� Maria (Adrienne Shelly) to Matthew (Martin Donovan) in "Trust"

Exciting news: someone did a search on "Hank Stuever" from a Washington Post server and got to my diary! Do you suppose it could be Hank himself? Hank, the Style section is a thing of beauty, and I love you as much as a straight girl could.

I am considering taking the loss loss losses and damn-it-all selling off all the assets I have left, except for the IRA and maybe the life insurance, and converting to cash in advance of the war. Also maybe in advance of other things (keep reading). Thoughts?

I am so looking forward to Ladies� Cocktail Night tomorrow that there�s a part of me that feels insensible about it, like I�m an animal. We start at Linda�s around 7:30, after my haircut and after I have ditched the office-girl clothes for something more festive, and I�m leaving my car at home so the taxi driver can just pour me out onto my porch when I can drink no more. Holy shit do we have shit to talk about, Vanessa and me.

The maximum amount you can take out in federal loans per year is $18,000. You can probably get private loans for the rest, I learned this weekend, although I also see in the NYT this morning that the finite amount available for student loans is being tested by the number of people who don�t have the resources they used to (tell me about it) and have to borrow much more than they�d originally planned; I�ll worry about that later. If you die, there is no obligation to repay the federal loans � according to the government, dead is dead, a policy with which I agree. Private lenders are not so inclined to the teleological perspective, however, and if you die owing college money to one or more of them, your estate is responsible for making good on your debt. This may seem like a macabre line of inquiry, but � and I may seem dementedly spiteful � even from the nothingness of dead is dead, I will be damned if I�m going to let my father martyr himself all the way to his own grave about what he�s forced to undertake on my behalf, how my debts have drained his retirement accounts the same way my upkeep as a tyke was one big opportunity cost to him, he will never be allowed to live his life outside of the sucking pit of his offspring�s selfishness, etc. Hell no. But, and here�s where it helps to have a pal in the insurance biz, I also found out that it is possible to insure these private loans against the death or incapacity of their holder � "you can insure anything," Vanessa pointed out � so that if I checked out it would not be dear old long-suffering dad having to cough up the balance. This is good news.

Here was an idea Catharine and I had when we talked on Friday, for me to make lists of (a) qualities that I need in a job and career; (b) qualities that it would be nice to have in ditto; and (c) qualities that absolutely cannot be present. I didn�t spend as much time on these that I should have, but here�s what I�ve got so far, in no order other than the one in which I scribbled them down.

