17
Nov
2005
Hollaback
Tell me what you hollered back. Don’t take his picture.
Tell me what you said. Tell me you told him he was a “limp dick.”
Tell me you got into a fight.
Kameron Hurley
“Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”
- Gloria Steinem
Archive for November, 2005
17
Nov
2005
I Am a Little Drunk
Good times, good times.
17
Nov
2005
At the Gym
So, I was at the gym tonight, and this huge guy, I mean, broad, not tall (not much taller than me, anyway), with that amazingly defined triangular shape, the huge shoulders, walked up the stairs ahead of me.
And I was transfixed.
Not in a “Wow! That’s hot!” way (I tend not to like overly butched up guys) but in a “Wow! I want to be that buff!” way.
Funny.
17
Nov
2005
In Which the Protagonist Drinks Whiskey & Is Happy to Be Alive
Beautiful night. Cold, but good. Just got back from the gym. Jazz playing. Roommates cooking dinner and chatting in the big kitchen. Drinking some whiskey, transcribing some writing work I did this afternoon. Getting ready for a great weekend in NY.
Doesn’t get much better.
17
Nov
2005
On Being Better
It’s been some time since I talked about being better. I guess you could say I’ve been too busy working at it to reflect on it.
To be honest, I’m not really sure where I’m at with it. I’m writing like a maniac, at lunch, on the bus, on the train, at home. I’m switching out notebooks soon because this one’s full. I have a marketable book that’s halfway done. I’m about to drop another waist size as well (in a good way), and my biceps have gotten bigger and denser after many weeks of neglect. I’ll be in NY this weekend, and Ohio next week to visit a very, very good friend of mine who I’ve know for more than a decade. I’m going home for Christmas, paying my own way totally this time. I’m moving to NY next year, and moving again a year after that.
My job pays me a living, I like the people I work with, and I have a bit of breathing time this week before I get dumped with another whirlwind of “real work” terror in December. That’s pretty fair.
I’m working out regularly and getting work done. Though you may not think it’s on the list, I’m also glad I’ve had some time for blogging.
There are still things I desperately want, but I’m at the point where I’m actively working toward all of my goals, so there isn’t much to complain about except, “Gee, it takes a lot of time to be the person you want to be.” And that’s not much of a criticism at all.
I am still in constant wonder at the way things are turning out.
I think I’m getting far more than I hoped for.
17
Nov
2005
Thoughts On Meaningful Work
I went out ot lunch today at a local place that sits on the first floor of one of the buildings in our corporate complex. I haven’t been here since I had the flu, because after eating their baked potato soup, I promptly went home and vomited.
I’ve been coming here for two years, and the turnover in the waitstaff is predictable. Most people try to stay out of food service if they can, or use it to pay bills to get through school or divorces. For some, a very few, like, say, my parents, it becomes a career. But not always because you want it to.
It’s not usually you’re first choice.
You don’t sit around in fourth grade and say, “I want to be a waitress with I grow up.” And if you do like the work, you’re not supposed to.
I’ve always had a terror of these sorts of jobs, likely inspired by my parents, who dreamed of something like what I’ve now got: my ability to walk out of college and at the very least get myself a 401 (K) plan, health benefits, enough money to pay rent in a decent town, time to pursue other passions, holidays off, paid vacation.
They didn’t want me to spend my relative youth the way they did, working 12-hour shifts, weekends, holidays, coming home smelling of burger grease and french fries.
The irony, of course, is that my parents did achieve that comfortable white collar life, the dog and the big house and the (mostly) college educated children, a little something for retirement.
And they did it flipping burgers. It got them where they wanted to be, just a little later in life than they probably wanted.
But when I’m here at lunch, watching a handful of the servers still working food service, paying bills, I wonder – do they have a plan? Do they want to run this place? Or is this enough? And are they OK with that? Am I? Because some people are OK with it.
I wasn’t.
Certainly, there are things I like about all of the jobs I’ve had. I worked harder as a waitress and had less freedom than the job I have now, and I make twice as much money now, only the labor we exert in serving others is seen as a lesser labor than sitting on our asses typing out words and numbers and running paper reports about actual work done by others.
I take some comfort in the fact that the tower crews whose work I report on make more money than I do. You know how they get up those 200 ft cell phone towers?
They climb.
I think I have some guilt about how I work. I have some guilt about being on the other side of the table. I don’t understand money. I don’t understand the value of work. I look around at what everyone else makes for what they do, for how hard they work, and it boggles my mind at how undervalued the people who actually do things are. We pay managers six figures to run reports and bitch about how they don’t know what’s going on in the field. You want to know what’s going on in the field? Put on a hard hat and get into the field. I spend all day reviewing tower audits, and I’ve never been to a cell site.
I remember, while working in the corporate office at the burger joint, when the VPs realized the company had grown so big that over half the office staff hadn’t come up from behind the grill. They’d never seen a deep fryer up close. My mom helped spearhead a campaign to encourage office folks to get their food handlers’ cards and go and help out in one of the burger joints for a day.
For paper pushes, it was an eye opener.
And, I think, for some, deeply satisfying.
We get so divorced from real, tangible work, hunched at our desks, making up reports, fielding information. But at day’s end you have nothing to show for it but a paycheck.
For me, hey, that’s really all I need.
But I must say, there are days when I’d like to learn how to climb a 200 ft tower and replace an antenna.
They’d pay me more, too.
17
Nov
2005
I’m Going to Lunch
It occurs to me why, after a while, writers don’t read reviews.
I’ll take my trusted critiquers over random slapdash any day.
17
Nov
2005
"When You Fall in Love With Something…"
“They didn’t want me in the gym,” she remembered. “They wanted me to have a try at it and go. I got punched right in my face and I just wanted to get right back at him. Ever since then I knew that I loved it. I’ve always been intrigued by watching boxing and I’ve always been a boxing fan, so going in there, trying it, and understanding the discipline it takes and how difficult of a sport it really is, I wanted to really be the best at it.”
And yea, they’ve got a mention about her looks (sigh). But let’s be happy it was a half-sentence throw-away line, and not the subject of the whole damn article.
17
Nov
2005
17
Nov
2005
Women
These are the women who went to the polls in Liberia last week. They ignored the threats of the young men who vowed more war if their chosen presidential candidate, a former soccer player named George Weah, didn’t win. “No Weah, no peace,” the boys yelled, chanting in the streets and around the polling stations.
The women in Liberia, by and large, ignored those boys and made Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who is 67, the first woman to be elected to lead an African country. I wasn’t surprised that Mr. Weah immediately said the vote had been rigged, although international observers said it had not been. In the half-century since the Europeans left Africa, its men have proved remarkably adept at self-delusion.
Novels
