don’t you look tough
CROSSING A LINE
Inevitably, I have been summoned back to the office, three days a week, and while it’s not intolerable my work is not very collaborative by nature. The whole endeavor entails traveling to a worse version of my office to do the same thing I could be doing without all this fuss.
During the time of planning for RTO my organization took the opportunity to update a bunch of policies relating to the facilities and human beings existing within them. Look, I’m a mom and a manager, I understand as well as anyone the need for standards and guidelines. I know that if you don’t specify, others will interpret, and that can cause problems all around. On the other hand, nothing is going to turn me into an r/antiwork rantbaby or anarcho-syndicalist than numbered sections on how many plants I can have or how long I can keep up decorations “related to designated holidays.”
Previously, I went to the office around 12 or 15 days a year but have not workd in any sustained way on site since 2020. Now I realize I missed my chance to surprise casual coworkers, with whom I do not Zoom,* with a giant spiderweb neck tattoo. There are so many reasons to not get a spiderweb neck tattoo and only one reason to get a spiderweb neck tattoo, and I fucked it up. Oh well.
*title of my postmodern, “New Sincerity”-style novel: With Whom I Do Not Zoom
Alternately, I suppose I could have also gotten away with coming to the office super high for a while because people might not remember my normal office behavior and just be like “okay.” More fuck-ups! They abound!
Taking the train around the Loop more regularly, though, has revealed wonders to my eyes. For instance I saw this in person . Like for real! I thought it had become such a joke that no one still wore that outfit, because the bros have seen the memes, right? No, it doesn’t seem to have affected them.
I am being unfair because there is plenty of style conformity and shorthand in every subculture (wallet chains, baggy pants, etc etc etc). Why should finance bros abandon their uniform if they genuinely like it? Eventually the subculture style moves on to something else and sometimes it dies out completely. (Side note: it is cool when styles pass out of favor but remain as a shorthand, emoji-ish way to express a whole group or era. Someday wearing this vest in a made-for-TV movie will be the instant “finance bro” character, the way that a shoulder-pads pencil skirt said “Boss Lady” in the 1980s.)
Another side note: the fashion shorthand of “so poor that I’m wearing a barrel with suspenders” has always been kind of baffling to me. Surely fabric still exists? Also, where are your clothes? You can afford an empty barrel but not a rag? The cooper can still use that, dipshit. SO CONFUSING.
I NEED A HERO, AND ALSO LOOK HOW PRETTY I AM
While chatting about my body’s biggest failure (sleeping well), one of my coworkers said, “Well, if I’m tired enough, I’ll fall asleep” and big if true! But it turns out not to be true for me!
I do all the things like breath-counting and meditative mmmmm and progressive relaxation but sometimes I prefer to try to fall asleep by concocting a very elaborate crime-related scenario where I am pulling a bank heist or beating the everloving crap out of someone (always a VERY BAD PERSON, I guess in a kind of Dexter-esque way) and getting away with it so cleverly. Those imaginary scenarios are juvenile, but not nearly as dorky as the New-Yorker-style interview with Nicholson Baker (me as interviewer) that I have totally plotted out in my pre-sleep mind. I have SUCH good literary questions, I share some personal stuff, it’s all written up in a way that would be anthologized and make my name legend, me mentioned at the same time as Joan Didion and Lillian Ross. It is so dorky but so satisfying. (Note that these sleep scenarios are basically standard childhood fantasies just updated for adults: one is superhero and the other princess/prima ballerina.)
I had another page and a half of dumb thoughts in draft, but then when I checked the word count of this section it was 666,* and YEAH MAN GOOD SIGN. Book of Revelations heavy metal album art bong haze devil horn’s rock on. So that other stuff will have to keep.
*Well, not anymore since I typed that but you get it
BYE
—mimi smartypants doesn’t want to classify you like an animal in the zoo.