cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Little Farther and a League Up Today I was on a live video panel for the Huffingt0n P0st. It was more professional than I had expected. I did a really good job, I think. Also, a very large conservation organization asked me today to write a big article for their magazine. This is a pretty big deal. It will pay pretty well and be a lot of fun to work on. Groups like this often have magazines that reach more people (and have bigger budgets for writers) than a lot of publications that are on newsstands. My feature for the W@shington Post will run soon. I have 2 pieces in the hopper for Sl@te. Men's H3@lth wants me to write a feature. I'm building a career as a serious journalist pretty fast. The crazy thing is that I wasn't really trying to become a serious journalist. I just wanted to get out of my old desk job and write books and do neat stuff outside. I pitched a lot of things to niche magazines this past summer, but I never expected to be writing for the W@shington Post. I figure that I've just graduated a couple of steps up in the media hierarchy. I want to be two steps up from this point in six months. Six months from now, I want to be writing a feature every month for the New Y0rk Times. I want to do a feature for GQ, and for R0llings Stone. I want to be a guest on MSNBC every couple of weeks. I want XM or Sirius radio to offer me a couple of hundred thousand dollars to do a radio show. And whatever the fuck with a TV show. I'm not trying to become filthy rich. I just want to get a few deals that will let me bank enough money to buy a sustainable house with all cash and have some savings to pay the bills. By 'sustainable,' I mean a house that is off-the-grid capable and will require no monthly bills to keep it going. Enough money in the bank to pay the property taxes off of the interest, plus enough to keep a few cars working and buy groceries and internet access. That's all. I just want a durable life. A place to live, food to eat, maybe health care. This is what I'm working for. I will not take a $2 million deal and use it to put a down-payment on a $5 million house. I would take $2M and fucking retire. Meanwhile, I still don't know how I'm going to pay the rent in a few weeks given how slow Sl@te and the WP have been. But if I can just scrape through these next few months I can see that I'm just about to break through and have a lot of money coming in. I might even be able to have trash pick-up again. Go to the dentist! I don't whine about it here much, but I fucked my right shoulder up pretty badly about 8 months ago. The pain is near-constant. Some days I can't reach out to turn on a light switch. I would love to have enough money to be able to get this treated. If I could find the right doctor, maybe I could get some pain medication. Is this usually what people go through to 'make it?' I don't know. I'm so isolated. I've sacrificed so much and lost almost everything getting to this point. If I could go back and undo it all, I would. What I've lost wasn't worth it. I think I'll be broken pretty much forever. I wish that I had never tried to do any of this, but now that I'm here at least its turning into something. 11:15 p.m. - 2012-10-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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