overheard, alexander technique edition

"Do you know what a monkey is? Does that ring any bells?"

she's gonna make it after all

So! Working is fun.

I've been doing a shade lot of it lately, what with finishing off temping commitments and starting my new position. The temping was a receptionist gig at a wines and spirits company (rhymes with Zemy Grointreau!) and it was fun to answer the phone in a phone-ily sincere "Good Morning/Afternoon, Zemy Grointreau USA!" and press buzzers and wear headsets and drink free tea all day. But a girl needs a little bite to her workday, you know?

Which brings us to the permanent gig. I went to two interviews for an Alexander Technique studio, meeting with a handful of board members, for their part-time Office Manager. It worked! They offered me the job at a decent salary and decent hours, and I spent all day Monday working with the woman I'll be replacing. The job is definitely demanding. In a great way. There's a myriad of responsibilities that fall under my (capable!) domain. Accounting, organizing, archiving, ad hoc press work, light website and editing work.

I'm more than prepared for the steep learning curve. I'm looking forward to working with conscious, artistic people in a gorgeous space. I'm also looking forward - seriously looking forward - to being efficient and productive three days a week and introspective and creative on my writing days, the other two. The knowledge that I'll have a steady job that I'm well-suited for, and that I get to leave all the work behind me when I leave for the day, is a comfort.

It's balancing all the anxieties about that steep learning curve. I need to go from idiote-savant in QuickBooks to pro, and soon! But I get to wear jeans, try some sessions in the Technique from teacher-trainees, and work in Union Square.

Which brings us to one of the best unintended perks of the job: farmers' market and Whole Foods baguettes as the panacea to our new neighborhood's dearth of the stuff. Ohhhh yes.

Unrelatedly, it's my birthday next Friday! And don't think I haven't been plumping up my wishlists, either, material girl that I am. Things might not be coming up roses because c'mon, that many roses would be cloying, but they might certainly be coming up lilacs.

saints be praised

I have found the holy grail, treasure of the Sierra Madre, Atlantis, Shangri-la, or anything else you'd like to call it. A job!

Oh, I know you want to hear all about it and believe you me, I want to tell it. But! I cannot tell you about it yet because I am too busy, up to my ears in temp work. Did you know that people who hire temps are shocked and awed when you display any glimmer of your natural-born intellect? They are! I've won scads of praise in the past two weeks just by being compos mentis.

Speaking of compos mentis! We celebrated with Champagne last night. So I am not! Mentisly compoted! Because of all the bubbles what ganged up on me.

So I will tell you more, yes my pretties, when the bubbly and the temp work have worn off. That is, tomorrow.

Note bene does after-bubbly make me talk like I'm in a Noel Coward song? Oh, I think it does.

steadily depressin', low-down mind-messin'

Well it's not quite the workin' at the carwash blues around here. Mostly because I don't think there is a carwash around here. But if there were one, I might have applied for the job by now.

I haven't been really stretching the mileage of my complaint-mobile about being unemployed, except to Stuart, because that's what For Better or For Worse means. It means For Better, Worse, And When I Sit Around On The Couch Sniffling And Howling Into Your Tee-shirt. Read the fine print on marriage, it's in there.

So aside from sniffling into Stuart's shirt weekly, I haven't been complaining more than a bitter off-hand comment at parties because people, listening to me whine about being unemployed is BORING. It's boring to ME. And it usually requires this big long explanation about how, yes, I'm actually having my artistic mid-life crisis early this year and no, I'm not looking for full-time work in the field of my experience which is being a magazine butt-monkey. I'm looking for part-time work so I can support my writing! Everyone needs a nasty habit, right? Cocaine, writing, cocaine, writing - it's so hard to choose. Having to explain this makes my skin crawl with embarrassment, still, since everyone around me is working full-time jobs and probably thinks I'm insane or spoiled or both. (Actually they're all very nice and none of them think anything LIKE that but hey, welcome to my neuroses!)

I'm breaking my complaining fatwa to discuss my streak. Because I inquired about an interview I'd been on, to a job I might have enjoyed because it involved photography, and the position has been filled. And obviously not by me. I've now forgotten all my ambivalence about the gig in the first place - 5 or so too few hours a week, a hell of a long commute - and am sitting around feeling sorry for myself because I broke my streak. My streak!

My streak is that I've never been to a job interview I haven't subsequently been offered. My streak was sort of my little chunk of rainbow inside, that I interview very well and manage to come off as this cool, collected and capable woman, which is a valuable impression of me that this blog usually invalidates. My streak! My precious streak! There was very little left in my box of confidences and that streak was definitely one of them.

So I'm taking offers. Anyone, suggest anything, that you think I should do for a living, 20 to 25 hours a week. Suggest a career course and I'll probably look into it. Suggest a website and I'll probably visit it. Tell me to buff alligators with earwax for a living and I'll tell you I've got a pal at the Prospect Park Zoo who could probably hook me up. With the alligators, not the earwax.

To make up for losing my streak, I am going to fill that mostly-empty box of confidences with all your crazy suggestions for jobs in which I'd be totally brilliant. Taking all comers.