6 posts tagged “work”
Hi folks.
I apologize for my once-a-week posting, but, there's a lot going on at the moment; most of which can't be talked about. A lot of it is because there is far too much cross-over between my "real life" and my "online life", and although the whole "neighborhood only", "friends only", "friends and family" settings on VOX are fantastic...if I feel like I need to constantly downgrade, upgrade and kick people out of my neighborhood just so I can have some expression and release...I can't really decide if it's worth all the effort or not.
There are all of 2-3 people that I can really talk openly and honestly with about all that's going on at the moment, and for that I'm grateful - but I truly do miss being fearlessly open online. Of course, I always had my boundaries (no personal family talk, no airing out my dirty, marital laundry online) but I've felt all muted and censored lately. There's nothing wrong with having to watch what I say, as I know I'm making the right decision, but I just being able to FUCKING TALK.
It's like, there's so many companies and organizations and bloggers and journalists that I just want to rage on about...but I'm in such a vulnerable position I can't really afford to piss anybody off.
Does that make me weak and subservient to The Networking Gods? Or just smart?
Does anybody else feel like the Internet is just claustrophobic lately? It just kills me that I used be in this fantastic little bubble where I could slag off some idiot journalist who did something shitty and laughable one minute, and now I do the same thing and realize that we have 8 "mutual friends" on Facebook and follow the same people on Twitter and have high music compatibility on LastFM. SERIOUSLY?
Am I losing my balls or and caring too much what others think? I wish I had the clarity to know for sure at the moment.
I have a feeling it's just this awkward transition period that I'm in the middle of. Or maybe it's that fucking Mercury Retrograde everyone on here is always banging on about. Can I blame it on Mercury? Is he retrograding at the moment? What does that even mean?
Thanks to everyone for their job suggestions and concern for my ability to afford food in the next few months. I really am okay, and I've accepted the fact that a Magical CEO is not going to email me and offer me the most fantastic blogging job of all time that allows me to work from home whenever I want, and get paid £500 a day AND get paid ON TIME!
The Universe is leaving me to figure this out myself. I'm up for the challenge, it's just just a shame my mojo is only running on half power at the moment.
Dear Internet/Silicon Valley/San Francisco,
Hi! It's me. Cate. CupCate. Of the London CupCates.
Here's the thing, homie...
I was made redundant at my job last week.
I'm there for another month, as I've agreed to do some very limited freelancing work on ye old Dollymix in June, and then after that, I'm broke, I mean, 100% open and available for new freelancing work.
Shit like this happens when you're freelance. The economy's bad at the moment (so I hear) and things are looking a little dull over here in the UK blogging industry. For example, please observe what happens when you Google "UK Blogging Jobs":
While there are no hard feelings and I understand that the company I worked for for the past year and a half "feel that we can no longer pay your incredibly inflated salary and support your extravagant lifestyle", it still sucks.
It sucks like...
...when you know you're in a relationship that is eventually going to end because either one of you doesn't want kids and/or you haven't had sex in 3.5 years and although you didn't want to marry the guy or even get a cat with him, when he looks at you over over half melted Jamba Juice, and says, "You know...I just don't think this is going to work. It's not you, it's me. It's been great, "
You're sort of relieved because you know how it's going to end, but then it just sort of pisses you off that HE BROKE UP WITH YOU and he gets to keep the apartment and YOU'RE THE ONE who has to start Googling BLOGGING JOBS and thinking about how you're going to be able to afford your next root canal...or something.
Does that make sense?
So, that's how I feel. I understand, I'm cool with it, I see how it's better for both of us in the end...but finding enough freelance work to float me for the next few months is my main concern at the moment.
Please, let me explain how.
See, while you're sleeping, I'M AWAKE. You're site will be guaranteed to have fresh content on it by the time you and all those returning visitors go back to your site first thing in the morning. PLUS, how IMPORTANT and SERIOUS will you look by having INTERNATIONAL CORESPONDENTS??
