Archive for the ‘a material world’ Category

Driving home from work tonight, I fell into a game of What If. That thing you do when you imagine that something catastrophic happens in your world that destroys everything, grinds your life right into the ground, and you have to restart entirely. Have to—it’s not your fault, because there was the Terrible Thing. It alleviates the guilt of that occasional wish you experience, that you could just duck out of your life. Just throw your hands up and slip on a pair of sunglasses and kind of slip out of your life. New place, new name, new accent, if you want. Though I’ve always been really kind of awful at accents.

I decided that I wanted to go someplace warm, and probably that has a lot to do with the wind-chill factor and the single-digit temperatures that are whittling me down to a shivering little nub. And I’m going to leave everything I own. Even the books? Even the books. Even the pictures?

You know the three wishes game? Which is pretty much–that. You get three wishes. And you spend a lot of time crafting them carefully, wording them in very specific ways so that you are not screwed by a mischievous genie over a technicality because you had a dangling modifier or forgot to be precise in your choice of adjective. I spent a lot of time working on my major wish, and it was this: to be perfect. I don’t remember how, exactly, I phrased it, but what it boiled down to is that I wanted to be perfect in every way–physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually perfect. That is a whole lot of perfect. That is a whole lot of wishing.

I want to be perfect and unassailable. I want to be absolutely bullet proof. I want no one to ever find fault with me, because there are no faults to find, no cracks, seams or crevices.

I have discovered the most amazing thing of all about living in the future, and it is that you can call up the nostalgic, rosy past whenever you like, with a click of your fingers and a credit card number. Did you know that onto the Nintendo Wii you can download the classics of your gaming childhood? Did you know that if you had a Wii , and a wireless connection and six bucks, you could be playing the original Legend of Zelda? This is among the most beautiful things that I can think of, and it makes me happier than happy. It makes me the happiest, in fact.

My baby brother and I spent a ridiculous number of hours in the basement with our Nintendo and our enormous collection of games, flailing our arms and yelling at the screen and mashing buttons and throwing our controllers and stomping around and hunching forward filled with grim determination and saying things like YOU CAN DO IT GO GO GO GO YAY YOU WIN YOU ARE SO GREAT!

They don’t tell you, in freelancing school, how great the potential for enormous amounts of guilt is, coming at you from all directions and every angle, pew pew pew. Maybe that’s because there is actually no Freelancing School. If there were, there ought be a class called Warmth vs. Freedom: The Pants/No-Pants Divide. Oh, and Are You Really Going to Eat That, Over the Sink, With Your Hands? Isolation and the Freelancer’s Fragile Dignity and Self-Respect. But mostly, You Will Work Every Hour and Regret the Hours You Don’t Work, and When You Are Waiting For More Work to Come in You Will Panic Because You’re Not Working and the Idea of Sleeping in Just a Little or Even Watching a Movie Fills You with Shame. That might be a little long for a class title, though.

So for the past two weeks or so, I’ve had a handful of rush jobs, for the proofreading people I work for.

More or less officially, I am out of work. I had a contract job as a proofreader at an advertising agency; they wanted me full time, and to run the department. I said I can only do part-time! They took me on, anyway. When I didn’t change my mind about working for them full-time, they went ahead and hired someone full-time, but told me that I’d stay on part-time. Except, as it turns out, there are no great and greasy gobs of extra proofreading work to be thrown my way, so after a couple of weeks of “not yet! start your part-time schedule next week!” I have been officially told that there is no work for me, and they’ll call me when that changes. If it changes.

I’ve got some proofreading jobs that I do at home in my underpants, and I am pursuing some Leads, vis a vis some more writing jobs which I would also perform in my underpants.

Because E is ridiculously awesome, but especially so at work, they rewarded him. I am as shocked as you are–an employer recognizing that an employee goes way above and far beyond? An employer who says holy crap, dude, your sense of responsibility and commitment and dedication is magnificent, is inspiring, is beautiful to behold and we do not think that the money that we provide to you in the form of a paycheck is enough to acknowledge the fact of your awesomeness. An employer who says here is a bonus, because you deserve it and are very attractive and have many good qualities. Hooray!

E has been working his ass off doing wonderful things for his little company, and they said thanks with a very large travel voucher. You tell us where you want to go and what you want to spend it on–a hotel, a safari, airfare–and we will make the arrangements for you.

Sometimes I am taken up by such a tornado of amazement and wonder that I land three states away, blinking and with two broken legs and only one shoe. Probably because I have a gentle and completely credulous nature which makes me believe you when you say that it was you in the big dance scene in Flashdance (true story, and I don’t want to talk about it). It’s never beautiful, mystical and sensitively spiritual things like dew drops on roses and the small and wondrous pink nose of a kitten that makes me contemplate the nature of a loving Universe and blows my hair back–no, what usually astonishes me and makes me wide-eyed with awe is when I am struck anew by how much in the future we are totally living.

It’s always the little things that get me.

The jeans in my drawers, all three pairs, all come from Old Navy. I have three pairs of jeans that are no longer my size set aside to give away, and they are all Old Navy jeans too. There is nothing wrong with Old Navy jeans, really–they are very inexpensive and come in an exciting variety of washes and shapes and styles and colors enough to turn your pretty head. But besides the fact that they aren’t quite right–for instance, the boot-cut pair are embarrassingly just a smidge too short, and too-short pants on a woman is one of my pet peeves–it somehow feels like Old Navy jeans are not enough.

There is premium denim out there, people. Premium! For a premium, admittedly. But in the world exists brands of luxury denim that are not only luxuriously made of hammered gold and pressed diamonds and sheets of fabric that have been woven by fairies in a land of dreams where wishes always come true and McDonald’s breakfast is served 24 hours a day, but they also have magical properties.