Once you retire from the nine to five world, you (well at least me) lose touch with the flow of the weekdays. Tuesday and Saturday could be Wednesday. It really doesn’t matter. No more alarms to set. No dragging a razor across your throat then choking off your air supply with a necktie, the noose of the working man. I have no idea how I did it, straight outta college and right into an advertising agency full of lunatics. I guess it produced a state of numbness and forty years later you stick your head outta your tortoise shell and think:
What the hell was I doing?
It’s one of the running themes in my new book: Occupational Studies. (Yes of course that’s a subtle plug. It’s doing well by the way.)
You follow this pattern just because it’s expected that you do. And I never questioned it. Stupid shit like who decided 9 to 5 was the optimum time to think. 11 to 7 coulda been better but back then it wasn’t a workday unless you got crammed into the subway smelling fresh and often not fresh armpits. Everyone’s already sweating from the underground heat – even in the winter – you walk by at least ten people begging for money that you want to punch as if to say:
Why the F do I look like Clark Kent on speed while you’re holding a sign asking me for money via a cardboard sign with typos?
The other thing was we all (in New York we all = millions) had to travel at the same time, cram in some lunch at the same time, guzzle coffee at 3 to stay awake, then all return home at the same time. Imagine if some genius embraced the concept of staggering things to even out the ebbs and flows. Nope. It took a pandemic that killed millions of people to discover that.
Hey wait a minute. I can get dressed from the neck up, stay in my pajamas, sleep later so I was more productive all in the quiet of our home. My commute consisted of walking from the bathroom to the makeshift office. You made your own lunch thus saving about a hundred bucks and no subway fares. Just how stupid have we been following this dumbass working routine?
But the ultimate stupidity is that after those two eye opening years, most places of business have gone right back to the old work routine. Thankfully I never did. Then a couple of weeks ago my husband comes home and announces that he may be transferred to Houston. Houston like in Texas? Will I be “on board” with that? Let me think about that – NO! If you can flip open your laptop and be in Texas, why would anyone make a conscious decision to move there? Let’s say it’s the Hot Topic on our daily run of The View. They’d have to pull off a Patty Hearst to get me there. How this will all resolve itself is a long-term decision. For me it’s a matter of life and death. If I open my mouth with my extreme left liberal hootenanny, I’ll be killed. If I have to press a button for Ted Cruz, my finger will burn off. Texas is the only state that flies their state flag one inch higher than the flag of the United States of America.
I may have to adopt phrases like yes m’am and isn’t that something or bless your lilo heart.
They’ll discover I’m a fraud in one second. And the worst part is I’ll have to adopt the old pattern of life I’ve discarded. Tuesday can’t be Saturday anymore cuz I’ll be late for church. I realize you’re not forced to go, but come on. It’s worth a demerit and I’m already sporting an arsenal of far too many more.