Displaced

Old news: I left my corporate job at Williams-Sonoma, Inc.. New news: what did I buy on my way out that I do not regret and will not be returning? I know you’re so excited to find out that it’s getting hard to breathe. I know – it’s super exciting isn’t it?

Before we get to that though, let me set things up for you. Due to my (former) employment by a leading purveyor of overpriced, high-end cookware and related tools, our kitchen is stocked with food preparation equipment that no couple with our skills has any business having. R mentions this often.

I do not enjoy cooking. You spend an hour or more in the kitchen producing something that will then be consumed. How is that relaxing, to see your creation getting all chewed up? I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy munching up food other people have created. I’m just saying I don’t get anything out of prepping it myself.

This state of affairs has made for some interesting conflicts with R, as he’s the one who cooks and I’m the one who buys the cooking stuff. It seems like a charming, if illogical division of labor, no? (Just to be clear, I do the cleaning. It’s all fair and square, so just calm down.)

I purchased a ton of stuff on the way out the WSI door. Here’s what’s staying:

• Calphalon One frying pans. Ooo, baby, are these nice. I love them. I, who would willingly use a whisk as a pastry blender, notice the difference. These are some kick-ass frying pans and you should register for them if you’re getting married or buy them the next time you’re in need of a new set (or just one). Screw Circulon and all the rest of the them. These are totally non-stick and hard as nails. (If you go into one of the Wm-Sonoma stores, they might still have one of the sets of an 8″ pan + a 10″ pan for $70. N/A on the site.)
• Primo Milk Frother. $20 well-spent, my friend. I am not a coffee snob, but years of shelling out $2.15 to Starbucks for my cafe au lait (which they insist on calling a “misto” for reasons not understood by me) has spoiled me for drinking coffeemaker coffee with cold milk in it. I am not going to invest in an espresso machine just to get steamed milk. Primo is my answer. Milk in mug, froth, microwave, add coffee, done. Just make sure you submerge the frother ring before turning it on. Trust me.
• Microplane Graters. Grating cheese with these (we have the medium one for hard cheese and the rasp for citrus) is like swimming with floaties. You never knew you could have it so good. Kick your collegiate box grater to the curb with that hippie wall hanging you scored that weekend in Michigan at the truck stop and move on already.

I took this photo with my cell phone on Bleeker St. six months ago. Now, it’s happening all over the city. Apparently, I’m not the only one feeling ambivalent about the choices we face.

“Illud ab homine factum ab altero fieri potest.”

Know what that means? “What one man can do, another can do.” That’s right, mo’fos: Emma’s out from under the man and back on track.

I think I need a shield. And a helmet. To wear at my desk. This is gonna be great.

I do not like to fly.

For starters, I’m claustrophobic. Small spaces = bad. Planes = small spaces. Ergo planes = bad.

Also, I do not believe in flight. It is highly improbable that something as heavy as a plane can get off the ground at all. I could see maybe – maybe – four inches off the ground, but that’s my final offer.

As a result of the misery incurred by doubt and phobia, I am a panicked and unhappy flier. The stupid music they pipe into the plane doesn’t help matters either, so add “mildly irritated” to the list.

Do you know what else does not help matters? #$(*&#%# children, that’s what. The expletive is directed at you…yeah, you: the wild-haired British kid who wandered into my row. As if the window seat in the last row on a red eye were not bad enough.

Due to a lack of consistent parenting standards (why doesn’t everyone subscribe to my standards?), my current estimate of the ratio of cool children to monsters is 1:100.

This is not the children’s fault. It is the parents’ fault. Children don’t know any better. But just to be fair, I dislike them both equally, as a preemptive strike at the future parents these children will become given the lack of quality upbringing they’re receiving.

Note to Wild-Haired British Child: screeching around the boarding area in your pastel Crocs does not make people want to sit next to you. I avoid that behavior myself, just in case someone’s watching. Also, I don’t like Crocs.

In my view, children shouldn’t be allowed on planes the same way they should not be allowed in bars. Children go to Gymboree, not Employees Only. By the same token, they should get their own planes or stay home and play Scrabble in their pjs instead of putting everyone else’s night out at risk. If planes were bars, 99% of kids would not make it through the door and the same should go for planes.

For one, kids are by definition underage. And they can’t prove they’re not because none of them have drivers licenses. Underage = limited self-control and no sophisticated decision making. Not a good qualification for cramped, dark spaces.

Strike two: it’s a rare six-year-old who is dressed appropriately for going out among adults, especially in the evening. Also, their hair is messy, like they’ve barely pulled it to together from their last night out. The least you could do is run a comb through your tiny mane, Kid-O. If you can’t dress for the event, don’t show up.

And last but not least, you can tell just by looking at ’em that they’re going to be rowdy. No one that small has any kind of tolerance – for liquor, sitting still or whatever. At some point, that kid is going to take his shirt off, probably exposing a pasty and out of shape body and nobody needs to see that.

