Sunday, August 10, 2008

Home (for real this time?)

By the time I realized there was no 2:00 Chinatown bus it was too late to make the 1:00. I had intended to be back in New York early enough to get settled in before the show, but because I had to take a 3:00 bus, and because it was the one that went through Philly, when I turned the corner into the second floor hallway of my building for the first time in 2 months and 3 days, I was greeted by a mob of people standing outside of my door. I made my way through the hey-how-are-you's, into my loft, and up the stairs. I had to lift my bike over the heads of 2 girls, one of which turned out to be a friend from Amsterdam, in order to stash it by the new A/C in the back. Within an hour of getting off the bus in New York I was watching Tides play to a living room full of my friends - and a handful of strangers. It was a bit overwhelming.

So now, 5 days and 3 shows later, I'm back in my own bed, listening to music through my own speakers, writing this by the light of my very own bedside lamp, and attempting to steel myself to my first day back at work. I don't remember feeling this defeated in a long time. I've gotten so used to not working that I've forgotten how much I hate knowing that I'm at the mercy of someone else's schedule. I can't stomach the idea of waking up at 7:30 tomorrow morning and spending the better part of a day doing the same thing over and over, punctuated, if I'm lucky, by almost getting killed, which is the only exciting thing that ever happens at work. And the best part? Business has slowed in my absence and they can no longer afford to pay me a guarantee. Being back on commission means fighting for jobs and still ending up with a little over half as much money at the end of the day. I've spent most of today trying to think of a way out of this. Ben gave me a well-meaning philosophical diatribe about doing what you need to do in order to facilitate being able to do what you want (which was largely invalidated by his admission that he really likes work), Sean tried to convince me that I should just learn to live with less money (which, given how much less I'll be making now that I'm off the guarantee, I'll be doing anyway, but I'll still have to work full-time). If I continue in this direction, this post will devolve into a whiny appeal to the universe to just give me a break from the slow death of privileged, middle-class expectations (if it hasn't already), so I'll leave cut it short here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't know that it's any consolation, but you don't hate work any more than other people who work only to make a living, you just articulate it more. (Check out Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, next time you're in a bookstore.) Perhaps it is some consolation that being beholden to someone else sucks way less in some jobs (mine, for instance) than in others.

Jake said...

i think its time you made the jump to bike shop job. at least that way you can make more money than your supposed too.

jake