Every so often I get overtaken by a wave of can-do spirit, generally precipitated by some minor accomplishment that I manage to blow out of all proportion.
Yesterday the feel good came from some back breaking snow shoveling and some clever repair work on the garage door. By the way, for anyone who's ever had to waste money on a garage door service, all you need to do is fiddle with the sensor for a few minutes and, if that fails, kick it really hard a few times. The eerie little light goes back on even though there still seem to be loose wires everywhere, and you're all set.
Anyway, when I am overcome by that rare wave of can-do, I try to roll with it as much as I can and I immediately locate my to-do list, which is fairly easy to do because it travels around with me in my head. It's always there, nagging, reminding me how useless and lazy I am. When the noise gets too loud, I usually take a nap (or pop a pill, depending on the circumstances). But on a feel-good post-can-do morning, I muster up the motivation to face the list, and item number one, as always, is something about plotting a career move so I can make boatloads of money and be self-supporting. Ugh.
The nice thing about living in 2013 is you don't even have to get out of bed to look for a job. All you need is a laptop and a pillow. So I settled in and searched my files for the most recent version of my resume -- that single page that supposedly says everything there is to say about me. Everything that matters anyway. It is silent about my hopes and dreams and all the things I meant to do; that's the stuff that screams silently out at me from all the empty white spaces. As usual, I gave the resume a quick scan and tried to imagine how a prospective employer would react to it. Ugh.
So I abandoned that depressing file pretty quickly and went, instead, to my blog. As long as I don't actually read it, it looks to be an impressive body of work. Lots of words, not nearly as filled up with empty white space as my resume. The most recent post, from the day before, is about the two guys in New York who posted an ad on Craigslist looking for dates to bring to their cousin's wedding. As I gazed at the blur of text from afar -- squinting as if I was watching a horror flick -- I got an email from a friend, telling me she thought it was funny. That's all I needed -- a small pat on the back. I decided to read it more closely, figure out why it struck someone as funny. I suppose there's a fine line between funny and twisted. My suggestion that I offer up me and my daughter as dates for the two brothers in return for the chance to write a screenplay certainly straddles that fine line. Ugh. Sort of.
If you've never visited Craigslist, you should. It is beyond creepy, at least in the personal ad section. Vanilla seeks chocolate, chocolate seeks vanilla, dominatrices and submissives seek each other, fetishists seek coco puffs (and I don't think it's the cereal) -- every yin desperately seeking its yang. So a couple of good natured all American boys looking for "activity partners" to keep them company at a family wedding, well -- that's pretty darned tame. For a Craigslist personal ad at least. It took me a while, but I finally found the post I was looking for. It was tongue in cheek -- and I mean that in a pure sense, where someones own tongue is planted in one's own cheek, the one on the face. Completely harmless, and since I am, theoretically, in the midst of a job search, it seemed appropriate to apply.
I sent the guys a brief email, making abundantly clear that I was simply looking for a big screenwriting contract, nothing more. Sure, I mentioned that I would be accompanied by my twenty-three year old daughter, but I gave no indication that I was the kind of parent who would sanction -- much less participate in -- any monkey business involving my children. I said very little, and simply attached the link to my bloggish musings about how the boys and I could benefit each other.
Naturally, I was overtaken by misgivings and a horrific feeling of "what have I just done" the moment after I hit "send." As usual I wondered why these feelings never manage to hit before I pull the trigger but that's another story for another time. I decided to look at the bright side. Not only had I shoveled snow and repaired my garage door sensor the night before, but I had fully addressed item number one on my to-do list. A resume and cover letter, all pretty much tied up in a neat little already-written blog post. Another day filled with minor accomplishment. I had earned a nap.
Within five minutes, I heard the little bell on my laptop alerting me to the arrival of an email. You guessed it folks -- it was a reply from one of the brothers. He wanted to chat about my business proposal! My imagination began to run amok. A zillion dollar screenplay, an Oscar, maybe even an appearance on the Today Show? Where they'll do my hair and make-up for free? OMG! It don't get any better than this.
We still haven't chatted, but I remain optimistic. I'm giving them time to sift through all the garden variety young hotties who responded to their post and realize I'm the one they really want (or need). And to think it all started with a little bit of shoveling and kicking the shit out of something.
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