There\’s a full page article in this week\’s City Paper on the murders that occured this past weekend and the disparity in the local coverage of the events. I wrote about this on Monday, though rather incoherently, I admit. Anyway, the article in the paper, by Sarah Godfrey and Eric Wemple, covers the EXACT same thing I was/am furious about: the bloated coverage for white homicide victims and the barely-there coverage for black homicide victims.
Which means a few things:
1. It\’s not just in my imagination;
2. Other people are noticing this bullshit;
3. Other people are getting paid to notice this bullshit;
4. How do I start getting paid for having a hypervigilant mind?
In the past year the paper has started running a weekly piece on \’local not-a-bargain real estate\’ or whatnot, featuring a different property and snarky commentary about real estate sellers. Which is only something I\’ve been doing for, like, four years. If I was paranoid I would think someone was passing my storylines along to the staff!
I went to the 18th Street Border\’s today and stood staring at the Reference section for writers; it is the biggest, most bloated, most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Outside of pop-art stores and \’entertainment\’ sections of bookstores, I don\’t think I\’ve seen so much self-absorbed wanking crammed into one section. So that being said, where in the hell do I start getting a piece of this for myself? I\’m overwhelmed. I have no idea where to start.
A few years ago MW tried to get me to join a creative non-fiction writer\’s workshop, but there was a $75 fee for the priveledge of sitting around with that particular group of Capitol Hill would-be writer wankers; no thank you. I\’d been pestering a friend who has a friend that is an editor to ask a few questions for me, but that turned into a dead end. I don\’t know where to begin. It\’s 4pm and I want to go back to bed; I\’ve only been up since 10am; I think this is what is known as \’chronic fatigue.\’ Ha. Ha.
Selling my body pays well, yes, but damn, it\’s exhausting and an absolute wreck to my self-esteem, not to mention my physical health and the sexual health of others. So I fall back to my only other asset: the craft of written bullshit. \’Cept everyone always says the life of a writer is worse than that of a starving artist, and even harder to \’break through.\’ I\’ve been trying to get a Higher Education to Do Something with my life other than Write, but if I can\’t get the sleep and the pain under control, no amount of Higher Education is going to yield me any feasible career or even job.
I managed to scrape the left side of my car up on a support beam in the same parking garage that I did the right side in two years ago–woohoo!
