I need to write

Me and this thing called a blog have a contentious relationship. On one hand I need the practice. Ever since I've become "happy", I've had less and less use for this thing, and thereby my only talent has suffered. I used to be funny. I used to have people who willingly read my stuff.

But I'm hesitant to jump back into the blogging thing. See, my problem is that I've become the girl I've always hated. I have a boyfriend. In lieu of spending my nights in the bar and falling asleep next to the commode, I spend cuddled up next (or talking on the phone) to the boy. Blogging shows me just how boring I've become. No more funny stories. No more embarrassing run-ins, instead my life revolves around movies, dinners at home, and *maybe* a bottle of wine that I picked up at my local wine shop.

Perhaps this change in attitude stems from my recent move to the Upper Upper East Side, the part of town where you see a "white flight" daily on the 96th St stop on the 6 train. No longer are bars just a stumble home, but now require planning, cabs, and much longer time spent in stilettos. Or maybe it's the way I've brought in my birthday this past year cursed me--law and order, my sister, and a lovely cat named Sabrina. Or maybe I'm just getting old, folks.

Monday I start my new job, where I'm doing things a bit differently this time. A love of Banana Republic. No Booze Sunday through Thursday. Incessant chatter about my "wonderful boyfriend". And a love of popular fiction. I want to blend in and be just like everyone else.

Update

I've been diverting all of my energies and putting them towards finding a job.

I found one.

I now make a decent salary and will be doing work that was made for me, starting at the end of May. Until then, I will getting into trouble and fleeing the country--things that I am very good at.

I will start to post in earnest once dear boyfriend leaves for the Left Coast. Oh yea, that's another reason why I havent been posting--I've gotten boring since I've found sex on a regular basis.


I am happy. Well, almost, I mean, not having Boyf around is really going to suck. Where am I going to find a partner willing to engage in unprotected sex?

What's left?

Unemployment forces you to take an honest inventory of yourself from all directions of your life. When concocting your career plan, first, you have to ask yourself the dreaded life question: ‘where the fuck do I want to be in the next 5 years?’ ‘What about the next 10?’

Housewife, as I am lovingly rewarded for turning a blind eye away from my husbands indiscretions with the likes of Choo, Cartier, Canyon Ranch, and a few of my own extra-circular activities.

Next it forces you to take an honest inventory of your skills and talents, and how your professional assets can be best applied for the good of the organization that you are applying.

I am great at sucking dick. I can make a moist and flavorful chicken. I am a bottomless pit of useless knowledge regarding sex, drugs, and alcohol. My boobs for their size defy gravity.

Having been a pupil of feminist liturgy for most of my life, from being the geek in high school who read the Feminist Mystique without being told, to attending a women’s college where we are taught that the white man is the source of all evil in the world, to most recently having written my thesis about women’s employment patterns, one could say that I should be a bit more optimistic about my professional fate. Or to be perfectly candid, perhaps you should be demanding censure for my depressing self-categorization that flagrantly objectifies me as this sexual object who is a great cook.

But for those who’ve been reading me for a while, you know I don’t shy away from the truth. Especially when the truth pertains to observations about me.

To be perfectly honest, that is not the most depressing part of unemployment, acknowledging that the only skills that separate me from all the other over-educated gen Y’s is being a whore or acting like someone’s mother.

No, the most depressing thing about unemployment is finding out just how much of a spoiled brat I truly am.

Let me give you a little lesson in economics that I’ve been learning first hand. The economy works on this concept of inflow and outflow. Inflow is the amount of capital that comes into an economy (in this case me) and outflow are your expenditures. When there is no inflow, it severely limits the outflow. For most people, in these tough economic times you cut your expenses and try to make sure that your inflow and outflow are roughly the same.

