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I'm back in the van for now, so I'm not updating my profile yet, but I returned from Temple this afternoon after a week in the room I'll be renting.

To call this a stepping stone to the idea of the eventual commune hits the nail on the head. It's a multigenerational home where if something needs to be done, people just do it. And cook.

In fact, we were talking about placement for planned raised beds this afternoon (against the fence, but which part?) after the grandmother mentioned wanting to get a really nice picnic table.

I'm aware that I'm going to start tying myself into knots if I don't set the stage with characters:

• R - the woman I met through the burner community with whom I started interacting more because she commissioned me to write the copy for a GoFundMe for a queer activist who'd suffered a stroke and two brain hemorrhages. She's an elder, I suppose, in the Temple Pride organization.

• S - her husband. Generally speaking, when you meet someone, you expect roughly the same intellectual level, and R is not dumb by any stretch (she just has different interests and activities), but not ... oh, shit, how did one cigarette turn into an hour and a half covering current monetary policy, philosophy and the Late Bronze Age Collapse? He is an anarchist, which he describes by two tenets: Don't tell me what to do, and don't hurt anyone. He's cool with anyone who can actually live by that. He's also really funny and pulls all sort of obscure references that I generally get. We watch a lot of the same YouTube channels.

• K - R's mom. She's the cool grandma who tiptoes up to the line of swearing but never crosses it, even when she spills a full cup of coffee into a Rubbermaid tote with a vented lid (the tote was full of empty coffee cans upon inspection, and we were all racing to make the obvious "guess it wanted to go home" joke first).

• O and N - R and S' kids. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to say anything about them.

The plan was this: R and S, having hosted me a couple of times when I was working on Mike's story, had a room available they'd be willing to rent to me. I suggested I Lyft up and back and spend a week there so everyone could test the waters before we jump into something more permanent.

It's not that there were any red flags; I've just been living alone since 2019 and haven't had kids in my living space since 2016, so I wanted as much for me as for them to know this would work as a housemate situation where the only data points were "let's entertain a friend for the weekend."

The first couple of days, I was honestly spent. It took until day three for me to have the energy to take a shower. After months of warmer-than-average temperatures, my body just said "lie down and shut up" when faced with adequate climate control.

I spent most of the time in my room, with a somewhat erratic sleep schedule. I'd come downstairs from time to time, and engage if one or both were there (or when it was just K), but my energy level just wasn't there.

And so it was Day 4 that when I walked into the garage where S was smoking a cigarette that he said, "Hey, I want to talk with you" in a friendly tone.

"I've noticed you don't come out of your room much. Are you uncomfortable?"

"Nah, I just ... well, you know, you have your life, your family ... I don't want to be in the way. I've never gone from 'hey, we're friends' to 'I'm trialling being your tenant.'"

He laughed.

"Dude. If we need to talk about something and don't want you around, we're not going to do it in the kitchen. Your presence is not intrusive."

Things softened tremendously from here. I think S told R that I was worried about overstepping, because she starting texting me when she was making food so I could join them.

Yesterday, I went to visit in the garage, and he was like, "so, R says the plan was for you to leave tomorrow. I don't care if you stay another couple of days. What's your take?"

I stumbled over myself a bit because, well, after so many failures over the past year and a half, this felt so ideal that I didn't really want to say anything to fuck it up.

So I said, "well, I feel really comfortable here. Y'all are the sorts of people I feel like myself around."

He didn't say anything like "so, it's settled." Just "yeah, we like your [vibe]*."

Because of the unusual funding schedule I get, I asked if I could break rent into the first and 15th. R handles the funds, and she was fine with that. "Let's just say it's free until the 15th, then, whenever you get back."

I still have the key to my room, and my dirty laundry is there if they care to air it. S told me R would likely go into the room to see if all was well (it was not with the prior tenant) in my absence, and as I'm not paying rent yet, I see no reason that's unreasonable.

It helps that I pretty much sat on a bed for a week and precious little else.

Actually, that's not true. Yesterday, R got home and walked into the garage where S and I were chatting about something ... maybe that was the conversation about an Assyrian library that was torched to destroy it, but as they were still using clay tablets, all the aggrieved managed to do was make a makeshift kiln and preserve the tablets for millennia.

She asked S whether he could help unload "a shitload" of wood from her SUV. He's had some back issues, and it wasn't a good day. So I volunteered.

