photo credit: where are the joneses
If this week is any indication, things must be getting better, economically speaking and all. Here’s why:
1) I will have been employed by external sources, working outside of the confines of my glorious and overly decorated (according to some) apartment this entire week. Whoot. This hasn’t happened since early May, 2009. And boy, are my arms tired.
photo credit: Carly & Art
I’ve been bad. The sleep-creep has started up again. Remember my 4 am-1 pm sleep sched back in the summer of neverending consequence? Ah yes, well, it’s back with a bit of a vengeance.
I blame this in part on some really good books I’ve been reading at night. The kind of books that keep you up until 1 am and when you look at your clock and find you’re not tired (the books are that good/exciting/compelling/insomnia-inducing), you just keep reading.
Few things make me more cranky than waiting for money that’s due to me. I’ve trained myself not to even expect a check until after the first 30 days post invoicing, but when someone tells you it’s going to be sent on one day, and then it isn’t, it’s even worse than if they’d told you it was going to be 60 days in the first place.
That said, I realize companies have their own systems of paying you, and I’m sure those are highly intricate and complex machinations, but God, man! I have my own needs for the money I’ve earned (past tense) from you.
photo credit: digital_monkey
You know how yesterday I was all moans and groans about my freelance gig for the next two weeks? All, Woe to the weary freelancer! So tiring, being in an office all day long! So hard to fit in your blogging, your workouts, and your social time! How do the employed do it?
It does take some getting used to. I am working on a theory about this, but I think it’s because it’s unnatural. People were not meant to sit in tall, heavily air-conditioned buildings staring at computer screens and reading Gawker all day long, listening to loud, plummy-voiced fellows talking about how to get relationship dish from underaged, inexperienced actors at film screenings. People were meant to be active, and enjoy life, and make a difference—do something good for themselves, and each other.
YUD woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. (Whatever that really means, and however it was derived, the fact is, she was cranking like a bizotch. And she took it out on poor Henry P. Torrence, Coordinator, among others. Not that he didn’t deserve it. But I’ll get to that later.)
At any rate, the crankiness is more likely due to lack of sleep, and “woman troubles,” and heat (more people kill each other in hot weather, does that surprise anyone?), and, not least, the fact that she is going into an office today, for the next 2 weeks—something that causes anxiety as well as pleasure over upcoming monies to be paid and boozy deliciousness and/or shoes to be bought.
Today, I am reminded of something. The blissful waves of the 4-day weekend have washed from me, and I am suddenly staring stark in the face of something. Something bad.
Despite the frequency with which I scan job postings, send resumes, and, the past week at least, go into an office for freelance work, there is this problem I have.
Glorious midtown, 6:15 pm
This marks my second day in the NYC office of TK publishers, where I have a 3-week freelance copy editing assignment.
Yesterday not much was ready for me, and the blessed saint who hired me allowed me to go home early after a quick perusal of the word list and style guide. I thankfully agreed and departed by 3 to hit the gym and then nurse my wounds from Sunday night.
photo credit: Diego Cupolo
Your Unemployed Daughter has adopted some questionable behavior in this, her 7th week of unemployment. I suppose it stands to reason.
She stays up far too late. At first she was blaming it on that Caleb Carr book she was reading, where the psychologist tracks down the lady who kills her own babies, breaking the “natural bonds” of motherhood that every man believes every woman to have, at least in the late 1800s.
Despite that description, it’s pretty compelling. This lady is pure evil, reminding me, in fact (jaunty leather jacket? manipulative shifts from victim to sex kitten to destroyer?) of Whori Sturgess, aka, That Woman Who Fired Me. I’m about 100 pages from the end. It’s hard to put down.
photo credit: gettyam
Remember when Magazine Editor was like, the dreamiest dream job around? The one that all the rom-com characters in movies (the pretty, smart, successful ones who dressed well and had handsome boyfriends and really tricked-out day planners) were assigned?
Whatever happened to THAT? Did we writerly folks do something to deserve this “media apocalypse”? Did we fly too near the sun, in too many pairs of Christian Louboutin heels? Are editors now paying some karmic debt to society?
Shouldn’t that be Madoff’s problem?