My problem is that even when operating on a barebones lifestyle, I am still roughly $2K in the hole every month. These, I consider, are my “fixed costs”. No matter what, I have to spend money on these items:

Rent + Utilities: $900

Student loan payments: $300

Health Insurance: $270

Food: $300 (estimate)

Now these expenses look legitimate. I need to eat. I need a roof over my head. I need to payback uncle sam, despite the fact that the US government is the biggest fucking fraud since they locked on my Stafford loans at 7.5% last year and will not allow me to consolidate the loans so I can take advantage of the lower interest payments—Fucking this is where our tax dollars are going, keeping the middle class enslaved in fucking debt. But, I digress. You could argue that my food bill is expensive but, I live in NYC where it is cheaper for me to eat out. No, seriously. If I would order off of the Mac D’s dollar menu and take advantage of Grey’s Papaya’s recession special I could lower my food costs by $ 250 per month but, I like having a waist line.

Which brings me to my “necessities”.

As part of my fixed costs I’ve also included strip class at $240/mo. Because I find the classes to be better than therapy for my self-esteem and channeling my inner ‘creature’ (their term not mine). I pay roughly $60/wk so I can learn how to take off my clothes and the proper method of grinding my ass into my man’s lap.

I also have as a fixed cost Boot Camp at $250/mo. Three times per week I am yelled at, forced to exercise in inclement weather (think the post office’s motto), and am so sore that it is difficult for me to sit down for weeks on end. But, I’m looking hot. Especially in the skimpy clothes for strip class.

Then there is the manicures, especially since I am interviewing for jobs. The shopping trips that help me perk up my fragile self-esteem. The skin products that promise me a youthful glow. And of course your author cannot take public transport after 11pm. I’d get mugged in my Judith Lieber snake skin shoes and alligator clutch!

For me the most depressing thing about being unemployed isn’t sitting on my (soon to be very shapely) ass day in and day out watching re-runs of law & order while simultaneously applying to jobs that never call me back, but it is realizing just how much of a spoiled brat I am. I claim to be all in tune with myself. I came back from Israel telling everyone how I found life outside the purchases of discounted designer handbags and Vueve Cliquot rose champagne. It’s bullshit.

I’m a vain motherfucker.

And I find my vanity increases as my prospects for employment decrease.

To be perfectly honest, I am so afraid of gaining weight and looking unattractive as I spend much of my time at home and away from routine, that I will do anything to make sure that I stay fit and get out and about.

If I don’t have a career, what else can I have going for me? These exercise classes, love of fresh organic food, pricey skin care lines are forms of insurance that I will have something going for me—my beauty. Because, the more time I spend at home, and the more time I spend wrapped up in this hell call job hunting, the less interesting I feel. I’m boring.

I don’t have money to go out all the time and star in my own stories.

So, this is an interesting question, and actually not far from my thesis topic. But I will pose it another time, when I am not falling asleep at the keyboard.

I’m heading out of town for a few days for a change of scenery besides my living room. Because, you know, that is the natural thought process…when you are broke, go on vacation!

I seriously am such a fucking spoiled brat.

The Feminine Misstep

Why haven’t I been posting as of late? I’ve been playing housewife. Except I do not have a husband, and my three bedroom fourth floor walk-up in the “diverse” (half of my block is public housing) neighborhood could barely construed as a house. Well, its certainly not what I envision having when your author becomes a baby-maker at the tender age of 45. You know, because when I do the math and think that if I want to start baby making at 31 or so, that implies that if I would follow that time frame I could *potentially* be responsible for another life form in 5 years! (Holy Fuckface kids!) It’s enough that 4 of my friends are getting married this year. I cannot deal with right now the thought that I will be 30 in three and half years and am going to my five year college reunion in May.

But back to the point of this post. What most people don’t realize is that the more free time you have on your hands, the more you find your days packed with “to-dos”. Perhaps its part survival instinct, trying to maintain a semblance of productivity or perhaps it really is that we rush through the things that give us meaning in our lives only to be rewarded for sitting in front of a computer for 10+ hours a day. But this post is not about my neo-marxist rants, so I will spare you my ruminations.

I haven’t been writing because I have been busy with doing nothing.

