What do membership managers, therapists, curators, teachers, ministers, reporters, photographers, counselors, assisted-living directors, and TV producers have in common? According to CNNMoney.com, they all have “stressful jobs that pay badly.”

My friend Tom (“Mr. Blogfodder”) could not possibly have foreseen what perfect therapy his link would offer at the end of my own stressful day.

For me, one of the toughest things about being a writer is that everyone else is also a writer—technically, at least. I don’t have a particularly fragile ego, but it can wear thin when the only feedback I get is that my department’s copy “tends to have too many commas.”

I find myself longing for my past as a pre-press color technician.

Alas, gone are the days of defending my professional judgment with terms like “dot gain,” “chromatic aberration,” and “metamerism.” My only defense these days lies in verbs, nouns, objects, clauses, and periods. Oh, yeah—and commas. Way too many commas.