TRES. IT WILL LOOK TRES/MUCHO/A LOT IMPORTANT.
So, all I'm saying, San Francisco, is that you're very wealthy. You've got a lot of blogging jobs, but it would be better for you if you just shelled out the cash to pay some hot ass bloggers in sterling and let them telecommute from London Town.
Just think! I can get you all the latest news on what drugs Amy Winehouse did last night, who Russell Brand is boning this week, and what Heather Mills is lying about lately BEFORE all of your other US based bloggers. Time is on my side! You're 8 HOURS BEHIND ME. Do you know how many hits you could be getting in those 8 hours!?!?
TRES. YOU COULD BE GETTING TRES HITS.
I know I'm American and all, but all this means is that I know shit about TWO cultures! TWO! How many do you know about? It's probably like one and a half. I can talk about Richard Hammond and Miley Cyrus with equal ease. If you want me to be British, I can be British! I sleep with a British guy on a regular basis! I'll even lie and say I like Marmite. I'll throw in random 'u's in my spelling.
Liouke Thious
But in all seriousness, Silicon Valley...San Francisco...California...The United States of America....
We have some fine bloggers in the UK.
But!
There is only ONE in particular that has not only participated in a rather bland, awkward debate over WAGS live on Sky News, and managed to become a sex and relationships expert for Yahoo just months before they fired thousands of people, and (AND!) was misquoted in a grid about feminism in The Observer Woman, complete with an unflattering embarrassing photo.
Where the hell else are you going to find those kind of qualifications?
I may not be whorish enough, *ironic* enough, or have a strong enough love for cocaine to be a part of Gawker, or perhaps friendly and perky enough to be a part of Sugar....but god dammit, I am all for settling and deal with disappointment and low pay very well.
Please. CALL ME.
Cate
xx
PS. In all seriousness, if you have any blogging or freelance writing work done, please get in contact. PM me or my email is in the links on the side. Please? I'll send you a photo of my bra.
Iain: "Oh. Here's the thing...Bitch Face might be there."
Me: "I'm not going if that cunt's going to be there."
Iain: "Yeah. Good point."
Then the man on the escalator in front of me turns around and looks at me with the, "GOOD HEAVENS!" face people do when they're too polite to tell you that you have a dirty mouth and are going straight to h-e-double hockey sticks.
Iain and I snickered to ourselves and said our goodbyes.
Moments later I'm briskly walking up a set of stairs thinking to myself about all the emails that need to be written and how it was probably rude of me to say "cunt" in pubic before 10am (update: yes I'm aware it says "pubic" instead of "public". Precious little typo that's staying in.), and I trip UP the stairs, like all the cool people do. I tripped up, and had to do a sort of swinging manouver on the railing to prevent myself from eating it, of course, all the while yelling FUCKING HELL just in case no one heard me use the C bomb 10 seconds prior.
Right, I thought. I'm an adult I need to get my shit together and stop fucking yelling things like the F word and the C word out in front of the British people. Sure they use the F and the C words better than any other types of people I've met, but that's usually when they're drunk. And it's still only 9:06. They won't be drinking for at least 54 more minutes.
So, I get to work and we have a sweet little intern helping us out. Not sure how old he is, but I reckon he still had his soul.You know? He had that youthful, excited grin in his eyes that said, "Spreadsheets? I'd love to do those for you. I heart Excel!"
Somewhere between me calling Liz Jones a "complete fucking idiot" and asking something about why she hasn't "been assassinated yet" (I KID!) I remembered the little kiddo was in the corner, painting one of our fashion editors toenails and I figured I should probably keep my mouth shut...
So, when Kiddo decided to come over and talk the gal in the desk next to me (Hi Laura!) I realized what I had on screen.
BOOBS. I photoshopping up a collage of boob shaped products (as you do, at work), and therefore had a screen with a giant pair of boob cushions blown up so that they covered my entire monitor. I quickly minimized it, only to find another photo of boobs behind it...and behind that was my web browser, which apparently had 6 fucking tabs open, all with BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS.
