Brother, can you spare some water wings?

The flood waters are rising!

Within hours of yesterday's post, I got an email from the creative staffing firm asking if I could reprise my role as fill-in copy editor for a week in October. I have a call out to my agency client to see if there's any way I can swing that while doing the 1-5 onsite gig I agreed to for him . . . I think it's feasible, because there isn't a specific project I'll be working on when I'm onsite for the agency, and the copy editor is flexible about his dates. I just need to make sure that the copy editing gig takes place after the RFP project!

When it rains, it pours . . .

. . . in a good way!

All too often, freelancing is a "feast or famine" occupation. One learns to appreciate the times when there's an abundance (or overabundance) of work, because inevitably there will come a day when there is nothing on the horizon.

Last Thursday, I was asked by one of my regular agency clients to work on-site 4 hours a day for at least the month of October, starting this Wednesday afternoon. That's exciting stuff! I love working with them, and this gives me an opportunity to get more involved in their processes and to get to know their clients a little better.

Today, I opened my email to find a message from the worker's comp client who asked me to be their RFP person. They want to meet with me Wednesday morning to discuss an RFP they just received. Again, this is exciting because I think I can help them refine and improve their RFP process, and at the same time help them land some new business.

Fortunately, I should have plenty of time to work on the RFP in the mornings before heading off to the agency. I am a little worried about juggling any future projects that may come in--but I will deal with them as (and if!) they come. In the meantime, I'm just going to be thankful that October is going to be another good month.

If I worked for the Ohio Board of Tourism

A few years ago, the Powers that Be here in Ohio decided to change the state slogan from "Ohio, The Heart of It All" (presumably because the state is vaguely heart-shaped) to "Ohio, So Much to Discover" (because the capital is Columbus--get it?). Neither, in my opinion, does much to foster excitement about living in or visiting Ohio. So I came up with a few of my own:

1. Ohio--Less Neurotic Than West Virginia: This slogan lets people know what to expect when they visit. A group of psychologists recently conducted a study that maps various personality traits by state. Ohio is ranked as the 9th most neurotic, and is pretty much right in the middle of the pack in extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness.
   
2. Ohio--Birthplace of Luke Perry and Charles Manson: This one plays up the celebrity angle, and could create new revenue streams for tour guides.
   
3. Ohio--Where Presidents Come From: Ohio is the birthplace of 7 Presidents. Virginia is the birthplace of 8--including William Henry Harrison, who moved to Ohio before he became President. Here in Ohio, we play a little fast and loose with the rules, so we count WHH as one of our own, which brings our total to 8 and thus ties us with Virginia. Following that logic, I also count Ohio-born actor Martin Sheen--who played not one but two Presidents on TV (in The West Wing and in the miniseries Kennedy--The Presidential Years) as well as a presidential candidate in The Dead Zone--bringing Ohio's total to 9. Take that, Virginia.
4. Ohio--No, The Capital Isn't Cleveland or Cincinnati: Maybe we don't have a team in the NFL, NBA or MLB, but we're the home of the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Columbus Blue Jackets! Maybe we're not Lake Erie- or Ohio River-adjacent, but we're less than 150 miles from either one! It's time Columbus got the recognition it deserves.
   

Popularity contest

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal posted a list of the 100 most commonly-used words in the English language. Of course the cool kids all made the list: pronouns, conjunctions, definite and indefinite articles, and helping verbs all have positions of honor near the top. The jocks are well represented too: uh, um, uh-huh and yeah. Even a few bullies muscled their way in: president, Iraq . . .

I thought maybe they'd allowed a foreign exchange student into the ranks of popularity, but then I realized MHM was really just text-speak for uh-huh.

The best thing about this list is it compares word usage in conversation, newspaper, and several American and British corpora. For example, "I" is the most-commonly spoken word, but ranks 30th in newspaper usage ("the" tops that particular list). It's commonality among corpora also varies, where it ranks as high as 10th and as low as 20th.

I am surprised to see that the list did not include any profanity. I have a friend who curses often enough to have made more than one 4-letter gem rise to the top of the list. Apparently she was not surveyed, or they purposefully omitted profanity from the results.

I am disappointed but not surprised that some of my favorites didn't make the list. It's a bit challenging to work "albeit" and "defenestration" into normal conversation. Oh well, there's always next year.

What words do you think need to be added to the list for next year? What words do you most want to see removed?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

It's fall--my favorite season, but also my least favorite.

I love the colors of autumn. I love the sound of fallen leaves crunching underfoot. I love the still-warm days followed by cool nights. I love Halloween.

I don't love the idea that winter is just around the corner. I don't love raking--more often than not, we have more of our neighbor's leaves in our yard than our own. I don't love the way darkness settles in earlier each night.

I get a strange sensation this time of year, a mixture of stir-craziness and artistic frustration, a need to just do something. Maybe it's best described as unchanneled, unfocused energy. As a result, fall can be a really productive time for me, or a really unproductive time, depending on what I do when the feeling comes upon me. The best case scenario: I'll network more, get really creative with my writing, and get a lot of yard work done. The worst case scenario: nothing will get done, professionally or personally, because I can't decide what to throw my energy into first.

One thing I won't be wasting my energy on: submitting to Helium. It was an interesting exercise, but I've resigned myself to the fact that their crazy rating system is too much for my OCD nature to handle. I'm tired of pulling my hair out in frustration, and I'm sure you're sick of reading about it. Below is a link to the 2nd and last article I submitted to them, which they titled "Please Don't Eat the Tomatoes":



A more accurate title, in my opinion, would have been "The Ohio Tomato Massacre."
(a note to my would-be editors: formatting is limited in Helium, and as a result em dashes get translated as hyphens, and italics don't translate at all. So pardon any apparent grammatical faux pas and imagine anything in caps to be italicized.)