Sunday Top Ten: We Don't Know So We Wait for Tomorrow

You'd think "dream jobs" woulda been an easier topic, but maybe it's something I've never truly thought about, not specifically, like B2 does here, and how Rob does in High Fidelity when he makes his "Top 5 Dream Jobs" list. [Coincidentally, many of my ex-boyfriends declared a perceived unique affinity to the character of Rob when that movie came out. He's very rumply-haired, obsessive, emo and dissatisfied and likes making mix tapes, so that's something.] [???] So the idea of "dream job" is that when you get there; that's where you've wanted to be, and then, at last, you relax. Your life is in stasis.

And what's dawned on my monkey-mind lately is that a future prospect of relaxation/contentment is precisely what motivates us into anxiety, which is semi-hilarious -- people disguised as robots, robots disguised as people -- just as the concept of a settlement is what inspires and propels the argument. So we run around like maniacs in order to one day stop running? Human beings are retarded. Clearly we don't want to relax that much, otherwise we'd be doing it, right? Or not? This paragraph had a point when I wrote it last night, and I'm not sure what that point is anymore. I'm leaving it in in case it occurs to me later.

I never thought I'd be able to do what I wanted to do in life by getting up and going to a job every day so maybe I never thought about what that Dream Job might be? [I've also been consistently aware that I'm somewhat limited by fibromyalgia and what hours I can manage and still keep that under control, etc., but that's another blog entry -- like a really boring one, actually.] Anyhow, I just imagined always waitressing or temping or dealing crack to supplement writing until my first book deal or television development contract. Luckily, I sort of love waitressing a little, even though I'm bad at it, I'd totes waitress right now if anyone would hire me. [Waitressing became intoxicating, almost; its unpredictability, though it provided for a certain risk of complete poverty, also implied the possibility of jackpot treasure striking at any moment. Though it wasn't likely you'd make $200 on a Friday night ... it also wasn't impossible, which meant you could plan ahead allowing the chance of improbable good fortune. Also, I loved the exhaustion. I loved running around all night like my life depended on it, like if Table 59 didn't get their Bruschetta before their Pasta Milanos, a great cloud would open above us and G-d would strike us all with lightning bolts. Which it would, in the form of douchetards. A million small, achievable tasks.]

I look back on my whole life before now and I'm amazed I've gone this long without a steady "job," considering I went out and applied for jobs as soon as I was old enough to legally work (age 14, but you can't use knives until you're 15), even ultimately foregoing extracurricular activities (soccer, theater) in favor of closing Dana's Deli every night, and foregoing an active social life all through college in order to waitress. I loathed, all my life, the idea of not having a regular job for even one day, let alone so many months. If I'd've told myself in March that I'd be, right now, without a steady reliable place to BE and reap income for at least 20 hours a week (outside of my apartment), I'd be like "Wha?!!! What's going to happen, Psychic Weirdo?" Actually, there are at least 500 things that Riese-in-March wouldn't've believed about her future. No, probs like, 1,000. Most of all I never thought I'd have bangs, obvs.

Sooo ... in High Fidelity, this is Rob's Top Five Dream Jobs List:

1. Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979
2. Producer, Atlantic Records, 1964 to 1971
3. Any kind of musician, besides classical or rap
4. Film director, any kind except German or silent
5. Architect (seven years training)

Laura reads his list. This conversation happens:

Laura: So you've got a list here of five things you would do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object?
Rob: Yeah.
Laura: -- and one of them you don't really wanna do anyway.
Rob: Well, I did put it at number five.
Laura: Wouldn't you rather own your own record store than be an architect?
Rob: Yeah, I suppose.
Laura: And you wouldn't wanna be a 16th century explorer or the King of France--
Rob: God no.
Laura: Well, there you go then. Dream job number five. Record store owner.

And here's the thing: he totes IS a record store owner. Get it?

*

I had to scour the archives to ensure I'd not written on this before; a recent archive look-through (I can't remember why) made me aware of the fact that I repeat myself LIKE WHOA. I mean, seriously, clearly the side-effect of my EPIC output is that I don't remember what I've said and not said, and therefore I'm liable to post the exact same Sunday Top Ten more or less twice. I could save a lot of time with cutting and pasting, obvs.

SUNDAY TOP TWELVE, PART ONE
(12-8)
DREAM JOBS
"If time, history, salary, and qualifications were no object."
(Also, requires attendance, as in, no freelance hoo-ha, like totes "be here, this time, etc." kind of situation. To be a "job.")

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12. A Staff Writer/Editor/Whathaveyou for one of the following publications:

Vanity Fair (1919-1924), Sassy Magazine (1990-1993)
Rolling Stone Magazine (1970s), Mademoiselle Magazine (1950s-60s)
The New York Review of Books (1963-1979), JANE Magazine (1995-2000)
Ms. Magazine (1972-1980), McSweeny's (2000-2002), New York Magazine, (2001->3/2007)
MIGHT magazine (1995-1997), Spy Magazine (1986-1996),
The New Yorker (1992-1998), The Paris Review (1953-1983)
Vogue (1963-1971), ElleGirl (2005-2006),
Curve (present), Bitch (present), Bust (present), Radar (present)

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11. Super Hip Bartender in Fictional Location/Someplace Hip 'n Fit in the 70s

Most actual bartenders hate their jobs; something about having to cut a lot of fruit early in the morning. Or maybe that was just my bartender friends at The Olive Garden and the Mac Shack, 'cause we sold so many drinks requiring fruit garnishes. Anyhow, in the movies, this always looks like a good way to meet cute girls and make wads of cash and be overall very cool, and also be frequently drunk for free. Mostly I wanna dance around on the bar to that remix of "Can't Stop the Moonlight" or do tricks involving glass cutting through air, the subsequent pour of burning liquid ... and the few times I've bartended -- filling in -- I've liked the speed, the potency of what you have to offer, the ability to hook people up most of all. It feels like you're the Goddess of Loose Inhibitions, which is not a bad thing to be supervising.

