So – I ABSOLUTELY have an ego. It’s true. Surely you’ve noticed? It’s very large. It’s hairy. I try to keep it in check.
I don’t think I generally need to have it stroked, or pandered to, but it IS perhaps somewhat easily bruised. I try to swallow such things down, but I am finding the line between bruised ego and having my pride easier and easier to draw. I try to be better about getting over the former and less permissive about abuses to the latter.
I guess that somewhere in my myriad labyrinthine web personae I need to lay something out : if you’re part of my local arts community, and I can see how you support it or how you’re a part of it – I feel like I tend to go out of my way to help out. I’m not top tier, but one of the reasons I’ll help as I’m able is that I have a vast array of hard-won skills and I don’t think artists should be beholden to middlemen holding the keys to things we all need to be able to do. These skills may be piecemeal and patchwork, but they’re gleaned from first-person, hands-on knowledge tried and tested and maybe a little tainted by real-world experience. I can produce prosumer level content in audio and video, streaming content, graphic arts and HTML. And I can guide people through myriad applications from Adobe to Zoom and I do this to the best of my ability for the people in my community – which is a strangely sprawling thing in our modern world. And if it’s helpful, and you’re able, please do tip. It’s appreciated, but I’m also going to try and not make it feel EXPECTED of you. I want to help you.
But to the rest of you : I’m for hire. I’m not here to have my brain picked, or to bounce ideas off of, or just to have some one to run stuff past. I have a dozen jobs and I try to do them well. If you’d like to give me a dozen and one, we can talk about it… but people will pick your brain to bits, and bounce things off of you till your beaten and bloody – and then if you’re lucky they’ll say “thanks” at the end of the day. The world is filled with takers.
And so I’m going to rant for a sec. Because this isn’t coming out of the blue. It’s coming from an experience that’s happening at this very moment. And I’m laying it down because it’s bruised my ego – but I’ve got my pride. And so I’m not willing to be taken advantage of. And I’ve worked with this particular taker before.
They called me a month ago about a project who then said “this is really only speculative JUST IN CASE the person I want to hire doesn’t work out (there were some specifics to why they wanted to hire the other individual over me – they didn’t have much to do with skill set – and they ASSUMED I could understand and the other individual’s had a really rough time of it recently… which they have… but we’ve ALL been out of work for three months) – but can you do x, y and z just in case it doesn’t work out?” – I wrote up my understanding of the project knowing that what I was REALLY doing was providing the roadmap for the person they really wanted to hire. I wrote up the rough map, I left out the exact street signs – because if you’re hiring someone else – hire someone else. Their response to my statement about my rate was non-committal. “If it comes to that we might be able to do something like that”.
Oh – and that’s all me being clear because I’ve got my pride. The part where my ego got bruised was how they danced around what they needed at the beginning. I asked “to be clear, are you looking to hire me as a host, or a performer?” And they laughed: “No, no, no, no. I’ve got all the performers. They’re all top notch.” It’s the laugh that was highly unneccessary and really helps make my decisions easier.
And as expected, I proceeded to receive emails with lots of information “can you look this over, can you just check this, can you just look over these videos” and my answer is “no, but it looks like you and your producer are putting together a great program!” They continued to carefully avoid the words “consult” or “hire”.
And as SORT of expected, eventually a toss-off email came in and said the other guy wasn’t available afterall. And perhaps then we’d have talked – IF she’d used the word “consult” or “hire”… IF it wasn’t a toss-off email with less than 2 weeks to the deadline – apparently assuming that I’d held the date for three weeks. She still wants to pick my brain and bounce some ideas off of me because the other guy’s not available. I tried to be polite. I told her that I’d had the time open when she’d initially contacted me but at this point, I’m full up and really can’t help. I tried to be polite, but my brain was a little jammed up on the idea of “you waited three weeks and you still aren’t willing to hire me… you’re still trying to get me to volunteer my services.”
Her event is in less than 24 hours. She Facebook messaged me last night at 11.30pm asking if I was up and if I could take a look at some things. I didn’t respond. It was 11.30pm. I forgot about it.
She called me tonight at 10pm asking for me to call her up till midnight to bounce some ideas around. I texted her back and said I had an open consulting slot at noon, but that I was done with the day.
I didn’t say “because it’s 10 fucking pm and we’re not pals that call one another at 10pm just to kick ideas around. This is a business. And you can expect at least phone calls to operate during business HOURS – especially since I’ve already said ‘no'”.
And she’s doing testing on her own. And she’ll be fine. She’s not doing it the way I’d have done it, but she’s figured out a solution and she’ll be fine. I’m glad of that because it IS a Hell of a program and the artists she’s gathered to sound decent. I have some recommendations and suggestions if she wants to consult me. But I’m not interested in having my brain picked or having her bounce ideas off of me.
I’ve got 12 other jobs to do.
For people who’ve hired me.
