...out of the worm-hole, into the fire!

Dear The Worm,

I was recently laid off from my job at National Public Radio. I find I don't miss it one bit. I'm enjoying sleeping in, going to the beach, and watching back to back to back re-runs of NCIS, followed on especially lazy days by a block of House. I feel no burning need to be productive (rather, I am a burned out producer). My concern is that once the unemployment checks run out, I'll have to once again work for The Man (although, in the case of NPR, it was more like The Woman. I would elaborate, but I know this is a family blog). So I'm wondering if you have any advice on what kind of job I might get that won't require a lot of actual work, but might pay well. Flexibility to work beachside is a plus. To help you help me, here is a list of my skills:

-- Clinically obsessive

-- Obsessively clinical

-- No, not really, I'm quite warm with lovely interpersonal skills

-- Can erect a beach umbrella in dry sand so it doesn't blow over in a stiff off-shore breeze
-- Usually.

-- Can recite entirety of Back to the Future

Cheers and ciao,

funemployed


The Worm sez: There are many highly paid positions that require little or no work on the part of the person holding the position (although everybody around the dead weight must usually do their part and then some), and these types of jobs span the gamut of industry. However, The Worm is currently applying for these positions, and so it is loathe to offer you any specific, substantive tips on the subject. Were you a real go-getter, the following bit of general entrepreneurial wisdom might be of good use: when one has trouble getting a job one wants, then one’s job is to create one’s own job. Given your professional background and your interests, The Worm would recommend producing a blockbuster, semi-annual, half-hour reality show about beach bums who dream of traveling back through time to get all tangled up in their respective teenaged mothers’ sex lives. And by “reality”, The Worm means totally unscripted, set-the-mic-on-record-and-go-get-some-lunch. But this advice, The Worm fears, here falls on deaf ears (or, at least, on very sleepy and lazy ears). Thus, The Worm suggests that you try to continue relaxing and to simply enjoy the unemployment checks while they last, without worrying about the future. Bring your mind back from the future, as it were; bury your head in the sand along with your toes and your umbrella pole. The Worm also suggests that you rent the 1980s NBC sitcom Family Ties, in which Meredith Baxter-Birney plays Elyse Keaton, mother of college student and Young Republican, Alex P. Keaton (played by Michael J. Fox). The plots mostly revolve around the erotic tensions among Elyse, a middle-aged ex-hippie who can’t let go of her outdated ideas on free love, Alex, a Reagan-loving conservative who is mortified by his mother’s incestuous overtures, and Alex’ gay best friend, Irwin “Skippy” Handelman (played with bestial intensity by Marc Price). The sexual themes are handled quite subtly and tastefully and there’s no time travel involved, but, still, it’s pretty hot.

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So sayeth The Worm.