angry**********.com...

...is a website I've become addicted to. I'm not publishing the full name, as it's primarily for wretches like me in a specific career who need a place to bitch in anonymity.

I haven't posted there. Yet. But it's only a matter of time.

I'm not angry enough today to go there and spill my verbal guts. I received two whole checks yesterday, thus allowing me to pay this month's bills and, if I'm a good boy and don't waste money on trivial pleasures like ordering a pizza or buying books or music, covering next month's essentials as well.

Not that my monthly nut is so damn big these days. I have surrendered most things people take for granted, and live in a space so small that when Kate put out a call for people to post pics of their bedrooms, the resulting photo was so embarrassing, including as it did my office space and "living" space all in one minuscule package, that I decided against putting it here.

I love my work. I really do. I will write four articles this week, and each will be well-researched, clean and -- one hopes -- have the little touches that make my editors happy they have chosen me.

Sadly, none will be good enough to make publishers feel an uncontrollable urge to call their accounting departments and say: "send this boy a check...now!" Nor will it cause them to think that perhaps the combination of writing talent, expertise and care taken with the work deserves a few extra dollars in the pay packet.

While I have mentioned these undesirable traits of my profession in the past, I have tried to moderate my disgust with a writer's lot. I know a few writers who are just starting out on the long career journey; one is stunningly good, and will in a reasonably short time be great. These people sometimes visit my journal, and I would not want to imply that they might fall into the same bottomless void that has swallowed me more-or-less whole.

If the value of sheer talent means nothing, we as a society are truly doomed. So I continue to hope that some who show extraordinary talent will achieve deserved fame and financial comfort even if I have not and never will.

I admit, shamefacedly, that I feel tremendous relief that neither landlord, phone company nor utilities will be hounding me this month. Or even next month.

Is that good enough? No.

But age and a lack of marketable suit-and-tie/work-in-an-office skills forces me to continue on my lonely and too-often unhappy path. From time to time, I crank out an especially good article, one that makes me feel as if all the tsooris is worth it.

That's a pathetic payoff, but what the hell? It's what I have, Jim.

And I keep buying lottery tickets....