Freelance Writing Looks Suspiciously Like Dealing Drugs
I wouldn’t have thought of the connection myself, but a gentleman I’ve done some volunteer work with asked me the other night (discreetly, to give him credit) if all my trips to Chicago to visit “relatives” were really supply runs for my job as a “freelance writer.”
Apparently local travel plus a non-paycheck income plus doing reasonably well for yourself (or at least putting up a good front) leads to certain unfortunate conclusions. Who knew?
I’m sorry to say that I’m not a drug dealer, and in fact would have an embarrassingly hard time even knowing where to score some recreational weed, which in Madison is roughly as challenging and handled much the same way as asking a stranger if you can pet his/her dog. Like so many writers before me, I prefer my depressants distilled from grain.
But it was a good reminder of how damning appearances can be. It was a fair supposition. It also made me really worry about how my occasional large, lump-sum wire transfers from a consulting group in Afghanistan are going to look if I ever get audited…
I was just doing statistical analysis for them, I swear.
So, one has to be careful of appearances it seems. But hey, a man’s gotta work. I’m certainly not going to give up my lovely, freewheeling, bohemian lifestyle to go work in an office just so I look less like a drug dealer.
Psssst. Wanna buy some really good adjectives?
Dude. That final line is comedy GOLD.