I Don’t Understand Why I Attract Losers Like Shit Attracts Flies

More Boring Personal Stuff—Please Bear With Me

In the past I’ve owned and operated two companies that ended up producing multi-million dollar revenue streams over a period of a few years. In the process I learned what it meant to work 60-80 hour weeks and the cost of throwing everything I had financially at starting and growing my business.

I made exclusive use of specialty subcontractors and free-lance contract employees—I never had an hourly or salary payroll employee other than myself. Things worked well in feast or famine times because I didn’t have to provide work and pay anyone unless I had work that I needed to have done.

A deal was a deal, if you worked, you got paid--it was just that simple.

I've also learned how it felt to lose practically everything I had when couple of my customers decided to go out of business and take me and my company with them in the process. I like to say that I have earned a “street” MBA degree (A Masters in Business Administration,) although I’ve recently abandoned the engineering profession due to health considerations—both physical and mental.

In addition to my blogs, I’ve started writing a couple of books and began writing local interest news articles, some of which have been published as letters to the editor in the local newspaper. In late July I contacted a local magazine publisher about producing an article about the opening of the new passenger terminal here at the Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, a happening that was greeted with much fanfare by the local media.

He (the editor/publisher) loved the idea—so he said—especially since I was willing to work for free and was willing to actually do some investigative reporting rather than just a cut and paste job of the standard mish-mash media material issued by the airport authority.

I had previously developed a relationship with an employee in the Airport Director’s office while in the process of getting our airport listed on the FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center Website, so I had no problem gaining access to the non-public spaces and getting a nice tour guided by my contact there at the airport terminal.

I immediately scheduled the tour, developed my story outline, and within one week of notification to proceed with the story I had the copy written, proof read, and submitted as a Microsoft Word document to the editor via e-mail. I beat the copy deadline by 6 days.

Then disaster struck and I had my little brush with death in the hospital, and when I moved out of the intensive care ward I was greeted with an E-mail from the editor demanding to know the status of my story. Funny thing, I had copied myself, my mother, my girlfriend, and my sister with the same submittal and received comments from EVERYONE complementing my work, so I know that my submittal went through and I didn’t receive any “daemon-failure notices” indicating a problem.

Since I’ve learned that this gentleman generally refuses to answer his telephone or return voice mail messages, I immediately forwarded a copy of my previous submittal including the story attachment a second time, and yet a third time later that week just to be sure that the copy was available for the next issue.

The next issue came out in October, and my article was yet again absent from its pages. I was somewhat crushed personally, but I think that the message was loud and clear. Thanks, but no thanks—the guy just didn’t have the guts to say so personally.

I have absolutely no respect for people who are insolent enough as to waste another person’s time, allow them to make a fool of themselves on their behalf in front of public officials, and not admit their inadequacy or stupidity or error in favor of seclusion and silence. I’m a reasonable adult, and as a minimum all I would have expected was a statement that the publication had changed their mind or didn’t have room for the article or that my writing didn’t meet their standards. SOMETHING, is infinitely better than NOTHING, which is what I have in the way of an explanation to date.

I don’t care who you are, how much money you or your parents have, how good looking you are, or what your feet smell like (or if you smell like dirty feet), all I ask is that you follow through with your agreements with me.

All I wanted to do was get some of my writing published, I was willing to work for free, and after all, a DEAL is still a DEAL, isn’t it?