SOL11: My Free-lance Working Day

            Twice a week, Monday being one of them, I do free-lance copy editing for the magazine I last worked for full-time. The day goes like this:

            Get up, shower, dress, breakfast.

            Do stretches to avoid pain in my leg from spinal stenosis.

            Between 10:30 and 11:30, I vpn to the server at the magazine where I find my work.

Today there are 10 files, and eight are already ready for me. Because there are so many, I download them to my laptop and close out of the server. It’s quicker to work offline.

            The files I’m reading are collections of short book reviews in a variety of genres. I read for sense, grammar, language use, punctuation, publication style (e.g., a book about kabbalah may capitalize Kabbalah in the book, but our dictionary lower-cases it, so the review must lower-case it). I don’t find any egregious errors (once, in a review of a book about impeachment, the reviewer wrote that Lyndon Johnson was impeached, meaning of course Andrew Johnson; I caught that) today, but it still takes me three hours to get through all 29 reviews.

            Once my work is done, I eat a salad with leftover salmon I’d sauteed last night.

            Then I realize I have time to see Green Book. A feel-good movie, mostly for white people. I want to learn more about Dr. Donald Shirley, and there just happens to be an article about him in the New York Times Arts section today.

            Back home, I eat a Trader Joe’s frozen vegetable biryani and do the laundry. Then I write this. 

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!