The necessary stuff

1. (See second item on the no-dice list below.) I have to be able to keep learning new things. Being a programmer, for instance � note: I do not want to and will not be a programmer � fits the bill in that there are always new worlds to conquer, new fields of inquiry, new ways to solve problems, new problems entirely. As a programmer, you never have to be a hack unless you�re unmotivated and would prefer to tread water. You never have to tread water at all. Let me repeat, programming is not an option � don�t worry.
2. Self-motivation must be a necessary factor to succeeding.
3. It has to be at least reasonably remunerative. Sorry if this makes me sound shallow, but I do have a certain standard of living I�d like to maintain, not that I�m talking Cristal or anything, but I�d like to be able to go out to dinner, rent movies, buy cds, go on vacations, see bands, get haircuts, have new shoes or a sweater every so often. I have a salary objective in mind that takes the downmarket into account and that I will revise from time to time, and right now it�s almost exactly in between the software apex and the Gastro nadir.
4. I have to be able to do it in Seattle.
5. I have to be able to do it elsewhere, if I want.
6. I want it to be difficult. Or at least the getting there part I want to be difficult, the job itself I�ll settle for constantly challenging.
7. I say "getting there" because I really do imagine that what�s going to be necessary � and I am thinking, Bring it on � is some kind of a break from what I�ve been doing so far, because compiling these lists in even this cursory manner has really made me face up to, hm, like an intellectual glass ceiling to what I�ve been doing for the last several years. Like copy-editing, for example: there comes a point at which you pretty much have it down, you know? I will never disavow my liberal arts education or back-burner what it gave me, but my brain has other needs that it is not satisfying, and I am not sure that it ever will.
8. The job must involve critical inquiry.
9. It must feed both the documentarian and the taxonomist in me.
10. {I�ll tell you later.}
11. Ultimately � I mean, I would not expect this in my first week on the job � there has to be learning that goes both ways, me learning from other people and also me teaching things to other people.
12. Collegiality.
13. Health insurance.
14. I must have responsibilities that are mine alone. I will not have my performance evaluated strictly on the success or failure of a group. I want specs, deadlines, accountability, and consequences.
15. Performance review that is based, at least in part, on some established metric. Quantitative analysis.
16. Job security within the industry, so that if I get fired or the company folds or if I accept a position that turns out to be a dud, I can get one somewhere else. Theoretically, I mean.
17. I require some schedule flexibility. I do not want to get up at five to five, and I do not want to punch a clock.
18. I want to have to think and speak on my feet, and this in particular I want accountability for. One of the coolest things I ever had to do at a job was make a presentation about a database I�d just customized, walk the assembled group through various scenarios and explain why each one went the way it did, and then field questions. That was the bomb! And I was so good at it! I�d love to be able to do things like that every so often.
19. I would like to work with smart people who recognize me as one of their kind.
20. I need to be able to write about some aspect of the job and make it interesting, show how it is interesting, to other people.
21. When someone asks me, in the evening, "What did you do at work today?" I do not want to say Oh, nothing or feel ashamed of how idiotic and demeaning would be any answer I could give. I want to have an answer and I want it to be something I can be proud of.
22. A rock-solid, in-writing sexual harassment policy that is actually enforced.

1. I�d like to be able to have interesting conversations over lunch.
2. The opportunity to make friends of my colleagues, or maybe I mean the possibility of that happening.
3. The studying-to-do-it part of the job can take place in Seattle.
4. Public speaking or at least contact with the extra-corporate public.
5. A non-invasive HR department. I�d rather deal mostly with the manager who sees me on a regular basis and has some kind of ongoing dialogue and relationship with me, and I want that person to stick up for me to HR ignorami if and as necessary.
6. Something that is *mine*, a project or domain that is acknowledged to be my own.
7. A modicum of white-collar professionalism, please. No dirty t-shirts for the guys and dirrty tank tops for the girls. No midriffs. Ideally, no one in the workplace will need to be told that Birkenstocks and grubby bare feet aren�t cool, because they will take it for granted.
8. Also ideally, the dress code wouldn�t go too far in the other direction, like towards nylons and suits and heels every day.
9. The ability to do research in some capacity.

1. It cannot be anything that makes me feel dirty or fraudulent or as if I am betraying my abilities or driven to self-medication. Here I am remembering the brief paralegal stint during which I composed demand letters in personal-injury cases.
2. It cannot be like my English-majory jobs, where no matter what the job description is, the position revises itself to encompass my precise skill set. I�ve written about this before, the maddening tautology of my employment to date where what I do becomes exactly what I can do, my job becomes the job of being me.
3. Random pee tests.
4. The job can�t be solitary, that is to say me sitting in a cube or an office all day long shutting out the world while I chew the stingy cud that is my designated mouthful of it. I need human contact, I need other voices.
5. I will not report to sexists, racists, or bigots.

OK, that�s all for now. I am hatching some more specific ideas based on all of these list items, but, as ever, I�d be interested to hear what you have to say so far. And here�s something else: What if I did come up with a plan that satisfied every one of my requirements, that would take great effort but that I knew I could do, and that made me excited to think about and that I�d be proud to report about myself? If I had a little bit of money sitting around, how much of it should I be prepared to spend on making the plan happen? I don�t know how any other answer than Every last nickel is morally permissible.