Well, not nothing exactly. In addition to job hunting, I have been re-writing my thesis (I have a brilliant book idea that I am trying working on). Exercising (and beginning to look hot in the process, may I add). And tomorrow I am spending the day making Hamantash for my friends and assembling Purim baskets.

I’ve become the Jewish Martha Stewart.

Viva La La Long Island

There is something so wonderfully tragic about Long Island. It’s a place that is a victim of its own success. Parents move from the big bad city to shelter their kids from the evils of urban living. Although little Johnny will end up trying a line of coke for the first time at the tender age of 16 using his older brother’s fake ID at a club in the city, instead of trying a line of coke at the tender age of 16 using his older brother’s fake ID at the VIP section of a club in the city, parents believe that this beeline for the suburbs makes a difference in their children’s lives.

It’s true that to a certain extent it does—life on Long Island disconnects its inhabitants from the ills of urban life. There is no homeless; the poor only have one BMW in their drive way, six year olds carry Prada…it seems that everyone and their grandmother is living this extreme affluence meets Mrs. Cleaver kind of life—happy pills included.

This reality is comfortable. This reality consists of my mother bringing me plates of homemade brownies, chicken sandwiches, bagels and cream cheese, whilst we watch the style channel commenting on ‘Whose wedding is it anyway’.

It becomes a vortex, where quick jaunts home to retrieve old TVs and carpets and ski clothes become this domestic vortex that I cannot escape. Which explains why it took me 30 hours to pick up a TV that didn’t even make it back with me.

When I enter my parents house it becomes a place where I regress—no longer am I required to keep track of my finances (not like I ever have), my mommy does my laundry, picks out my jammies, and even the remote control is brought to me. I live on the couch, getting up only to eat, shit, and sleep.

It’s so nice to be home.

So I spent the last few days on LI—being catered to and coddled.

I had some funny stories, all rooted in anger, but I’m a bit too fat and happy to write anything objective and scathing.

I’m in that special place where I love my mommy and think that the world can do no wrong.

Murphy's Law

Of course when I go bragging to people about how great my immune system has been all winter, I start to get sick. Headache, clammy skin, sore throat, and the inability to sleep that characterizes illness.

I'm supposed to be moving out tomorrow. And watching porn on the big screen too.

It's a rough life being me right now.

Do old antics really die hard?

I used to be a funny blogger. I was mentioned on Gawker weekly, when people actually gave a shit about nobodies sitting in the basement of their homes and writing “real accounts” of the dumb shit they did all day. I had an apartment in Greenwich Village. Access to expense accounts where my facials, booze binges, and Marlboro light habit was fully paid for by agency fairy godmothers called ‘vendors’. I had a phone filled with the numbers of dirty old men who I could call any day of the week for free food and drinks, and my only method of payment is a kiss good bye on the cheek. My credit card bills were magically paid, and frequent flier miles accumulated. I routinely traveled to exotic locations for vacations, and could tell you my favorite restaurants in at least five international cities. If it wasn’t for my average sized body and negative savings account, you would have thought I was a socialite living like this.

I lived the good life. And when most people would have curbed their spending during a period of long term unemployment and a record strength pound, I didn’t.

Saving money?! “Why on Earth would I ever need to do that?” I asked myself throughout my early 20’s. “Life is for living!” “Wait, I’m supposed to ask myself if I can actually afford that bottle of champagne at Hotel Costa?” “Thank you God for Mastercard!”

A little thing called life bit me in the ass, kids.

A few of you may be wondering what happened to me. Here let me fill you in on the details since we’ve last communicated:

Currently, I’m 26. I live with a 37 yr old man I met off of Craigslist who plays a derivative of World of Warcraft whenever he isn’t at work. However, he is only at work between the hours of 8:30am- 5:45pm and sleeps from midnight until 7am. “But Shannon,” my observant readers would reason, “according to your math he plays WoW for nearly six hours each day! He can’t spend all that time at the computer, right? He has to go to the bathroom, attend to his hygiene. HAVE SEX?!”

“Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Clause”

Yes, my dear readers, I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes, but people like him really do exist.

But don’t worry, my living situation misery is only temporary. In a few short days I move to SpaHa where one of my besties from HS is renting out the extra bedroom in her apartment at a highly discounted rate—the ‘my friend is unemployed, has $50K of student debt and cannot move back home’ rate.

It’s not a bad area. It’s still within the confines of Manhattan’s DMZ (De-Militarization Zone) but has the flavors of El Barrio. Actually, I must confess the juxtaposition of the area is fucking brilliant. One block South is a Gourmet Garage and two blocks North is the bodega where I can get my Forties of Coors light to play Edward 40 hands.

My father wanted me to carry a gun for protection when I told him where I’d be living, but I told him, the pocket knife in my purse should be fine. Or the nice young men who sit on the stoops on my block smoking this sweet smelling substance should be able to offer me protection.

I would have asked for a raise at work, except I’m at a start-up and my boss lovingly told me that I should begin to have another job lined up…”just in case”.

I wish I could tell you about the classes at Oxford. I think they were ok. My area of expertise for a little under a year was rugby, ale, drugs, fetish clubs, and the London landlord/tenant laws. Oh, and some how sociology was thrown in there…somewhere.

But I have my degree from Oxford. a reputation at one of England’s most oldest and prestigious universities. And a near-miss of spending time at rehab.

I wasn’t writing for the last few years because your author was complacent—an ugly word for people like me, however the perks were wonderful. For the first time in my life I wasn’t playing keen observer, unable to interact with people on a human basis. I wasn’t compelled to stay up all night, chronicling my observations of the human condition, thinking that I had some gift that allows other people to see into the emotions of their fellow human being. For a little over a year I was pretty average. Actually, I’d even go as far to say mediocre. And I liked it. For a bit. But then my life stopped being so cushy, I got in touch with this little motivating factor called ‘anger’ and ‘jealousy’ that fuels my foray into the depths of the human soul, and here I am.

26. Over-educated. Spanish Harlem Resident. “Freelancer”, which is a nice way of calling yourself unemployed. $50K in student debt. And a credit card that weeps whenever I need to use it. And I have absolutely no idea what to do next.

So that is why I re-started my blog. When I began ‘Drunk and Single’ a few years ago, I was working my first job, over educated, underemployed, and scared of my own potential. Funny how when you take yourself out of the rhythm of normal life you begin to question the assumptions that you are supposed to follow. That’s where I am right now.

As long as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to shake this writer’s thing. I carrying my notebook with me. I stopped reading great works. I even cut down on the interesting people in my life, all hoping that those things would deprive the fire inside me, and put out the flame.

It didn’t. So now I’m here.

Wanting to reignite my passion and finding I’m about a year and half out of practice. I restarted this blog so I could practice writing, force myself to post daily, and use strangers as my soundboard for when I plot my next move, and do little warm-ups before I write pitches and work on my book proposal. I mean, if you could make the boring shit you do all day interesting, then you know you are on to something.

I wish I could tell you that I’m Still Drunk and Single in NYC, except wisdom has a funny way of creeping up, reminding you that spending night after night drunk and making out with random boys *may* be a waste of precious time. I still have my adventures. I still have dirty old men to take me out. But I think there may be some other things that are just as interesting, if not more.

So with all of this talk about growing up, redefining priorities, the million dollar question remains. Am I still drunk? Still single even? Maybe. It’s hard for a tiger to change its stripes. But you’ll have to find out for yourselves. I won’t make it that easy on you.

Welcome Back Old Friends

Yes the rumors are true, I've started to post again for a variety of reasons that I'll explain in my more lengthy post. But it's not ready yet because my eyes feel like they are about to bleed they're so tired.

But I wanted to have something up here so you would see the rumor really is true.

I look forward to catching up and filling you in on all that you've missed. It was fun over there but I'm happy to be back home, despite the sluggish economy and inflation looming on the horizon.