Sometimes I think about how being a writer -- just a writer 🖊️ -- was an entire job description until just a couple of generations or so ago.

Like, the idea that no hyphens or slashes were required is so intoxicating. Being good at writing was enough. That, in and of itself, was once a skill that was worth real legal tender to pay real debts, both public and private.

But before I go on romanticising the idea of simply sitting down at the ol' Hermes 3000 and typing for a few hours and then receiving a check that is enough to pay the note on the house and maybe buy two fingers of bourbon, I also remember that when being a capital-w Writer was an entire job, a lobotomy was an entire medical procedure that could be imposed on my silly little lady brain.

So maybe it's OK that I need to have seven different potential job titles, familiarity with every CMS under the sun, and ample knowledge of consumer trends at the ready. Maybe it's fine that my biggest asset is something that anyone and everyone with access to WiFi thinks they, too, possess (or can possess, given enough help from ChatGPT).

Which is to say, day to day, the choice between an existence of yellow wallpaper and paper money and one that requires me to perpetually add more and more expertise into my overcrowded brain is not an easy one.