It's hard out there for a blogger

Six years ago, when I started this blog, I made a solemn resolution: "I am going to get serious about eating less cheese!"

Another resolution I made, possibly of more interest to readers of this blog, was that I would never write one of those lame, "Sorry! I'm super-busy! I'll post more soon, I promise!" posts. In part because I would never be able to take myself seriously if I used that many exclamation points, but also because, really, if you have time to post that, then you have time to post something at least halfway interesting, if brief.

Basically, I think people expect more from the World's First Expat Blog. And as one of the world's preeminent bloggers, I owe them more.

[As an aside, I keep up with about a dozen blogs. I check them every day or two. And when I check those blogs to see if they've updated, I also check this one. . . . to see if it's updated. Because I am apparently under the impression that magical blogging fairies will update this blog when I don't? I bet if I understood this aspect of my behavior, I would understand why I eat so much cheese.]

You may look at this impressive work of blogsmanship and assume that this is what I do full time. In fact, it is not. In addition to this blog, I run a freelance empire. It isn't much, but, hey, it keeps me teetering above the brink of insolvency.

In any case, Dan Inc. has kept me busier this past week than at any other point in the last two years. Beyond editing for an expat magazine here and catalog copywriting for a company in the United States of America, I have been teaching English classes, doing subtitling and dealing with accounts receivable.* I also interested a U.S. newspaper in an article and so I am rushing to finish that.

None of the above are get-rich-quick schemes. But they all pay more than blogging.

So for now I will just say this, not wanting to overpromise: Things come to those who wait.

* Maybe this is a well-known maxim, but the smaller the amount in question, the more work it seems to be to collect it. In addition, part of the joy of the system here is that clients require physical invoices from a government-approved invoice tablet which are produced using carbon paper (remember carbon paper?). So every one of those I produce takes several hours, including the time needed to run it over to them. . . and then pick up the check on a separate occasion . . . and then cash the check at the bank on which its drawn, since I don't have a bank account here.