least in part about a writing frustrated with just sitting and trying to write his book. Appropriate, I think for the week I've had, although I'm not that frustrated with my writing at the moment, as I've written well over 5,000 words this weekend so far.



Then there is this promotional video, from before music videos were a thing, for The Beatles "Paperback Writer", about the frustrations surrounding trying to get published. It is really the only other rock song I can think of that has to do with writing. Let me know if you know of others.



So, it's back to the salt mines for me, even on Sunday. One of these days, the books I'm writing will be finished - and published one way or another. At least these days there is the option of self-publishing. There's still a stigma to that, but things are getting better on that front, I think. And, maybe one day I'll actually find a job.

Not holding my breath, you understand, but the economy can't stay this crappy forever. Can it?