I'm an actor (you may have seen me advertising for a popular Scandinavian sports drink in a series of American-Football-themed ads this past fall if you live in Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Finland) who, among various survival jobs, has worked with the World Science Festival and the TriBeCa Film Festival as a Street Fair Supervisor.
My most recent survival job was mandated by the state: a two week stint as a Grand Juror in the County of Kings.
Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore…I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.