Who wants to sit next to the underage, under-groomed, out of control drunk? No one, that’s who. Likewise, no one wants to sit next to a kid on a plane. Especially not on an overnight flight and especially not me, after the day I’ve had. COME ON: I just left my job five hours ago. Your blankie and bottle are not even on the same radar of insecurity and angst. Maybe to you they are, but come back and chat with me when you’re 32 years older and cutting out on a twelve-year career in corporate America during a recession. Until then – or until you get your own airline – please stop whining and get out of the aisle.

The countdown to departure from my job has begun in earnest. On Thursday evening the light at the end of the tunnel flared enough so I could see it. I think it was because my computer’s hard drive was thrown on the burning pyre.

The drive crashed Thursday morning and I spent two of my remaining six days at Williams Sonoma, Inc., recovering files and rebuilding a machine I will use for four days before returning it to the company stockpile from whence it so recently came. That crash was the last of the last straws, and it pushed me beyond the village of strain where I’d set up camp, shrugging into the land of What Are You Gonna Do?

Now all that’s left is buying the rest of the goods we so urgently need for our kitchen at 40% off. This is driving R bananas. He contends that not only do we need nothing else but we should consider returning some of the things we already have. He is clearly wrong.

What home does not need a Pineapple Easy Slicer? R maintains that the ratio of “pineapples consumed in our apartment” to “space consumed in our apartment by said Easy Slicer” is out of whack. I maintain that the Easy Slicer made its value apparent on the very first demo pineapple and it should not be required to reestablish that value on a regular basis. How would you like it if you were reevaluated every couple of weeks on your utility-to-space ratio when your ability to do your job had not apparently diminished? So what if you were not actually required to do your job in that time frame? You still could do your job if asked. That’s all I’m saying.

The item I will be most certain but sad to leave behind unpurchased is the Electric Vacuum Marinator. That’s right. You heard me. The Electric Vacuum Marinator. It does exactly what its name suggests: “Just press a button, and the marinator creates a powerful vacuum seal (no pumping required) that stretches and opens fibers. This draws the marinade juices deep inside the food for maximum flavor and tenderness.”

The “no pumping required” note still baffles me after 2+ years with the company. Was this product preceded by the Hand Pump Vacuum Marinator? Or is it a reference to other vacuum products requiring pumping? My vacuum cleaner is not hand crank, is yours? I guess the Swedish penis enlargement pump works on the same principle, but that can’t be what they’re referencing, can it?

At first, I thought, “If you have time to discover the EVM, earn the $200 to buy it, learn how to use it, use it and then clean it, you probably have time to marinate meat in a Ziploc as God intended.” But then I thought, “Who am I to stand in the way of progress? This is a wondrous application of modern vacuuming / pumping technology to a problem no one knew they had! What’s not to love?”

Even if R would let me buy it for our home – which he won’t – I almost certainly would not use it for its intended purpose. I would put cheese and olives and hard drives and other things that don’t need marinating in it, just to see what would happen and no doubt it would be broken in a weekend, so he’s probably right to veto it, but it’s still a sad loss for our crowded cupboards.

So I will live on without my beloved, intriguingly useless and surprisingly compelling Electric Vacuum Marinator. Farewell! Adieu! I’ll be over here with my unmarinated but smoothly cored pineapple.

I accidentally watched The Da Vinci Code again this weekend. It suuuuucked. Again. I was in a stress stupor around leaving my job or I never would have watched it. I couldn’t help myself. Dysfunction gravitates towards dysfunction, I guess. My “favorite” (read: totally ludicrous) line? “I have to get to a library fast!” Who’s heard that outside of a chipmunk saying it in last week’s Weekly Reader special?

When I tell people I resigned last week, responses range from, “Hooray!” (an inexplicably supportive stranger we met at a bar, R’s family), to, “Are you relieved?” (co-workers). I appreciate the former but the answer to the latter is a resounding, “No.”

I know. Surprising, right? This sucks.

I mean, I get why. Even changes for the better can feel terrible. Risk is stressful, even if it’s a worthy risk willingly taken.

Still. It’s rough to work your way up to the edge of the cliff, pretend it doesn’t feel like it’s the edge of the world, leap… and then feel like you’re falling. I thought the deal was that it only felt like you were jumping off a cliff until you actually jumped. At which point you’d realize it only felt like a cliff but wasn’t. Well, this surely feels like a cliff ’cause it definitely feels like falling.

Shit.

I resigned from my job yesterday. Yes, in this economy. Call me crazy. Actually, if I’d stayed you would have had to because that road was beckoning.