I frantically minimized each one, knowing that Kiddo probably thought I was the editor of a porn site by now, and then realized that it didn't really matter that my monitor had plushie tits all over it, because I had a vagina with a pirate hat sitting on my desk the entire time.
I think it's safe to say that I'm not ready for kids yet.
Thankfully, earlier this weekend I was smart enough to add:
But, this little hour or so of sweet, sweet intoxication has left me with time to think, and worry....
Can cats get STDs?
Our whore male cat Orion escaped the other night to go on a Sex Tour of the neighborhood. Now, I've only ever had dogs, and it's been a bit of an adjustment, but the fact that our cat left the confines of our home and his safety and a fresh bowl of BRAND! NEW! CAT FOOD! to jump through my brother-in-law's window just to go screw and hump a bunch of nasty stray cats for 9 hours, pissed me off.
He finally showed up at about 5am, and was quite pleased with himself.
I imagine if he were able to talk and smoke he'd be puffing a cigar while giving us a run down of how he be "hitting the walls" and "working the middle" of every single freaking cat on the block.
I'm just grossed out. He's even neutered! He has no balls! How did that even work?
I've been calling him "Herpe" and "The Whore" ever since
...I guess I just never though one of my pets would turn into a GV.
Vox! There you are!
This is me, posting for the sake of letting everyone know that I haven't committed homicide, genocide, or any of the other scarier 'cide's ...
I've been playing grown-up and going into a real live office every morning, and sitting at a real live desk, and printing documents and highlighting things on Post-Its and sticking them on my monitor so I seem like I'm important and have things I need to remember.
I also do this thing where I'll let out an exaggerated sigh, pound down on the ENTER key multiple times, and mumble a few, "Oh for fuck sake"s under my breath so I sound like I have real adult office-y type problems that I need to be frustrated about.
....And then I take a 2 hour lunch break and come back stinking of Pub.
In all seriousness, I actually have been quite busy drinking
lately. So busy, in fact, that I feel guilty and lay awake at night
thinking of all incredibly small number of times I've clicked the "View
Entire Neighborhood" link or responded to emails, and start to panic
when I think of the fact that I haven't written anything on here in a
couple of weeks. I do! I really do! And then I have horrific nightmares
where Vox runs off with some other chick with a clever little
pastry-esque inspired name, like Little Debbie or PanCate and they make
hot, sweaty, wireless, blog-writing love to each other.
Then, to make matters worse, Vox then marks PanCate as [This is good], and then totally removes me from their neighborhood...which then forces me to sign up with Xanga or Blogger and well...I wake up screaming and Iain has to go find me my Vox Tshirt to hold for the rest of the night, just so I can sleep...
Really, I'm not deserting you, my love. You are my little slice of online heaven! My pink, swirly cupcake of Internet fun! Heck, I would even go as far as to say that you, Vox, are my Absolut Raspberry Dream of the Blogging Kingdom.
Yes. It is true!
We have so much to discuss! We do!
We'll talk! We'll do lunch! I'll pencil you in!
...And if I had a Blackberry I would do some fancy manoeuvre to program our rendezvous in, so that it would remind me that we need to have a chat, and alert me to stop dramatically pressing ENTER, and plastering my desk with Post-Its that say things like "Call Rowlings back about Potter book" and come meet you straight away!
Until then, I'll leave you with a fine piece of pastry plush.
My Drug Cute Dealer, the fabulous Maz, was kind enough to send me a few of the cutest plush goodies I've ever seen in my entire life.
Maz! I heart you, and if I could make an entire room made of Maz goodies (including plush sheets and wallpaper) I totally would.
And so, Vox. I booked us an appointment in my imaginary Blackberry, for one of our regular, long-winded chats.
....Oh and if you suddenly see that PanCate girl blogging around, she'll never be as good to you as I am.
(I hear she only drinks Zima, religiously posts bulletins on Myspace, and doesn't even vote. Is she really the kind of psedo-pastry-drunk-chick you want to have as a 'neighbour, additionally listed as a friend'?...I think not, Vox. I think not!)