Now, I have some back issues, and a heavy piece of pecan -- with bark -- hit my Achilles. I had to nope out pretty quickly after the shock wore off.

I'm not going to break down the exact amounts, but given that I can discontinue my internet account and no longer need to retain auto insurance once I get where I'm going some 60 miles away and my food will be covered unless I want to buy something special for myself, this actually looks like a net positive in terms of cashflow.

I was headed to the washroom that's in a alcove between my room and K's as she stepped out. I told her she was welcome to take the washroom first, and she told me she was headed downstairs to start on a chicken, broccoli and artichoke fettucine alfredo.

"Do you have a minute, or is it urgent?" she asked.

"I've got a minute."

"Well, I just wanted to tell you how much we all like how you fit in here. This is what we've been hoping for for a while. There'll be plenty of food in an hour or so."

It kinda sounds cultish, but like, these are my people. And we're able to be honest with each other about such things.

I was already timing my Lyft, so I thanked her and said I'll look forward to it the next time she makes it.

R was already off for a Pride event, so I said goodbye to S and K, knowing I was getting in the car to drive to Austin for the last time as a resident, 11 years and 9 days after arriving.

I thought my time here would provide more opportunities for my family under the status quo corporate bullshit. It turns out, the plan was total demolition and rebuilding.

Perhaps coincidentally, I was born in Phoenix.

• it wasn't this word, but I don't remember what it was

And it was: Are there any spaces in town where I could work on building out my van?

A user directed me to Asmbly, and the night I was there for the orientation, a guy in a van with a tree-frog decal was hanging out in the parking lot. We didn't talk that night.

As it happens, he was (/is?) the leader of the vanbuild community at the space. We first started talking four weeks later, when the next event was scheduled.

He's coming by this evening with my new fridge. It's going to be nice to be able to buy perishables again.

Which is cool and all, but far more happened than that.

He's a burner. So after several months, he invited me to join him at the warehouse (he's also let me crash in his garage several times to avoid temperature extremes) for a workshop on safely using flamethrowers.

I'm pretty certain Naked Fireman led the course, but I'd not get to know him for over a year. On Wednesday, I was hanging out with him, his daughter and his granddaughter, with a pipe being passed around.

I knew a bit about Burning Man, mostly because an intern at the paper in 2005 was a burner. Amusingly enough, he reached out to my then-girlfriend online, talking about how he didn't know how the paper had done copyediting without having him on staff.

You might think this would be an issue, but it's a city of 20,000, so at some point, you're going to face that issue.

Instead, I called him up and invited him out to a bar. We shot some pool, and I casually mentioned that I'd appreciate him not trying to hit on my girlfriend, and also -- fuck you for saying I don't know how to edit.

I didn't bring it into the newsroom. He was really good, and this was a personal issue that he had no issues respecting..

We last hung out when he was in town for the eclipse last year. Part of his polycule came down from Utah for it.

20 years after first hearing about the burner scene ...

It appears I'm going to attempt commune life. Now, this doesn't inherently follow from my physical involvement, but rather posting -- again -- on Reddit, asking what the local Discord was for the local scene after my first burn.

It was crickets for months. And then one day, a guy responded to me with a link. Somehow, I ended up at his house, and we talked Street Medics, which he runs locally, and well as general stuff. This was the night of the Los Angeles ICE protests, and I learned a lot about how people handle these situations.

I even got to try out a gas mask. As one does.

The next day, I'm back in my van, and I've been elevated to an admin on Discord -- something I suspect most of you know is really one step above my paygrade. It didn't take long to be booted down to standard user, but even less time to split the baby and make me a mod.

As a result, I met new people through the server in addition to the weekly event. And I started talking with another mod ... I don't even remember how we moved to DMs.

They just had a boarder leave, and as such, they have an open room they've offered to rent to me. We're just going to try it for a week before committing to something longer term.

The commune has yet to start up -- indeed, they're still looking for land (I get along famously with her husband, who is oddly not a burner himself), and they need to sell their house first.

They're chill people who share my values.

But seriously, who would have thought being priced out of fixed housing would cause gestures broadly all this?

When I was 5 (AP Style) or so, us kids were sent back to a room to watch a movie. It was The Neverending Story.

Which, not unusual in 1985. This was at the Thunderbird in Taos Ski Valley, and it being the '80s, adults enjoyed drinking alcohol at 9300 feet.

