Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I had planned to visit adrian_turtle this weekend.

Shortly after I got my train tickets, the weather forecasters started talking about this storm. By yesterday it was looking iffy, because the MBTA had announced that they were shutting down the T at 3:30, and I was due to arrive in Boston at 1:45. However, a friend of Adrian's was supposed to be on the same train (starting in Philly), had left his car at the Alewife T station, and offered to drive me the couple of miles from there to her home. So I packed my bag and put the decision off until this morning, depending on the weather.

This morning, it turned out that I wouldn't have a ride for the last bit of the trip, because Adrian's friend had, sensibly, taken an earlier train. I decided that a sensible hobbit wouldn't chance being stranded at South Station. Or, worse, at Harvard Square. (Or even Providence, R.I., but that seemed unlikely, given the forecast.)

Sitting here, warm and dry, with little snow on the ground in Boston yet, it's easy to second-guess myself. But the storm forecast for the Boston area is not encouraging, and while "snowed in with Adrian" wouldn't be horrible, it's also not a goal. I can see her next weekend.

The personal lesson from what I did right before Hurricane Sandy isn't "in case of bad weather, you should be in Boston." It's "don't get on the train at the beginning of a major storm whose impact will be much worse at the destination."

I do have useful things to do here, notably training (reading and watching videos) for a freelance editing project that's supposed to start next week. I have also been summoned to an unemployment insurance meeting Monday morning, which I am going to attend (weather allowing) largely so they don't yank my benefits for this week: the project in question may give me significant work for longer than I'm going to be living in New York. If so, I will be eligible for little or no more unemployment insurance. Not getting benefits because I have work is entirely reasonable. Not getting them once we move to Washington is part of federalism, I guess (two different people I've talked to this week, one of them American, were surprised when I told them).

Last week, I was summoned to a meeting about my unemployment insurance benefits. I had to take the letter they sent me (I think it said that) and fill out a form about my job hunt. The meeting was at 8:30, which turned out to mean that they open the building then; got about 20 of us in a room for a presentation that started about 8:50; and then there was a short wait and a meeting with someone.

( cut for length )

After consulting a newsgroup (no, not rassef) and having a friend call with the results of research, I called the unemployment office's robot yesterday, and told it that I hadn't been available for work the previous week. I now wait to see whether they send me a piece of paper explaining that I'm not getting a check for that week, or take it as read. (The current NY rules are that one can be paid for no more than 26 weeks in a 52-week period; if things go well, I won't need that week's benefits, and if they don't, it'll mean I'm eligible for a later week, so it comes out much the same. Aside from knowing I've been honest, a comfort for reasons both ethical and practical.)

Meanwhile, thanks to ers, I've just sent off a resume for a writer/editor job at a financial services company, found on a Web site she pointed me to.

And my intrepid researcher suggests that I re-analyze the question as "where do I want to work?" and then figure out how to get that place to hire me. She said assorted ego-boosting things to me, and when I told her to keep saying things like that, said something like "you mean pointing out things that are plain as day?" Definitely egoboo, and much of it is stuff I already knew, but is good to hear from outside. But "dedicated" isn't how I usually think of myself. She's right, though: given something worth doing, I'll dive in. And I used a variant on that as part of the cover letter I just sent.

Now, if I can just remember what good suggestion it was that I caught myself halfway through responding by giving reasons it wouldn't work. Having caught--and stopped--that particular bad habit is both good and noteworthy, but it would be nice to remember what it was that I found myself saying "yes, but" to.