Shawville is only an hour outside Ottawa — close enough, in other words, for me to be able to apply for government jobs. The catch is whether I’m willing to put up with such a lengthy commute. Others do, of course, but I’ve always liked living close to where I work.

Local jobs, such few as there are, really aren’t for someone with my talents or with my health issues — it’s hard to pump gas if you can’t stand on your feet for more than an hour, for example.

So my decision to work at earning income from my web sites — the self-employment route — was more or less by default. I’d already quit the one suitable local job, and my applications for various positions in Ottawa always went nowhere. (My guess is, my extremely nervous demeanour during the interview put them off.) So, after a while, I gave up looking and started focusing on this stuff, here. I’m not getting rich from my web projects, but it’s been increasing, year by year.

But tomorrow, after a drought of three and a half years, I finally start punching a clock again: I start an eight-week temp contract — an editing/proofreading job with Health Canada.

Fortuitously, my neighbour’s commute runs right past the building in which I will be working, so I will be carpooling in with her: this makes the commute much easier to bear, insofar as my health and ecological footprint are concerned.

Blogging gets moved to evenings and weekends: it’ll be interesting to see if I can manage the double workload. If I can’t, well, it’s only a couple of months away from my projects, and I’ll be able to return to them soon enough. In other words, it’s no longer an either-or proposition: I don’t have to choose between my writing and a steady paycheque.