Offer on the Table

Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.21.90
Current Song - Barefoot on the Beach (Michael Franks)

Ever since leaving Sauk Valley Media eight years ago, I have been waiting for that journalism offer to pounce on.

I've heard of many writing openings over this time: LaSalle had a couple, BCR had a couple, QC Times had a couple, and both DeKalb and the Northwest Herald had a couple. In all but one instance, I was unable to find it in me to put together a resume/portfolio because of the high cost of relocation. Simply put, I was not ready to move away and live somewhere on my own.

I didn't know how much rent, water, electric, cable, gas, and phone was all going to add up to over the course of a single month. And whether I would be able to keep up with payments. I never really know a rough figure.

Until an offer was made to me recently.

The living quarters is a small house in the neighborhood that I live in. Probably more living space than I need, but the inside is predominantly white (plants and pictures can fix that). Combined expenses outside of Cable would add up to $700/month.

I make $9/hour at Shell. So let's do the math:

Actual money per hour (after taxes) would be 9 x 0.80 = $7.20/hour.
Hours needed to work/month in order to pay for it would be 700/7.2 = ~ 97.25 (divided by 4 = 24.50).

Basically, I would need to set aside a whole $175/week just for living quarters alone.

My average hours/week for the fall and winter I predict will fall at around 28. (28 x 7.2 = ~200). This would leave me with around $25 in money per month for everything else (groceries, gas, website stuff, Internet, cell phone, personal).

I would literally have to cut everything down to where there's no bone left in order to move in without changing where and when I work. I don't know if the Tightwad Gazette can help me on this one. This stage of frugalness may be permanently damaging to my social life - or even destroy it.

Unless some freak absense or vacation happens at work, I don't see myself getting anything over 30/week. What would help is if I picked up just a single shift elsewhere in the company (amounting to another $50 in my pocket/week), but even this occurance is becoming more rare.

I would almost have to man up and find a full-time job during the daytime, preferrably something from 6-2. This would give me some break time before working the nights at Shell or driving to a sports event. But this would literally give me ZERO outside time, and just 3 hours of sleep a night.

My reluctance on finding a second job of this nature is the worry of not being physically able to keep up. The last 6-2 job I had was stacking boxes at Crest. After the half-hour drive from Ashton, I would immediately lay on my bed for five hours because I was so sore afterward. This can't happen for a two-job arrangement.

Bottom line:  My stamina sucks!

Most of it is the physical wreck that I am in. Part of it is the lack of desire to do such work, as it isn't the kind of work that I enjoy doing. (The kind of work that I enjoy doing is covering high school sporting events).

I hate drinking coffee, as it is too hot and I fear of becoming one of those morning divas. 5-Hour Energy is only good for 5 hours.

I don't want to overwork myself and get a heart attack. Yes, you can get those at 26 years of age. But at the same time, I need to survive.

Survive, and still be able to accomplish my dreams.

If I find myself willing to take on this challenge, hopefully I can find myself able to keep it up in a different set of living quarters far, far away. Perhaps I can actually move away and reside somewhere - the barrier that's preventing me from taking a writing job.

Speaking of the sports journalism stuff, this year I'm working on bulking up my bag of magic tricks in the form of oddball features, columns and the like. I think I have gamers down pat, except for the clock race against deadline. Once I stuff my repitoire with the bag of tricks, that's the lone writing thing that I need to work on. Problem is, I don't have the proper equipment (laptop) to perform this. With my website, I have always had the luxury of taking all night to write a story in time for a morning reader.

The only time I had a laptop while covering a game was this year's Class 4A state football final between Richmond-Burton and Rochester. I'd like to say I did pretty well with real-time writing during that game (in my opinion), but I haven't done this often enough.

Then there's designing the pages of the newspaper. Most newspapers use InDesign, which co$t$. Plus, I just don't know what to design with it outside of newspaper pages. It's one of those things that apparently I need to have, but have no use for personally.

Everything depends on whether I can ride this storm out with this rental offer.