My Hopes for 2011

I hope when I come back from Christmas vacation this year that I have a long-term job to come back to. This is not the kind of economy in which I want to be unemployed, especially as I’d practically be in as precarious a situation as The Sicilian threatened Fezzik with: “Do you want me to take you back to where I found you? Unemployed in Greenland?” At least, I should take some consolation, I’m not so slobbering drunk that I can’t buy brandy.

People with mad writing and editing skills, I’ve decided, are dime a dozen. There are just so many of us out there that to compete head-to-head in a nasty job market just isn’t palatable. My boss has reasonable confidence that we won’t be touched in the three rounds of layoffs coming in 2011, but the writing/editing group has been touched in every round of layoffs since I started working for the company in 2006. And guess who’s fairly near the bottom of the totem pole and not a company employee? I may as well be one of those guys who tucks his shirt into his underpants instead of between his underpants and his regular pants.

Wow. Two fairly obscure pop culture references in as many paragraphs. But nothing more than any of my competitors for scarce jobs are doing at this exact moment.

So, what else do I hope for in 2011, seeing as I’m thinking about unicorns that eat flowers and poop rainbows?

• A relatively warm February. Doesn’t have to be global warmingish, but avoiding our standard Winter Deep Freeze of 20 below zero on a warm day for a few weeks would be rather nice.
• A dog – but after the holidays. Was supposed to call a guy this past weekend about a $100 weenie dog, but put it off. Maybe this week. Saturday’s call would have been a bit premature.
• Lots more camping. This is of course contingent on me remaining gainfully employed. No job, no money for camping trips, of course.
• Progress either on replacing windows on the front of the house or an addition onto the back of the house. Probably the former, because with Michelle in school right now, any big project just isn’t in the budget.
• A teaching gig at BYU-Idaho. Tried now for two semesters. I’m trained. Ready. Poised to go. Still, no teachee. Maybe that business writing course I applied for will pan out . . .
• A published novel. But I’ve got to get it edited, and then farmed out to agents, and then agented first. May as well go back to Greenland.