Do you ever sit and play the “What If?” game?
Do you believe in luck, or fate?
Do you think there are things that just fall in someone’s lap?
Do you believe in random coincidences?
Iain and I went through some of our old emails to each other last week. I have hundreds from him. Our subject lines constantly changing. Cheeky lines, song lyrics, or the local weather report.
I go back and read the words he wrote to me just under a year ago. He didn’t know my face, my kiss, or the danger of feeding me Curry late at night…But he knew the lines and curves of my heart like we had been lovers and friends for lifetimes.
It's funny how some of the things he wrote to me still make me blush, and cringe with flattery.
A couple days ago, I emailed him my favorite lines he had sent me knowing he hadn’t read what he had written since he pressed “send”.
We sat there that night, looking at the dates of certain emails, and talking about where we were when we wrote them,
"Where were we sitting when we first talked on the phone?"
"Did you used to sit in the kitchen while we were on MSN or the couch?"
"Oh my God, I was half naked when I wrote you that…"
"AH! I almost died when you said that!!!"
If that one October night, I hadn’t been sitting on my ass, browsing MySpace while watching Sex and the City, hadn’t spotted that handsome bloke from Surrey, and had balls enough to email him to say hi...
Where would my life be?
I started really thinking about this and became frightened at the sad, sad story my over active, "all knowing", retarded brain came up with.
But what’s even sadder, is that I know that the convoluted story I came up with, really isn’t that far fetched.
It seems like it now, but if I think about the years before, my life would be alarmingly, eh, dull.
Triple, Decaf, Venti, Sugar-Free Vanilla, Non Fat, No Foam, 143.5 degree, Latte Dull.
When I met Iain, I was a Starbucks Assistant Manager.
I ate lots of croissants and drank shots of Espresso like water.
I had an increasingly serious relationship with my vibrator, a Saturn, and a Chihuahua that hated the pink sweater I forced her to wear. I smoked Marlboro Light 100’s because I was a pussy smoker and although Lucky Strikes looked cooler, I couldn't handle them.
I eventually switched over to Marlboro Lights because the 100's didn’t fit in the pink cigarette holder I bought myself.
-Are you catching how dull that was?-
If Iain decided that I looked too much like a twat, or that I was too young for his liking (we’re 6 years apart…6A if you will..ha..he…ok, bad joke) my life would probably look a little something like this:
I would finally get fired from Starbucks sometime mid February 2006 due to
A) My manager finally figuring out that I would sit outside on my lunch for 2 hours chain smoking, and eating stolen croissants whilst plan her death and how to blow up the store without getting caught.
B) My manager finally figuring out that instead of starting work at 4:15am like I was supposed to, I would prop open the back door and chain smoke until 4:45, and then eat stolen croissants topped with stolen packets of honey and cream cheese for breakfast whilst planning how to set the store aflame.
C) Me throwing a "venti extra hot" fucking bitch fit at customers and coworkers and screaming, “That’s IT! I’m blowin’ this place up YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!”
By late February they would have hired me as a shift lead, because they wouldn’t think I had enough managerial experience for anything higher, and I couldn’t exactly ask my ex-manager for a recommendation.
I would spend my days rearranging book shelves, ringing up customers, and helping people find books that were right in front of their fucking, blind ass faces.
I think of myself driving to and from Barnes and Noble everyday with a pack of cigarettes, a pink lighter, Johnny Cash coming out the speakers, and a stack of paper backs bought with my employee discount that I planned on reading during my half hour lunch breaks.
My depression would come and go, as it does…But I would be lonely and bitter due to the bad dates with Sacramento boys that were in bands, or in College, or Christian, Celibate (or both), worked in retail and were JUST NOT FOR ME.
I think I would eventually get out of Sacramento.
Maybe get transferred to a store in after year or so. I’d fall in love with the city and new surroundings, but would squint my eyes to make the skyline look like London.
