Getting Real

Okay, I tell myself, clicking off the SAD light: Get real. I know I’m depleting my meager retirement funds, taking Social Security too early, taking my leisure while my husband is still exhausted with a demanding full-time job.

I cut short my usual morning ritual: face, jeans, tee shirt, peanut butter toast, the Washington Post on Kindle, and the New York Times KenKen, with multiple cups of coffee.

Get your butt moving. I flick on the laptop and wait for it to crank up. How do you spell the name of that online tutoring service? Is it Smart-thinking or Smarthinking? The latter, I recall. It makes no sense when you read it phonetically; the two words crash together, with a disturbing aberration at the middle.

It takes a while to sort through the website to locate an application form.  Cheese-and-rice!* They want a resume, cover letter, recommendations. All this for a 10-bucks-an hour tutoring job for which I am wildly overqualified.

I refuse to spend an hour making major edits to the resume and cover letter I have on hand. I make one or two tweaks and paste them into the form. Just a few hours a week, I think. I can do this in my sleep.



*(Okay, this is not really what I said.  I'm being polite.)