Your Humble Narrator on the job in 2015. …
I’ve done a number of questionable things for money, but the only one with any staying power was journalism.
Earning power? Well … not so much. Especially after I left the newspaper to hang out my own shingle back in 1991.
Still, like crucifixion, it gets you out in the open air. Here’s your rock, there’s your hill, what’s your hurry?
I finally left that rock at the bottom of the hill about this time last year, and I can’t say I miss rolling it. Both rock and hill had shrunk over the years. But so had the pay. And the people who owned the hill at any given moment still seemed to think they were doing you a favor by letting you roll that rock.
“Well rolled indeed!” they’d exclaim as you reached the summit, gasping for air. “Sign here. And here. And here. And here. Yes, payment 30 days after publication as specified in the contract. Did we mention we’ve rewritten the contract? No? Well, we have, in Cretan Linear B this time, and I’m afraid we can’t cut you a check until you’ve scrawled your X on that old bottom line.
“Oh, dear, rock’s rolled down the bloody hill again. Be a dear and fetch it, won’t you? And do have your attorney or shaman or whomever look over that contract. Ta.”
Lacking professional support I eyeballed that contract myself and came away thinking the rock looked pretty good right where it was. It still does.
Doesn’t mean I’ve quit rolling rocks altogether, of course.
… and off it, as 2022 limps to a long-overdue finale.
Many years ago, between paying trips up and down the hill, I acquired my own tiny mound on the Innertubes and in my spare time nudged the odd pebble up its gentle slope. Strictly for giggles, mind you; if I were to charge admission it would feel like work.
I think I started blogging on AOL in the mid- to late Nineties; for sure I was doing my own self-hosted thing on a succession of small-time ISPs by 1999. The Wayback Machine has a capture from December 2000 that shows a visitor counter which started tallying the rubes a year earlier.
So, yeah. I’ve been at it for a few years, and I’m not giving it up. Not this year, and not next, Dog willing and the crick don’t rise. The bells and whistles come and go — the cartoons, the videos, the podcasting — but the blogging remains.
Who knows? It may just be The Next Big Thing.
But even if it isn’t, my thanks to all of yis who have gathered upon the hill — and who keep gathering, against your better judgment — to watch Your Humble Narrator perform his one-man, dinner-theater production of “Bowling with Sisyphus.”
I know, it’s only rock ’n’ roll. But I like it.
Mad Blog Media 