About Me — (Shadowgnosis)
I made my living as a full-time writer until I dropped out
I was hanging out with my wife on the south coast of Crete, in a block shelter on the seacliff between Pitsidia and Matala Bay. I’d just quit my job at the Arizona Republic’s Arizona Magazine. A guild was forming, and management was pissed off about it and froze all the wages. They brought in a thug from Oakland, who was advertised as a war hero but was never actually in the military, we later discovered. His partner in crime was a thin, slightly stooped, middle-aged man with bad complexion. He was “Personnel Director.” The big guy intimidated physically and his cohort intimidated with performance reviews.
When there was a readership survey, we came in above the front page, which, management said, had to be a mistake. We had a readership of 700k. When I got my next review, it rated me as average. I asked my editor why he did that, and he said he didn’t do it. It came from the front office, which meant the new Personnel Director. I gave two weeks' notice. During that two weeks, I got two raises, but as the review was not changed, I left.
One of the subjects I’d written about was the Meyers Briggs personality test, and of course, I took the test. It suggested that I’m the kind of person who likes to work by myself. I had been happy so long as I’d been…
