I sit on a blue plastic seat in the laundry mat near my home. As my jeans, underwear, and shirts wash in two machines, I still think about the two dollars and fifty cents cost per load and how much it will cost to wash all of my clothes, towels, and sheets, as well as dry them. Though it won’t be as cheap as using the filthy laundry room at the apartment complex near my cottage, thoughts of recently oil-stained red shirts convince me that the laundry mat is my only option.
With 33 minutes until washer-to-dryer switchover, I open the most recent issue of The New Yorker, which came in the mail a few days late. I want to read almost the entire magazine every week that it comes, but time to do so just fades away in a blur.
I graduated from college almost a year ago, and have since been working the standard 40-hour week in an office across town. I often realize that many adults in the United States work much more than that, 50 or even 80 hours a week. This thought creeps into my head more days than not, and it causes my mind to silently blow.
The pink cell phone in my purse vibrates to inform me that its time to dry the clothes, which I do and then go home where I will try to have a quick practice on guitar before going to bed. With still so much that I want to do today, I long every day for more time to do it. In my dreams, which I think about almost every minute it seems like, I have more time to do those things because my “job” consists of doing those things — and for less than 40 hours a week. This last bit, especially, never fails to make my parents, and pretty much everybody older than me, laugh with the wisdom of an American capitalist, a certain knowledge that I apparently have not yet acquired.
Which is more frightening — the thought that I will have to do the incredible to prove my parents wrong, or the thought that I might someday agree with them?
2 Comments
March 29, 2009 at 6:44 pm
If I could find a job writing, I mean a real job that paid the bills and also allowed me to create works of fiction, poetry, and songs, I’d take it and hold onto it for dear life. I’d be a different person, for sure, readily awake in the mornings to set out on a new creative task or to continue one from the day before. No more would I moan from the day’s labor or hate the needless artifacts of my earnings, artifacts I’ve purchased in hopes of nullifying the empty hours I spend working for someone else at a task that befuddles the soul.
That being said, however, I’d still be an “American capitalist.” I’d still take my earnings as a writer and pay my cell phone bill, buy new clothes, new accessories. I’d still dine at restaurants and see the occasional movie. I’d still consume and secretly pray that none of it vanishes overnight because what a pretty life it is to be alive in the age of American capitalism, capitalism period, because it not an American phenomenon.
The trick is finding something you wouldn’t mind doing for 50 to 60 hours a week and getting paid for it, whether it’s for cash or amenities. You obviously have a flair for writing, and from what I understand, it’s what you want to do. You good at it, gurl.
Anyways, I felt compelled to comment on this because I kind of know why you were inspired to write it. Maybe it was partly because of a conversation you, Bill, and Nick had in your parent’s living room.
Yea, nobody’s laughing at you, at least not in a sinister way. We all want the same thing, really. If you can achieve it, then it will be exactly how you described it – “incredible” – because not everyone succeeds at making their dreams come true, their avocation into their vocation; thus, cynics are formed.
Holla!
March 30, 2009 at 2:21 am
Becoming “one of them” is hands-down more frightening.
I bemoan your plight, though. And, for that matter, most everyone else’s. BUT, with your spirit, persistence, and skillz, i know you can “stick it to the man.” don’t give up!