tramp dread
n.— «My excuse is that, as a freelance journalist, I do not receive any paid holiday. If I stop working, the money stops coming in—and my finances are so precariously balanced that simply forgoing one week’s wages could bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. I suffer from what Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens refer to as “tramp dread”—the fear that if you stop churning stuff out you won’t merely fall behind on the mortgage, you’ll be completely destitute by the end of the month.» —“The office clown” by Toby Young Guardian (United Kingdom) Sept. 6, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...