I love this job.LOVE IT!!!
Even though I work 30-40 hours a week for about the same pay as I would from a single half-shift at McDonalds, I love it. And two years ago when I was making about that much money every month, I still loved it.
But every dime we make here at Writing About Writing comes from all of you. I've even recently turned off the trickle of ad revenue I got from Google so that this page could be ad free.
(No this isn't the once-every-month-or-two post begging for your monetary support–though if you want to stuff a couple of bucks in the "tip jar" to the left, I sure won't complain.)
However every once in a while I have to do one of the "worst" parts of this job. And I say "worst" knowing full well how this is going to sound. Because for a "worst" part, this is pretty spectacularly awesome.
I need to write thank you notes to my donors.
I hate sending off those auto replies. "Thank you for you kind donation to Writing About Writing. We truly appreciate blah blah blah. Generosity." I write each one by hand (I mean technically, it's an e-mail, but I don't use a form letter), and include personalized responses.
I want to be the kind of person who fires off a thank you note the day I get a donation. I really do. And maybe now that my writing schedule is working out a little better, I can work on getting at least a little closer to that. But with life hanging by a thread and a toddler running rings around me and two jobs to pay the parts of the bills that my "the-pay-of-one-shift-a-week-at-McDonalds" writing gig can't handle, I am usually not very good at doing anything in a timely manner that isn't either crying, blowing up, or sending men in black to my house from collections. That means I procrastinate. Then one day I have fifty thank you notes to write stretching all the way back to January, and it's time to evaluate my life choices.
So I'm still working on the big Mailbox to come (on Friday) but today–and probably part of tomorrow–needs to be dedicated to digging out the shameful backlog of people kind enough to literally send me money, whom I have not yet even thanked for doing so.
And if you're one of those people, I never stopped being appreciative. I just suck. And in the next few days, I'm going to make an effort to suck less.
Pfft. You don't suck. And I really don't mind getting thank you notes every few (or several) months. REALLY! I promise! I feel like I should respond, and I'm not good at that either... and then when I DO manage a response it's because either my pain meds have kicked in or I'm suffering from sleep deprivation. (Okay, yeah, sometimes I'm relatively "normal" but that can be even worse. Can you believe people have told me that I babble? :-) )
ReplyDelete(Do love hearing about TC, though. Such a mighty package of awesome, that one.)