I would write on the sly, or on commercial breaks during Grey's Anatomy. I would never send anything to magazines or even start a real blog as my fear of failure would choke the idea dead.
Perhaps the closing manager would be cute.
Maybe he grew up in Seattle. Maybe he would wear glasses and like Paul Frank Tshirts.
Maybe the sex would be bad, but my dog would like him…Maybe I could convince myself I was happy.
Maybe he would turn out to be my alternate life partner. The Side B. The only guy on the West coast I could tolerate.
We would never marry. He would smoke and I would smoke, too. We’d carry a flask of whiskey in the glove compartment of our Ford Escort and freak out whenever cops drove by.
He wouldn’t understand my depressive disorder, but would pretend to well enough that I would believe that he was supporting me, not just tolerating me.
We'd go on vacation to Monterey for our anniversary. We'd stay in the same B&B every year, and it would have the best orange juice. I'd like it because the owner was French and would talk to me about what it was like growing up just outside of Paris. She'd say to him,
"You should take her there! She would like it very much!"
And he'd rub my arm and say, "Someday if we can afford it."
And I'd fakely smile, knowing that we've been able to afford it for the past 3 summers.
I would never feel complete. I would never see Europe with him. He would just be the nicer version of my Ex…
I would be tired, and aged, and exhausted with trying to understand why I felt so empty, never realizing that I let my dream of being a writer in London die.
Never realizing that my wish of “Please just let me find love. Please just let my have a good husband” on countless birthday candles had blown out when I was 20, when I never jumped at the opportunity to break away from my stale, saltine cracker way of life.
And then, as I sit thinking of my alternate life…I wonder if I would ever wake up. I hope that I would wake up.
I would hope that my passport wouldn't expire with only one stamp on it.
I would like to think that I’m as smart as I think I am…
During our 8th year together he would buy a Silk Screening shop in downtown Napa. Strangely, I would find being the Store Manager for the local Barnes and Noble and making up the slogans for his Tshirts unfufilling.
I imagine that after the countless nights of crying myself to sleep, the endless guilt, the brutal fact that my life as it was, just wasn’t enough...That he wasn't enough...And the truth would finally cut me so deep that it was either bleed to death, or patch it up and get out.
Strangely, after a month, I wouldn't miss him that much.
I’d renew my passport, and book a flight to London.
Alone.
I would stay in bed and breakfasts, and write, and cry. Cry for my lack of life the past 8 years. The past 30.
What I wonder even more, is if in the back of a Starbucks in Leicester Square, would I see a handsome bloke from
Surrey scrunched over his laptop.
Would he have gray in his hair, and lines on his eyes…
Would he be married, or divorced, or have children…
Would he see me?
Would we...?
I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe I found Iain on accident.
I don’t believe our life fell in my lap, and just happened to me.
I think I placed myself on the right life path that would allow fate to reach me the way it should.
I think Iain and I have been chasing each other throughout lifetimes. I believe that. I believe we find each other over and over again.
This time I found him online, when I was 20 years old.
I don’t think my entire life has changed simply because I emailed Iain. The initial email, and his response is what sparked it...
But what has changed my life, is the fact that we do not let fear stand in the way.
A country, an ocean...Judgments, immigration laws, money, jobs, depression, family, time, and scrutiny will not stand in the way of MY LIFE.
Of OUR life.
And while I feel Iain and I chase each other through the stars, I don't feel like I can just sit and wait and think that everything will work out.
It is a conscious choice, every single day, to stay on the correct path. To stay strong, and stay clear, and to stay simple.
When Iain came into my life, I was ready for anything, and now together, we are ready for anything.
Anything that luck/fate/coincidence/God/The Universe/Tom Cruise has in store for us....
So, bring it on....
Can't touch this....
(Insert other lame pop culture reference here: ______ )
Ps. Sorry for the gigantic spaces, and if there are words missing...I wrote this in Word and apparently they don't get along...OH! And if you put "Tshirts" through spell check they suggest "Tits"....