---

*
Had a bad day, as bad as they come.
Time to get a real job, you gotta stop having fun.
So I, so I got a real job, I'm working nine to nine.
I'm making five bucks an hour till the day I die.
*

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10. Schoolteacher

This's actually something I truly would want to be if it didn't require a degree and waking up at 6 A.M. I wanted to do Teach for America until I saw a friend enter the program idealistic and bright-eyed and exit on anti-anxiety medications and a persistent case of influenza. I want to teach kids about books. If you read Savage Inequalities and don't want to be a teacher, then you have no soul, sorz. I probs'll be a writing teacher one day, ideally as good as the ones I've had, or that dude in "My So-Called Life" who started The Liberty Lit, because that's what you do after you've published a book and no one will hire you to do anything else because they don't realise you're not about to 'take off' [this's happening to me already, and it's super-annoying, it's like this weird in-between place where you become totally unemployable and unemployed], and you can teach Uni or private school w/o a teaching degree, I think.

---

I'm one third passion, and I'm two thirds pride.
I said I used to have a life once,
He said, "I used to like your smile once."

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9. Travel Writer

I would like to be sent all over the world for free and given all the nicest things, like footrubs, free bathrobes and fruity non-caloric cocktails. Also I'd climb mountains. I'd like to be like Pam Houston. I just want someone to pay me to have fun and get drunk is that too much to ask? On that topic, Curve magazine, the home of Stacey Merkin, has asked me to do a piece about a trip I already went on (the r-family cruise), which means I've got one foot into -- OR, RATHER -- OUT OF -- of the proverbial door, yeah? Totes. Wait. Does this count as someplace you have to go to every day, according to my rules? Huh. Yeah, probs. I have to go to like, BALI every day. "Go to Disneyworld!" Okay. Will do.

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8. Basketball Player

First of all, I'd be in really good shape. Second of all, basketball is fun, and third of all, it would be a good way to meet girls. Or maybe it wouldn't be. My Mom used to go to a lot of WNBA games with her buddies. I don't really know what to say about that.

---

"I got a picture of the way the world has summed me up.
If I could have one wish, I sure wish that I had never grown up.
I got a picture of the way I looked when I was three.
I came out laughing, screaming, dancing."
-Tegan & Sara, "More For Me"

---

Okay, I'm sure there are at least 100 more dream jobs. I seem to have more thoughts ABOUT dream jobs than I do actual dream jobs. I'll finish this later this week. I just thought of one. Oh, it's funny! [Imagine Stewie saying that] Saving it. Oh man, I just had a lot of good thoughts about it too. Also saving them. I will be happy I stored up all these thoughts later this week when I realise I still haven't written that story for the reading. Erk.

The protagonist of our teevee show, Morgan, is cited in the character descriptions as "struggling with ambition and inertia." I guess we write what we know.

This, after all, is what I know; this blog, my body which never learns, my friends, my books and my hat and my ipod and my bag and my favorite jeans and Chuck Taylors, this cruel expensive city, the muscle in my chest that once composed a relatively intact heart and has, in the past six months, been hollowed out and beat up and doesn't know how to put itself back together anymore, because it was such a scotch-taped and rubber-cemented deal to begin with, and has been for over a decade ... my fingers, this keyboard, my mean crazy neighborhood which never stops screaming, my roof and it's respite, my inbox, how hugs work, sleeping, the hours, the hours, the hours ...

I can say I want to be a rockstar, I mean, who doesn't want to be a rock star? I don't know, what is my dream job? What is my dream? What do I want? I know: I'll figure it out, right? I've got time, yeah? Not really, though.

The problem is, I've been the girl that knows what she wants, or at least acts like she does, pretty much my whole life. Now I don't even recognise myself, because so much changed on someone else's volition, so many choices were made FOR me, and I can't seem to UN-do them. I keep trying to work it out in language, hoping that'll translate to life soon enough. I'm certain something's off but don't know where to begin, and by "where" I mean "if."

I've had a series of "big pictures" -- huge all-consuming projects -- Conde Nast, [redacted] magazine article, totes mad twatwaffle, teevee show ... Right now we're in a waiting period, so to speak, on the teevee show -- so this week, for the first time pretty much all year, I've actually had to think about what like, MY big picture is. Two days after the story I told in "1" on the "SomeDay Top Ten," I declared I didn't want to write anymore I just wanted to work at Big Boy's, which even though I later decided was retarded, was still quite a shakedown for my mind ...

... maybe the reason I find it so unique and revolutionary every time I come to the revelation that I don't know what I want, which turns out to be something I've discussed at length in all journals, live, blogged, and otherwise, for years, when I actually look into it -- is because it's at odds with who I believe myself to be, essentially. So the rest of it is such a phase I forget about it even only days after it's concluded.

When it comes to this stuff, I'm a goldfish.

Anywhere else on earth is a good place to figure out these things; New York isn't so much. Because everything's so expensive. The air is urgent, like if you don't suck it all in right this moment, it could evaporate, and you'll be left unable to breathe.

*
There's a part in "Muppet Babies" when they're facing a bunch of doors
and don't know which one to enter.

Gonzo says he can take care of it: "I know this place like I know the back of my hand."
Gonzo chooses the door and they end up being lead into something awful,
probs an outer-space abyss of some sort,
a monster, something, I don't remember if they went in or just looked at it,
it doesn't really matter,
and Gonzo adds: "I guess I don't know the back of my hand very well."

*
(Gonzo's dream job: Professional bowler.)

(our stolen bowling shoes, high school graduation)