It's 24 years before I end up on the stoop of someone who'd named her first son Atreau. She threw an umlaut on the "u" for no reason, and this has been fun over the course of his life.

This said, I ended up in Taos for work, and, well, it didn't end up the way I would have liked. First off, you don't want to be white. Also, I had two section deadlines swapped on me, and I kinda lost it.

For anyone wondering, I have the Powderhorn trail sign from Taos. This was not theft; rather, the guy who founded the place went to boarding school with my grandfather, so I got special dispensation.

But that makes one feel differently about childhood experiences.. I can go before that to chicken and rice in the Kinderkaefig ahead of nap time listening to Moonlight Sonata.

As these things go, life could be worse.

I forever associate this movie with that room. The only thing that would have been more on brand would have been a girl my age who wanted to hold my hand.

My ex has a new kitten. She's very cute and, at five weeks, as the kids like to say, "smol." I'm not certain at what point "small" became too difficult to type, but as an editor ...

At any rate, the cat is not the point. Rather, she invited me up, this time insisting I pay for the Lyft in both directions, which is not how we've done this before. I can swing $70, but $140 is too much. (She told me to call my mom and ask for more money, which is A) not how this works; and B) really fucking insulting when she used to berate me for having my parents willing to help out in a pinch but happily enjoyed the results.)

In addition to wanting me to cover all costs, she made it clear that she doesn't want to act like a couple if I visit (actually not plausible; that's how we've interacted each time I've visited since December) ... but ... she has expressly forbid sex and wants to get really drunk and stoned, at which point she may be more amenable.

The relevant consent conversation happened, with her being the one saying, "Look, if I want it at the time, that's consent." Except it isn't, by a fair country mile.

She was asking for it ... did you see what she was drinking?

Thankfully, the logistics worked in my favour. I've got a guy coming by in the next hour to pick up my broken fridge in the hopes of being able to repair it. He thinks he knows the right control board, but it'll take three weeks to source, so I'm just getting a new fridge.

How Amazon can take fully a week to ship something is beyond me, but here we are.

He'd been angling for this evening, which will happen, but also left the rest of the weekend open. I mean, he's getting a free fridge that partially works but drains battery like nobody's business.

The only way to make this a plausible idea was being able to Lyft to Temple from Killeen (relatively cheap at $20) to stay with another burner friend until she had to hoof it back to Austin, and at this point, she has so much shit going on that it was a nonstarter.

For context, this is the woman who picked up a few bags of trash Monday, then sent me pics and info about a piece of land they're considering for the commune they intend to start up (I'll be on growing food and solar). So it's not like she just knee-jerk said no, more "now is not a good time."

I got back to my ex, let her know it wasn't feasible, and she hung up on me. Her son is going to be on ESPN tonight, and she wanted someone to watch with her. I could not care less about cross-country, and watching it on TV sounds like hell.

I'm glad her kid is excelling nationally, but still, it's people running on a screen.

It means giving up a chance to do laundry, but it just didn't feel right, which I've not gotten from her since we reconnected intensely. Why invite me and then say you don't really want me there, you just don't want to be alone?

That's your fucking problem, not mine, and I'm sure as fuck not going to feel like I need to spend my limited resources on an aloof partner who doesn't want to act like we know each other too well to make it a platonic visit. That flew the day we met in 2009, but only for about 12 hours.

I guess I should be grateful that we got to see each other a few times over the past few months. I can feel my heart rate decreasing as I walk through the door and put things in the fridge. Within minutes, it's like we never got divorced.

That was nice ... this is unpleasant sounding.

This is a vent and probably a trauma dump too, although I'm probably asking for something despite my inability to word it. I'll try not to make it too specific but it needs to come out so bad. I'm so fucking lonely. It's a gigantic painful hole of solitude dug just under the sternum.

I'm slowly pulling myself out of a disastrous marriage. She has issues, I have issues, and we've been feeding each other's issues for years. I haven't existed for a long time. I haven't acted on negative or positive signals from myself in a long time. I just soaked it all up. There's still a lot of sorting out to do and it'll most probably be a whole bucket of pain all along the way.

We have a child. Our daughter's amab and she rightfully hates her mother, who's said horrible things to her throughout her life. She is predictably fucked up. She's only out as trans to me and has basically given up on life at this point. She lives at night, she dropped out of college, she's unable to cope with basic social interactions and it's become increasingly hard to get her to eat meals. She's shutting me out. I have basically no idea what's going on with her emotionally anymore. I'm ridden with guilt on so many levels.

