It's 50 degrees and sunny today and seems positively summery after last week's wintry winds.

Although I didn't distinguish myself in the matter of getting out of bed this morning (I hit the snooze button six times), once I finally got to the office, I plunged right in and started getting things crossed off my list. Now I'm just exhausted from the effort of all that productivity, so I guess that means it's time to blog!

I dunno, though. If I've sworn to stop complaining about my job/employer, I haven't taken public transportation in the last couple of days and everyone's tired of hearing about that anyhow, and I'm not getting out much in the evenings, what does that leave me to blog about? Not much, I'm afraid.

Counting on my ink-stained little fingers, I find that I'm 80% done with my holiday shopping. Some evening this week, I need to finish my cards, writing notes inside and addressing envelopes.

Why is it that the effort of making the cards seems like less work than thinking of a personal note to write inside? I love the people I send cards to. I like talking to all of them. I'm chatty by nature. Why, then, are holiday cards such work for me? (Possibly because I'm not allowed to talk about myself?)

The R.C.'s career counselor has informed her that she (the CC) thinks that she (the R.C.) has a "gift" for writing and should consider something related, career-wise. Without in any way diminishing the R.C.'s talent, let me offer the thought that such suggestions make me tired. Many people have a talent for writing but that isn't, in our society, a path to gainful employment. Nor is the ability to piffle on about the minutiae of one's life necessarily a meaningful skill to exhibit to someone interested in hiring a copy-writer or a research assistant or even a newsletter editor.

As the R.C. herself has pointed out, the world already has one Dave Barry and that pretty much fills the need for people who want to read about the insanity of the minutiae of life. Those who like the same with a corporate bent can read Dilbert and get the same, with pictures.

When I was last job-hunting, I found several people eager to hire "bloggers" to add content to their sites/newsletters/whatever. On the average, these people were offering around $200/month for an unspecified number of posts daily. At a conservative estimate, you'd have to sign up 20 or 30 such accounts to make a half-decent living blogging that way.

Other than that, what are the options for "writer" in our society?

If you have an inclination and the required knowledge, you can pick a field (cooking, crocheting, gardening, auto repair, travel, whatever) and write magazine articles. If you don't starve to death first, you might make a name for yourself and find yourself eking out a precarious living selling piece-work that way. (Hint for those of you so-inclined. Start by becoming a regular contributor to the "letters to the editor" page(s). Get your name known before you start trying to submit something for payment.) (A degree or years or work experience in whatever your field is will help a lot.) (And don't quit your day job.)

Once I had a job where part of what I was required to do was write. I wrote sales scripts, in fact. Product descriptions for a catalogue and entire sales presentations for the sale people to use, or pick-and-choose from, for three new product lines each year. I'm not lying--it was fun, but what eventually brought me down in that job was the difficulty I had getting pricing sheets done accurately. I was one of three people in the building able to write a decent sales script. There were twelve people in the building dedicated to punching numbers, and yet my "writing" skills were considered less important than hiring yet another person who could add, even though adding was not what I was hired for.

They say, "everyone has one novel in them." That's a dirty lie, if you mean a novel that anyone would want to read. To people who can't do it, writing looks easy. It's just not valued.

Nevertheless. I support the R.C.'s quest for a new career path, and I'll support her no matter where it takes her. If she decides to strike out as a writer, more power to her.

Mostly, and I apologize for dragging her into the conversation, I just didn't have anything to say today.