I talked a little bit about the tendency for service workers to suck up in the post I did about the first day of our cruise. I’ve always known this. When I first got my eyebrow dots, I would go out to restaurants and waiters would fawn over how badass they look. To this day, salespeople (who are always the sort to describe themselves as “people” people) are the most likely to gawp at them, fawn over them, gush over them.

Today, I had occasion to spend time in the company of a guy who is hoping I’ll hire him as a contractor. Granted, this guy is kind of a high-end contractor who had worked with far cooler people than me, but in this economy a gig is a gig, right? So, I’m in the kitchen talking to this guy, and we start off talking about the project and what it will involve and how much he’s going to do and how much I need to do…you know – all the stuff you talk about when you hire someone to do work for you. Then he starts asking about what I do, and I start telling him about my hypertext novel project. Well, after he tells me about his venture into self-publishing, we start talking about the possibilities of e-readers and what’s next for the paper book and the publishing world, etc., and he’s just going all gooey about the project.

While I’m flattered and happy whenever someone gets excited about the project, it’s just so hard for me to tell. This guy is a creative professional. He makes his living by envisioning possibilities and making them into realities, and those sorts of people are easy to talk to when it comes to sharing artistic vision. On the other hand, I was at a gathering a week or so ago where I was talking about the project to a person who kept saying “Yes, that sounds fascinating,” but had that look on their face that is less a smile than a grimace, and who cut me off in the middle of a sentence to dash off. So…not a fan.

I’m hoping that when the project is done, there’ll be enough people who think it’s cool that it becomes a viable thing. Then again, I’m blessed in that if it doesn’t, I will have lost nothing, and gained everything in the experience. So – I press forward.