Me and my daughter moved out of home and are staying with relatives. We have our own rooms but it's not an easy situation. We have our own psychologists and our own family doctors.

I knew my sexual orientation's fluid for a long time. I've admitted it to myself for a much shorter time. I've mostly come out as bi in the last days. What I didn't expect is how as soon as I've started to quit the heteronormative role of a cishetero husband, the gender fluidity would hit me so crazy hard. I've made some simple changes to the way I present which feel unbelievably intense and emancipating. I feel things I thought I would never feel again and others that are completely new to me. It's like permafrost thawing but in a good way.

On the other hand I also feel like a pet completely cut off from their species. I'm so. Fucking. Lonely. I have no friends, let alone queer ones. It takes a tremendous effort to maintain the faith that this is valid, that I'm valid. That I'm not being silly. That this isn't one of those mid-life crisis that men go through and that everybody laughs about. I mean I know buying an expensive sports car isn't like buying buttplugs and nail polish but still you know.

So if you read all that thank you so much and please don't be shy. I hope your day is bright! I'll go touch grass for a little while now.

So, for reasons I can't explain, that was the template name in the byline box at my school paper. I got roped into this fiasco on my third piece.

Three stories meant you shedded your "contributing writer" title and got "The Daily" instead.

I'm well aware of Revenge of the Nerds, so no need to head there. It's funny how these things work ... you think shit's gone wrong, and then ....

The correction that ran the next day crediting me was of small solace, given the fuckup I was about to do in sports (seriously, people, don't put me in sports).

I'd not recommend running "My Leaking Heart" over a feature on a soccer player who, well, yeah, had a heart condition in which his heart leaks. I was 19 and stupid. The sports ed told me to just put something there and he'd circle back.

It. Never. Fucking. Works. That. Way.

"My Leaking Heart" ran. All-you-can-eat crow ensued. In my defense, a few days into ever working at a newspaper, the story came over with a hed of "Braveheart." I may have been 48 hours into journalism, but I told the sports ed I wasn't running it. (insert growing up with The Economist here), so he said, "just throw something on there, and I'll fix it at the end of the night.

Dummy text it a disastrous idea outside of lorem ipsum and xyxyxy.

If you want to hone in on ascenders, fine. Typographically, that's an absurd metric as a daily issue.

Back in the late '90s, a weird thing transpired at my school paper.

I was a couple of weeks into my role as a designer, but by then, of course, my editor and I were essentially living together. Never underestimate just how turbocharged skills get when you're trying to outdo the person you're fucking. (We seriously wallpapered the bedroom with layouts once we formally got a place together.)

One other thing to point out is there was an unusual situation in the power dynamic above me. It turned out my girlfriend's best friend was ... the editor-in-chief.

He took a liking to me upon seeing his "Cheesy Poof" happy.

The third leg of the stool arrived about a week later. I won't say his name, but his mailbox tag ended up with a handwritten "Simply Irresistible" note on it that I had no part in. (He'd later be my best man at my first wedding.)

At this point in time, we had to drive the pasted-up flats to a printer in downtown Seattle. This had been -- up to that point -- a mere drop-off.

The "we" should inform what comes next.

The design desk, consisting of me, her and him, inadvertently got thrown into not just production but administration.

I was in the editor's office, and for some reason I don't remember, just ahead of him needing to drive the flats, he mentioned being hungry and brought up Kozy Shack pudding. I asked if that was really what he wanted, and he said, "No, I need more. Something Beefy. A Beefy House."

And that was the night all three of us got in the Daily car (a piece of shit Ford that later inspired the inside joke "SPARE!"), went down to the printer, and then went to a 24-hour joint on Denny that now appears to be closed.

Beefy House was born. There ended up being many Beefy Heis (the editor's plural), including Beth's, The Hurricane and Denny's in a pinch.

The sort of absurdity one can only do in college ensued. We had the editor (well versed in Robert's Rules of Order) dining nightly with the production editor and two people less than a month into the industry.

In time, Beefy House became an amalgamation of a joke and actually doing things under the guise of a joke. We had quorum rules and everything after bitching about something that had happened at the paper that day.

With a quorum (not always guaranteed, as we roped in the copy chief) and majority vote, items passed by Beefy House went to the publisher.

