Alured de Valer: Blog

The couple that's owned the little hometown weekly newspaper I've been working at for three years has agreed to sell after running the place for almost 50 years. The buyer claims they want me to stay on. We'll see.

I receive Social Security disability benefits since having a stroke and am limited in how much income I'm allowed to earn. I'm almost making that just from Patreon now and would probably exceed the limit if I devoted myself to this full-time. I've promised to stay at least through football season.

One thing I'd like to change is my workload (I wrote 15 articles this week). I'd be willing to handle just the sports stuff as a stringer (X dollars per article) if they'll get someone else to do the other community news I've been covering. That would give me more time and, hopefully, energy to devote to this.

Something I don't think the new folks are aware of is I'm committed to being gone for about three weeks over Christmas and New Year's to visit my sister in Australia. That'll mean missing at least two publication cycles. It'll be interesting to see how they react to that.

If I can cut back to one or two days per week without all the special projects the current bosses like to throw at me, I might be able to be more consistent/productive on this endeavor. I'll keep y'all updated on how things progress.

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Chapter 48 of Victory Tour has been submitted. Sorry for the delay, but life happens sometimes.

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I either hit a wrong button or failed to hit the correct one when I submitted this week's update. Then there was a family gathering that ate up most of the day. Imagine my surprise when I finally got to check on things only to see the file was being held still awaiting being uploaded. It is now in the queue and will be posted ASAP.

Thanks for your patience.

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Going to have to skip another week, folks. The laptop containing the master file for VT has been in the shop for a week. It didn't help that the fellow working on it left town for two days to go watch his son play in a state championship football game. The good news is the team won, the kid scored three touchdowns and was named offensive MVP. Lots of celebrating going on around here now.

I won't be posting the next chapter of Victory Tour this week. Too much going on IRL.

All I have to do is make deadline a day early, survive Thanksgiving and cover a third-round playoff game in the next six days.

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