Do pandemic birthdays even matter? I’m pretty sure 2020 birthdays aren’t legit and, therefore, should not be counted. And this was supposed to be my Year of the Rat! If 2020 doesn’t improve immediately, I’ll have to wait until I’m 60 (!) to reap my full rat-year benefits. Yes, I’m still in denial that I’m as close to 60 as I am to 36.
When I was still doing my personal blog, Project Me!, I would only post a selfie (though no one called them selfies at the time) on my birthday each year. In a pre-Instagram, text-heavy online world, it felt too exposed to unleash photos of yourself too often. Now? Who cares. I’ve stopped being controlling about unflattering photos. Like anti-aging, isn’t the term “flattering” supposed to be outdated, anyway?
This would be the space where I post a current photo of myself, if I could be bothered.
(As an aside, every so often I re-remember that my ancient site is still on Tripod, which I must still pay $9.99/month for despite not recalling seeing any charges anywhere in at least a decade. I lost my www.scaredycatstalker.com domain years ago when I forgot to renew. I can deal with that, I guess, but I panic every time I remember the existence of this site because I want to preserve it for posterity and need to move it somewhere self-hosted but I don’t even know where to begin because I can’t log in and if I try to set a new password, the message goes to the email I used when I set up my account. I have no fucking idea which email I used in 1998!)
Unflattering? I’ve started doing work Zoom calls without putting makeup on, even though my skin looks like shit. I never had bad skin as a teenager, but for the past few years I’ve started getting one huge, hormonal, scarring blemish on my chin or cheek every month like clockwork. Is that what perimenopause is? I honestly still don’t know.
Work? So, I started a new, part-time contract job at the beginning of July, which is good since my extra $600/week unemployment benefit just ended. It’s a local food tech startup that’s essentially Amazon lockers for food (though I don’t think I’m supposed to say that). It’s going well so far, despite being the only female employee out of ten, but there aren’t any obvious bros and the average age is shockingly high. It could be a bust in six months, though it’s not like I’m doing anything else at the moment.
I literally just found out a few hours ago that I didn’t get the other part-time contract food tech gig (at Samsung NEXT for the Whisk app) for which I had done FOUR interviews.
On one hand, I’m relieved because two 20-ish-hour/week jobs plus new onboarding/getting-to-know a company rigamarole seems stressful and wouldn’t leave me any time to do freelance or personal projects on the side. Never mind that I haven’t done shit with the bountiful free time I’ve already had this year. In fact, I’ve been working very hard on my new persona as a stoner who does nothing except watch TV and order delivery.
On the other hand, I was irrationally excited about the prospect of finally making my NYC salary again--at least in pure numbers. I’m still acclimating to paying for my own insurance and mentally adjusting to probably never getting paid time off for the rest of my life.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who mentally spends money before they have it, especially since I have bought nothing except necessities this year. Who needs new clothing or shoes if you never leave the house? I bought an expensive pair of shoes in January and only had the opportunity to wear them three times before COVID hit. But I do have some pent-up buying urges, things that are not wildly expensive and that I wouldn’t think twice about if I was working full-time.
I went wild and bought a Tramotina non-stick pan because my old one had lost its non-stick coating, a new mirror for an alcove in my entryway that I’ve been meaning to wallpaper for over a year. I broke down and hired gardeners again to mow and weed my yard two times a month, which I can hardly even characterize as a luxury (though paying someone to clean the house is still a step too far for me). Oh, and I scheduled my first haircut since January--I need bangs, dammit!
I did not buy the cheapest functional burr grinder that’s still not cheap or the highly rated chef’s knife I’ve been eyeing for the past two years because, even though it might not seem like it, I’m extremely frugal and practical and was waiting to see if I was going to get the second job first. Bye-bye, burr grinder and chef’s knife!
Maybe because I’ve resigned myself to not leaving my house the rest of the year, I’ve also started feeling like I should have “nice” sheets rather than mismatched on-sale Target ones, but I just can’t justify paying over $200 for a product that’s going to get inevitably stained every month (as a period-haver for 37 years, you might think I would have night leaks solved at this point), so I shelved this idea until I finally go through menopause, which I have no idea when this will happen though I’m assuming within the next five years?
Back to being an inadvertent job foibles newsletter, I’m very suspicious that my first three interviews for the job I didn’t get were conducted over the phone with more senior people and all went well, while the last one with the person I would be working with directly was over video. This woman graduated college 18 years after I did, making her late 20s. She was easy to talk to. She’d read my writing and liked my background. There were no gotcha questions. I didn’t fumble any answers. I ended the call with 98% certainty that I landed the job, and the final interview was just a formality.
Well, and to gauge “culture fit,” I imagine. I got no specific feedback from my recruiter as to why they decided to ultimately pass. I guess I’m just too old to write a B2B food blog?
Often, I feel like I don’t actually “get” a lot of self-helpy, therapy lite type stuff that seems to thrive on Twitter and gets tons of engagement. I’m not sure if my brain is wired that way? I was trying to find examples of what I mean, but it’s never there when you’re looking for it.
Ok, here’s an example of one that’s uncharacteristically straightforward and easy to understand. It’s rational. I’m still not sure I agree with it, though. Feelings aren’t facts, yeah, yeah, I know, and yet…
You might want to take a look at a recent opinion piece, “Bye, boomer: the coming cull of workers over 50.” I’m ok on the premise, but are we now calling 50-year-olds boomers?
I really have nothing else to say except fuck culture fit.