It is true. Artenshiur and I *do* get up to some strange things sometimes. Doesn't pay the bills yet, but it feeds the mind. I scribble stories sometimes too.
By day, though, I'm a (not so) mild-mannered researcher working toward my PhD in biomedical sciences with a focus on virology. It's like a job, but two thirds of my salary goes towards my diploma instead of my standard of living.
I'm an aquatic ecologist with personal interests in fish behavioural ecology. Currently paid to be an ecological consultant in Tasmania, Australia, because there's actually water here, no one is yet willing to pay me to do what I want to do and I can't afford toput myself through a PhD.
I've been an army medic working in Afghanistan. (a little bit all over the, eh, 'country' - it's a sweet gypsy life) ..aaaand, now my year is up, I'm busy making myself superfluous, and will be utterly unemployed in 8 days' time. With any luck I have enough saved up that I can find a place to live, and a job(that doesn't involve getting back in the war right away, or joining a PMC) without starving.
Hello everybody. I'm choir conductor and professional freak (no, I don't get paid for the last, and barely for the first). I'm also a reaaally beginning amateur writer. And speaking of professional occupations: Warren, have you thought about the possibility of creating a roleplaying game inspired in this world?
I earn my money bartending and waitressing at a club that is mostly populated by aged Italians and young families. Not sure I'd call it "living" but it keeps my savings healthy.
I am the Atlanta market coordinator for the largest tool company in the world. (Secretly, I am an archaeologist studying the Southeastern Spanish Mission Complex and a cultural anthropologist linking post-disaster behavior and zombie literature.)
I spend my day contemplating how hard it would be to push two biros through the backs of my eyes and into whatever section of my brain controls my legs, that I may use them as improvised levers to perform a demented and bloody jig to pass the time.
I beat the crap out of a galley of captured drones, chained to benches, half-starved, moving in a zombielike synch to the beat of a drum at the oars of a metaphorical ghost shit.
Currently, electronics section, department store wage slavery. Under-appreciated, underpaid, overwhelmed. 5 mile, 2 hour walk, 8 hours on my feet. Angry Starbucks slurping rednecks in my face, all day, every day. Sartre was wrong; Hell is working retail.