I know a lot of people who can do things that are useful.  You know, the kinds of things that require skills.  I know a furniture maker, several teachers, drug addictions counsellors, mechanics, a potter…  A childhood friend of mine grew up to be a vet. 

But me?  I can barely do anything useful at all.  I am not the kind of friend you call on if you need to install hardwood flooring (although I’ve stumbled around entertaining others who are doing so, and maybe that helped).  I cannot fix a car, although I can change a tire and jumpstart the engine when it won’t go on a winter day.  Many years ago, I fixed a toilet.  I amazed myself.

But my skills end there.  The closest I have come to being useful is in the kitchen.  Sometimes I can cook a meal that is appetizing enough.  But I would never qualify to work in a restaurant.

I cannot even grow food!  I have never planted a vegetable garden.  If I were out of the big city, I’d be totally screwed!

I find it very troublesome how very useless I am.  In less than five months, I will desperately need a job.  I’ve plied my trade in language heretofore, and now find myself in a city where the language of business happens to be one that I write at about a Grade 6 level.  Moreover, language is incredibly subjective.  Even in English, I receive mediocre marks for my writing all the time.  If I spend literally dozens of hours on something, I can usually achieve an A.  But generally, nothing comes easy with writing.

Problematically, the going rate for spending dozens of hours on writing a feature-length article is somewhere around $50 to $400.  The economics of this strike me as impossible.