i am an addicted reader/listener of news.  i have a degree in old fashioned print journalism.  i was a terrible journalist.  one of the worst, really.  but i had the 19th century notion that journalism, literary journalism, could pay the bills.

i quickly disabused myself of that notion before i left school.  the poet/journalist!

well, ain't nothing wrong with that idea.  some might even manage to do it.

but then i think whatever you can do to pay the bills that allow you enough freedom to read and write is a good.

so i considered a career was what you do for moolah.  what you do for life is an obsession.  if you are lucky that obsession becomes a way of living.

so we are entering a new economic reality.  don't know how it will all turn out.  automation will play larger roles in production of stuff.  if we adopt autonomous vehicles then taxi services, bus and delivery drivers will probably be displaced.

this is a scary time.  it can be a wonderful time too.

education is changing and so are the jobs in academe becoming scarcer.

no longer can the writer count on becoming a teacher much less the poet count on being a journalist.

what can the poet do?  anything.  everything.  in between.

you want a career in teaching poetry?  i wish you the best of luck.  i really do.  we need excellent poet/teachers.

you want to be a poet?  pick up a pen, computer, tablet, and write.  you want to publish?  it is easier today in our digital culture to publish then it has ever been.

you want to rule the world thru poetry?  okay.  try it.

fear and fame, thrown far away.  because writing and reading is larger then popularity or fame.  besides there are easier ways to achieve both.

when i despair, which i do pretty often of late, i read a few favorite poets.  i have a lot of favorite poets.  their work, their life examples, brace me to face another day, another hour.  for i am one of those individuals who think life is short and is designed for pleasure.

for me poetry gives me the greatest emotional, intellectual, sexual, physical pleasure.

there is no career in that.  only a life.  a good life?  please.  but for me it is the only life i want to live.