(I'm pretty sure that's how I landed on his radar -- a decade later, he'd drive me two hours to an interview.)

Such a weird set of circumstances to lead me into the field.

Also, I miss being able to go out nightly on journalism wages.

this week's reading is Dark Laboratory:

As I sit here, in a friend's garage in front of a fan to escape 100F plus humidity, I have a lot of time to think.

Which is good, because that fan only does so much.

But, I mean the sheer improbability of all of this, where a rent hike led me to live in a van and ... well, I knew some forms of counterculture, but damn, burners are like ravers who say "yeah, I think we need more alcohol and fire."

I have a couple of friends locally, but they're not really the hiring type. And after a decade here, I feel zero connection to the city ... an economically disadvantageous divorce led to moving in with my boss (remember, kids, journalism stereotypes are there for a reason), and from there, wilderness.

I've been here 10 years, and if I pissed off my friend, I wouldn't even know how to get home.

current status: busy

In the past, Beeple had inquired about having Beehaw merchandise. At that time, they thought it would be a good way to raise funds to keep the site going.

Now that our finances are OK I’d like to revisit this idea for the following reasons:

1. Pure fun and enjoyment.
2. A way to get attention and draw people to Beehaw.

My brother has been in the professional textile space for 15 years. I asked him what he’d recommend as a merchandise platform and he immediately responded: Printify

If someone wanted to take this on, then they would want to coordinate things with the admin team here at Beehaw.

What are your thoughts?

This could be filed in tech, but I don't yet have a story. I have several Google accounts, and they all behave differently. Currently, two of five are giving the option to create fucking videos -- not terribly good ones, mind -- that actually look like researched ideas as opposed to "Pete's depressed and was drunk last night, so let's run it!"

Hey! Not new to Fedi or Lemmy but new to this instance, and just generally disappointed with how other Lemmy instances are moderated compared to, say, mastodon.social. Not sure this Lemmy version is new enough to have PeerTube support, but you can give it a try by following !furbland_channel@cuddly.tube and !furblandalt@cuddly.tube

If you’re an instance admin, just FYI: the PeerTube fix has been backported to 0.19, so I suggest upgrading to the latest 0.19 version if problems do occur. I’m into lots of obscure bootleg stuff, mainly these. Oh, did I mention I’m autistic? :P

Anyways, nice to meet you all! :)

A couple of years ago, I joined a local Discord server with a core group of five who'd get together to see a movie or do a cheese tasting.

(Dune 2 in 5D was a low point, but the homemade cheese was good.)

After some weird Discord bullshit, we rebuilt the server. It's not particularly active, which is surprising given that as of today, four of us are unemployed (after recreating the server, we chose not to advertise it).

I'm the only one idiotic enough to have gone into journalism. One other guy (the only one still working) drives around town for the city hanging utility-cutoff notices on people's doors.

Everyone else was in coding, devops or defense contracting.

And yet, here we all are. When there's this level of unemployment in the span of just 2025 across wildly divergent fields, something has gone wrong.

I'm by far the eldest at 46, so this isn't an age problem, either. It seems unclear how the economy survives when capable people are unable to find work.

It's an interesting thing, finding a field and then watching it disappear.

I never wanted to be rich or famous. I just wanted to go skiing once a year and then head off to Europe every other summer. (Being Swiss, this was an option.)

But the reality of journalism is somewhat different. Especially over the past 30 years. I was committing journalism in college. I was still doing the same in my first three jobs. And then, well ...

I don't want another fucking career. This simply suggests that I'd chosen poorly, but you know what didn't fuck buggy-whip manufacturers over? Ford. They were separate things.

Now, we have this weird environment where "why did anyone want journalism in the first place?" is somehow the question.

As Elon would say -- and has -- let that sink in. As a society, we've been trained via the gutting of education to, well, not care about truth. This is a bad environment in which to want an independent Fourth Estate. Yet here we are.

Everything domestic has gone off the rails, and this means no job opportunities. I can't see how we rebuild this within a single generation, let alone whether we'll try.

News has never made money (as with internet firms, the audience is the money-maker for advertisers, and that has nothing to do with single-copy sales). And the more layers of editors and executives, the worse things look.

