Debating whether to demand a 5-day work week from my shitty job instead of the 7-day schedule (plus overtime) that I've been on for three months, or just fuckin quit. Right now I feel like if my boss did give me weekends off, she'd just make up for it by giving me extra work to take home on weekends and I still wouldn't get to actually sleep.

Had a big fight with my wife about work (during which she said I was a fake leftist for accepting a bad work schedule ha ha) and my doctor says my heart rate is through the roof since she last saw me. I know I can't keep doing this but being broke was not good for my health either so lol fuck me I guess

life pro tip, never work so hard that your boss gives you a new compliment for it. I used to just get "good work" and tonight after 12 hours I got "wow, you're terrific" which is a bad choice that I made :capitalist-laugh:

I've been thinking the same thing, yeah. Another factor is that as a freelancer I normally invoice the client to get paid and at this job I'm being told "no need for an invoice, we'll track the pages you worked on and pay you", which seems like something an employer would say. Shady shit.

work bad :agony-shivering:

I just started this thing two months ago and at first it was six days a week with Sunday off. Now it's 7 days a week but the workload is unpredictable: some days there might be nothing and I'm sitting at my desk for 8 hours, and some days they make me work 10-12 hours or even ask me to stay up all night to meet a deadline. This is in the academic publishing industry and I get paid by the page, plus I'm a subcontractor (technically I don't even have a contract, just got asked by a colleague to help out and next thing I know I'm working 60 hours a week) so nobody cares what I want or need. I asked about payment for May last week and got a "I'm in touch with the client about payment".

It's wfh and I mostly find the work interesting or at least not that bad, and the pay is acceptable when I actually get it, but the inability to plan anything for my time off (even a fucking dentist appointment) is really wearing on me.

I know I should probably quit but finding full-time work has been so goddamn difficult my whole life because I'm on the spectrum and interview really badly. I feel lucky to have this job, which is probably fucked up.

My new job gave me a repetitive strain injury within the first 6 weeks, through the magic of six- and seven-day workweeks :pain:

Publishing is indeed soul-crushing no matter how you do it. Traditional publishing is probably not the way to go here, because as you observed, it's not a particularly fair system and it requires going through a lot of rejections, and even when you get accepted, you don't get to keep most of what your story earns.

Self-publishing directly on Amazon via KDP is an option, but if an agent already told her that the work needs to be edited, it probably does. The numbers you quoted sound high to me (used to be a copy-editor and I sure wasn't making that kind of money) unless her manuscript is super long, but at a minimum, it needs to be proofread, even if just by a smart nitpicky friend. Paying for a professionally-designed cover is also important, but those run from $50-200.

She should probably look in at the Indie Authors Ascending discord server because they're good at giving no-nonsense critiques and feedback: https://discord.gg/V3dBmfYmQj

I felt like adding the Disco Elysium music over this so I did: https://streamable.com/tu0qpd :tequila-sunset:

Watching Station Eleven and it really reminds me of the terrible PBS/NPR/"the art world is a meritocracy" lib that I used to be. Even after the literal apocalypse, the only artists/entertainers are people who were music professors and Shakespearean actors before, and (even more damning) kids who were raised in the group. Nepotism and the approval of institutions is the only thing that makes you a legitimate artist! Nobody just shows up from the potato fields with a song in their heart, you have to have applied for six grants in the beforetimes if you want to be creative in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic (which conveniently just goes away after eliminating all the unimportant people)

Just a total lib fantasy of what if you could do Shakespeare in the Park and make your tired-ass Rosencrantz and Guildenstern jokes and everybody HAD to come and watch because there weren't any other entertainment options. I hope there's a crew of lowbrow entertainers who wrestle and do crude Tiger King reenactments and they bully these nerds and steal their horses

I think my wife is enjoying it though so I can only complain to my online comrades, thank you for listening

had a client today who is a descendant of one of Simon Bolivar's siblings :vuvuzela-flag:

Honestly, memes. I forgot whole books that I read in undergrad, even after writing essays and passing exams. The stuff I remember is 100% because there was a funny joke about the material in class once. Shitpost your way through and turn it all into bits.

starting 2022 as I mean to go on, shidding and farding from covid diarrhea

I forced myself to stop replaying it a few months ago but I need to play it again :tequila-sunset:

Been forced for work to be around a bunch of New Age anti-vaxxers who've been pipelined into libertarian/alt-right stuff. The most miscellaneous-ass political leanings you can imagine. Sometimes they'll quote a well-known Marx line or admit that capitalism is the problem but then they're right back to posting Babylon Bee screengrabs with the crying-laughing emoji. They describe themselves as solarpunk but they also seem to think climate change is fake and they love crypto so :cat-confused:

Also one of them is a landlord who has just completed a days-long curse (literal curse) against a tenant he wanted to evict. He's eagerly awaiting results! :landlord-sus:

Tom Waits voice

I'm mendin' pajamas, bought 'em at the dollar store

yes I'm mendin' pajamas, bought 'em at that dollar store

them seams are all busted, can't afford no more

https://eartheracademy.com/do-the-experiment-are-you-magnetized/ this old Magneto dude is ripped, damn

it my birthday :party-cat:

yeah start there, go back later and cross them all off your to-watch list once you're minted as a True Fan

Feeling blessed that my weed arrived on time from flooded B.C., grey market mail-order dispensaries are the only :kkkanada: culture

(also good mega topic, one of my friends got to meet Dan Berrigan before he died and I was jealous)

The generations of today refuse to learn from the "I can haz cheezburger" memetic mistakes of their elders.

I was really struck by that one too, such a :sicko-wistful: mood. The guy would've made a great hexbear poster, rip