cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Job offer The University of Fl0rida offered me the job before I even left campus for the interview today. We're just working out the details of the money, etc. now. I'm going to be making at least $60k, and when some other grant money kicks in after a few month probably more like $85k. It's over. My year of civil rights journalism is over. I get to do something else now. The move is going to be difficult. I need to come up with a few thousand dollars to drive down and rent a room and get situated. After a month there I'll be able to rent a house. I get to live a proper life again. The whole time I was interviewing I was slightly terrified because everything went so well. I had ideal responses to every question and got along perfectly with everyone. I understood all of the the science and was able to hold sophisticated conversations with all of these scientists in various fields about their areas of specialization. Mycology, dendrology, ecology, botany, conservation history, economics, microbiology, paleontology, invasive biology. And I knew that they would want to bring me on board, and it is terrifying because I have all of this to live up to. And it means that I have to leave Charl0ttesville. Leave my radio show and the new show that I was putting together. Leave my kids, at least at first. Christ, that is fucking terrifying. It's just me. Oh shit. It's just me. Can I do all of these things that they expect of me? Can I possibly live up to what they expect? I have to bring in grant money. I have to get national media for what these labs produce. And I'm still just me. I've hardly had to try to get national media attention for the stuff that I have done. It's always just come. I do cool shit and everyone has just showed up. Can I turn that towards a group of labs at a university that pays me to make them look good? I don't know. That is terrifying. They think that I can do it. Whereas I got off a plane a few hours ago and have consumed a certain quantity of tequila. I can manage a project for a spurt of a few months and make a book or a feature film appear. I don't know whether that translates into being able to doing useful PR for a group of labs doing pure research. I don't know. But I am about to say yes to a job offer where I am effectively promising that I can deliver a bunch of big media wins over the course of a year. And making that promise involves leaving my home and going 700 miles away where I don't know anyone at all and if I fuck up then I have nothing to fall back on. This is a whole bureaucratic world of academia in which I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. I wish that my film had sold by now and that I didn't have to do this. I wish that I had a little pile of money to live on for a year or two and that I could be putting together another film right now instead. I know how to do that. But that didn't work out. Instead, I have this opportunity to take and I cannot afford to not take it. I am kinda drunk on tequila (always a bad idea) and I think that I have to take this offer and I will have to move to Florida and be confused and lonely and do this new job. There's no other way forward for me. This is the major opportunity that I have and I've got to take it. I've got to go to Florida. Which I would have loved with Helenah. And I would have loved with Trish. But I have to do it alone. And I will land in that city without knowing a soul except for the people whom I interviewed with. I am about to step completely outside of my life to become someone without friends, without a past. Without a past. It isn't tempting, it isn't romantic. Without a past. I don't want that. I want to go home to my wife. That's all I want. But I can't go home. I have no home. My wife left me. I just want to go home. Instead I have to go 700 miles away and cross my fingers and hope that I can make home there and hope that there might be somebody who will be home. I will be a thing with no past. Just showed up, cut and fit to suit. Just showed up, abuse and break how you will, I'm just loot. I've got no past, my point is moot. 12:24 a.m. - 2018-08-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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