I was hoping to be in a nice house with a few trees and a nonabusive spouse by my mid-40s. It really doesn't feel like a lot to ask.

idk where else to post this. my state denied me coverage for healthcare and food share for “making too much,” and now since i can’t acquire insurance elsewhere since i simply can’t afford it, i’m going to lose medication that is currently treating a chronic, life shortening illness. i do not have $509 a month to spend on this drug. and since nobody in my state gives a shit about me i am simply going to go without and suffer the consequences of being unmedicated with my disease.

great.

means testing is immoral and fuck everyone who supports it. you are why i won’t be medicated anymore.

today's book is Autocracy Inc.

My wife is taking it especially hard.

we are all susceptible to manipulation tactics, lies, and propaganda. some of us may be more resilient than others, some may have quite the skill at resisting, but if you are an emotionally responsive person than you are not off the hook.

in 2025, i'm sure most Americans consider themselves immune to dangerous and bigoted messaging. "i'd never support Hitler if i lived back then," they claim. but many of them absolutely would have and they cannot see it. they are incapable of making the connection.

take what we are seeing now with how the average American is responding to the rise of modern American fascism and you can easily apply it to pre-nazi Germany. the banality of evil encompasses all walks of life.

i think to myself who would be a nazi if the Holocaust were to happen in America today?

• Joe Rogan
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Jeff Bezos
• Tim Cook
• Buzz Aldrin
• Paula Deen
• Kelsey Grammer
• Zachary Levi
• Taryn Manning
• Kanye West
• Amber Rose
• Kodak Black
• Kid Rock
• Lil Pump
• Sexyy Red

the potential for this list to all be nazis is unfathomably high. All of these people have supported Trump either vocally or by showing up to rallies or helping by visibly associating with the Trump campaign.

the amount of celebrity nazis we would have to deal with would become overwhelming and tiring. idk, it hit me that Hollywood would be filled with open fascists if it were acceptable.

today's book is the voluminous Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Our current balance is around $6000 and the average monthly cost to keep us running is $250.

If you'd like to take a closer look at our finances, then you can do it here -> https://opencollective.com/beehaw-collective

All of that being said, is there another service that the Beehaw community could provide with the extra funds?

One example could be to establish a Nonprofit Corporation (501(c)(3)) to create a legally recognized nonprofit with a clear charitable mission: education, health services, housing, etc.

this week's book is Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America

I can't believe I'm doing this twice in nine days, but my mom's financial support, while sufficient without any unusual expenses, doesn't extend to months in which life happens.

~~The current situation is this: My 5G internet payment was due Friday, and if I get all the way to disconnection, things get far more expensive.~~ Additionally, my annual prepaid phone service is due this coming Friday ... great timing when mom's payment is on the first.

Essentially, if both of these are shut off, I have no method of contacting the outside world, making me a guy in a van with no means of finding work.

I'm not on any sort of Cadillac plans ... ~~Internet is $50, and there will no doubt be some sort of late fee, but reconnection is $30.~~ My Mint Mobile 5GB plan (the lowest tier) runs $204 for the year. If I do not renew, well, there goes my number.

I'm really freaking out here. I've been offered a few contract gigs over the past few months, but they never get through to actual work, and any sort of payroll work would be garnished to hell due to longstanding debt that I'm just ignoring at this point.

A guy from the burner community has been tipping me off to studies, surveys and such, but the van is not yet cleared out enough to be driveable, though a new friend has helped me make a lot of progress, and apparently "45-year-old childfree homeless guy" is not a target demo (he's in his 20s, so having a very different experience).

I really don't like asking for charity; I'd much rather get paid for doing honest work. But, you know ... any port in a storm. If you have CashApp or Venmo and can spare anything, please DM. I'd rather not lose access to Beehaw just because of shit timing.

Busing it to a place with free Wi-Fi was an option until a few weeks ago, when all two-year passes were canceled because a few people were caught selling them on the black market.

Thanks in advance for any help y'all can provide. This is an amazing community that I'm proud of Beeing part of, and I don't want to say goodbye.

My latest contact for freelance work has gone silent, and I don't really care to keep asking for charity. My design skills are at this point irrelevant, and finding someone to pay me to write is my own problem.

But between those steps lies editing, which is still what I tell people I do, even if I haven't really done so since 2014. It's my identity.

My experience is exclusively in AP Style, but that's nothing the copyed behind me can't fix if we're meandering into Chicago or MLA, APA, what have you.

I've won national awards for my writing, so you won't get some sort of middling treatment.