I don’t say this very often, but I’m proud of myself. I don’t do leaving well. I mean, I’m not in the habit of setting fire to things and sledgehammering the copier. But my usual plan, aka “what happens”, is this:

1. I realize the gig is not for me.
2. I blame myself.
3. The gig gets worse.
4. I get sick.
5. I tell myself it’s my problem to fix it.
6. I try to fix it. (The whole gig that is, not just my part of it – you know me: keep the goals reasonable and achievable.)
7. I yell a lot when I’m not at the gig.
8. I fail to fix it. (Note to self: yelling does not have a direct fixative affect.)
9. Someone sane reminds me that my preferences (not to go nutty, not to work for that particular Man) matter and that the whole gig is not my problem.
10. I try anyway.
11. I get sick again. More sick.
12. The gig is now completely unsustainable.
13. I stay a little longer anyway, just for kicks.
14. I quit.

It’s quite a plan: it’s got a little bit of everything and you can use it in any situation. I myself have used it on boyfriends as well and it’s just as effective. And by “effective”, of course, I mean “personally ruinous.”

It has one advantage: you never, ever leave thinking you could have done more to save the situation. Of course, you also leave feeling like you didn’t stand up for yourself or trust your instincts. And, naturally, the situation fell apart in the end anyway, so you could have saved yourself the trouble of banging your head against the wall for several months. But you did make damn sure you eliminated any risk that you’d blame yourself for not trying everything to save it (even if it wasn’t save-able or worth saving).

You’d think that trying every possible tactic to make it work would be a positive thing, even heroic, but it’s not. “Extremely painful” is not the same thing as “courageous”. Courage is trusting your instinct that something’s wrong for you and stepping away. If the boat is sinking fast, it’s not heroic to stick around saving hand luggage when there are lifeboats and people ready to help you onto them. Courage is prioritizing your well-being and instincts over making sure you have no regrets whatsoever.

Regrets are inevitable anyway. For me, it came down to risking a different set of regrets (“What if I’d stayed?”), rather than taking on the same set of regrets I’ve had every other time (“What if I’d stood up and moved on and looked after myself? What could I have done with the time I spent pounding my head on the wall? Could I have used those Band-Aids on my head for something else?”)

Having spent the last couple of months repeating Step 1 (and yeah, I’ll face facts: some combination of everything up to Step 7), yesterday I set about cutting out the remaining steps.

So there it is. Done deal. Free at last, free at last. It feels very appropriate to have done this the week after the inauguration. It’s a new time. Let’s be honest with ourselves, do the right thing, focus on what’s important. The rest will fall into place.

This is the T-shirt I’ll be wearing all week, thank you very much. Welcome to the new order!

When I was a kid, I was an overachiever. I’m sure it had a lot to do with reading. Our mother read to us and I read on my own early and voraciously. (The usual reasons: loneliness, broken family, parents who didn’t believe in television, a tough move.) So I had mad language skills when I was pretty young and it went on from there. Top of my class, most likely to succeed, admission to conservatories and good schools. I assumed my trajectory would continue on an upward slope indefinitely.

It hasn’t.

Why?

For starters, I chose the arts (writing, theater) which has no clear trajectory and which has a heavy requirement of support: financial (who pays your rent?), personal (do you have a cast iron ego?), interpersonal (does someone believe in you?), and professional (do you known anyone?). In my twenties, I had none of these, so I started working. I built a successful career in an area in which I have no particular interest (e-commerce management). My personality makes me good at it (high standards and organizational skills) and I’ve done very well, but it’s not what I meant to do.

(In retrospect, I could have chosen something more soul-deadening but wildly lucrative, like investment banking, but I just couldn’t get there. Too much math and lying. I also might have chosen something riskier, meaningful and proximate to my interests, like writing for the Clinton campaign when I had the chance, but proximate isn’t what 22-year-olds are about, at least not this one.)

Then there’s therapy. I went into therapy because I was depressed and couldn’t seem to get it together. I’m sure some of that depression was because of the dents and cuts in my head from banging it against the glass ceiling on the inside of my own head. Long story short, I’m damaged and driven, but not in the cool way that makes you a huge success at 26. I would have been fine with the damage if I could have had the success, the kind of damage that makes for a brilliant book about being damaged. Turns out my brand of damage was the kind that made me unfocused and frightened. Bad luck.

So here I am on a sunny Saturday, scanning the facebook of the Obama team and wondering what Jon Favreau (speeches, not Swingers) has that I didn’t. Hugs from his mom? Connections? Dumb luck?

Where I land is where you have to land, infuriating though it is: we’re all different and there’s no way to pull it apart, no way to formularize success. You do your own thing, you do your best and the chips fall where they may. Obama didn’t know he’d be President – he wasn’t even planning for it. Harvey Milk (well, Sean Penn) says, “I’m 40 years old and I haven’t done a thing,” and look what he managed in eight years.

So maybe I wasn’t a young overachiever, an early winner, an artistic debutante. I’m leaving my job to write. Against all my young expectations, I’m a late bloomer. As long as there’s blooming, right?