I write to you, darling, from my quaint fluorescently lit and wood paneled cubicle at the PR Company where I’m currently freelancing. It was a little drab at first, what with the pound of dirt in my keyboard and push pin holes everywhere. But I spruced it up with some Clorox wipes and a vine plant which has grown exponentially in the last week. Non stop florescent lighting may make me pasty and irritable, but for our green chlorophyll-ed friends, it’s just the thing. I think. Also I write from Microsoft XP operating system, with its signature inane *help* messages and loud, clackety keyboard. In fact many of you within a mile of the Upper East Side are probably hearing me type right now. The floors are carpeted with that familiar thin blue speckled woven pattern. When I ran out of staples yesterday, I filled out and turned in a legthy form to get a new box.
In short, I’m at an office job. It’s been awhile since I’ve done this. And honestly I’ve never been at an office job as office-job-like as this one. I graduated into the Internet bubble. Remember free Snapple, foos ball, continuous loop of The Big Lebowski on in the lounge? Remember having a lounge? At one place I had a “Thinking Beanbag” next to my regular Aeron chair (ordered of course from beanbag.com – remarkably still in business). I’ve always been on a Mac. And somehow, by the grace of god, I’ve always had a window in my sights. But it’s a new day, in the new new economy, and a girl takes what she can get, and is damn happy about it also. I’m damn happy about it. Did I say that yet? Damn fucking happy.
Along with my office-job, is an office-job paycheck. It’s been awhile since I saw one of those. When a girl rounds out about a year pinching pennies, she starts to prioritize. While walking 10 blocks out of my way to avoid an ATM surcharge, or taking the bus home instead of the train so my metrocard would only get charged once, I had plenty of time to think what is really important to me if ever had spending money again. 1. New sneakers. That was sort of a given. My old ones were three years old with holes, and smelled kinda of worse than any shoes I had ever smelt before. Check. I went with Reebok classics, rockin it Eve-style. 2. IPod. Lord lord lord, do I want one of those things. I’ve been drooling over it for a year. I dream about it at night sometimes – okay a lot of times. Anyway, as soon as my Visa card starts another cycle (May 22), that baby’s mine. And 3. Therapy. That’s right, the old sit on the couch and whine about your parents thing. But like I told my mom, my childhood was fine, it’s my adulthood that’s the real problem. Jami warns me that there’s a lot of crying involved, but since I cry like 8 times a day anyway, I figure doing it in the presence of a trained professional might make it productive. So anyway, it’s been a rough few months for me, and I have these romantic notions of therapy and figuring shit out, and whatever. Whatever.
In any case, I need a strategy of coping with the new office job so I can pay some bills, while not completely losing sight of my greater goals. And greater goals, fuck – I need some of those too. Let the crying begin.
It’s fun that when one’s out of school spring break can mean anything, and fall at anytime. I made mine nearly all of March. But for full disclosure, I’ve really taken the whole winter off. I never could figure out why. There was just all these open issues swirling around. I could write and write and write, but I had no endings for anything. No final thoughts, no way to wrap up the last paragraph with a joke and an exasperated sigh.
There’s the fact that the whole world seems to be spiraling into doom. I considered developing a series of essays with the loose theme, “Asshole of the Moment”. Its features might include the president, the governor, the guy painting the apartment downstairs who will not stop being a jerk to me , the head of the MTA, whomever decided to cut off IFC from my channel selection, and any one else contributing bad energy to the world. But then I thought that perhaps reacting to this bad energy in kind might exacerbate the gloom and doom, in my world and yours. That and when I’m pissed off about something I have a tendency to sit by myself and stew rather than producing anything worthwhile. I’m not good at being pissed off. I try and leave it to Bill Maher and other professionals.
In some sort of cosmic energy shift, or just stroke of luck, I have recently started working like crazy. Timing is good because I’ve been broke for too damn long. The new iPods just came out and I’ve been lusting after that thing for a year. I’m getting one in the next month no matter what, though I might possibly wait until mercury is out of retrograde, and also the inevitable first-release bugs are worked out. Besides for money it’s been a blessing to be working 12 hours a day since I’ve been going through a break up, and it’s a hard one. It was a relationship who’s beginning caught me by surprise, and also it’s end. I haven’t finished going through the five stages of loss yet. I passed (1) denial, (2) bargaining quite handily, but I seem to be stuck with one foot in (3) anger and the other in (4) despair. So feigning optimism, (5) acceptance must be just around the bend. (Sound convincing?)
I am projecting that to happen when it starts to get hot. All my life stages eerily correspond to changes in the weather. Spring has consistently been a bad season for me. I am of course thrilled to come out from the oppression of hats, scarves, and gloves. I had several fantasies about setting fire to my winter coat. But I think I hate the winter so much that the skittish nature of spring is a let down. I expect so much from the temperature shift, and it never measures up, sunny one day, and cold rain the next. Summer however generally delivers, and I repair winter’s pale skin, slack muscles, and emotional disappointments.
It’s also been exactly a year since I returned from Paris which is an anniversary I keep trying to avoid. I was supposed to have a lot more of my shit together by now, but no dice. What I’ve termed a “Transition Phase” persists. It’s going to be bearable though, as long as I have 30 gigs of music in my pocket.
New Angeles Monthly, June 2008
Weekend America, March 30, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008
Nil by Mouth is written by Neille Ilel. Neille is a writer, reporter and user interface specialist in Los Angeles. If you think that's a lot, she's also got a host of meandering sidelines including improv comedy, tennis, cooking, drawing and thinking about learning to play the guitar.
Nil is her given name. It's a long story.
E-mail her here:
nil
@
neille
.com