That’s a joke my ex-coworker and current friend Andrew and I used to make about our jobs. At the time, we were being ironic—about working in pajamas and the lack of health care, about our livelihood being dependant on a server and the bizarre guard who stood watch over our building. But as someone who is now following her dreams, let me tell you: there’s nothing more glamorous than being fully employed.
Even when I was a blogger, I lived in a non New-York-Magazine- type of Brooklyn. The dealers on my stoop, the blunt wrappers in my stairwell, the local crack-addict—they didn’t bother me. When I found used condoms in my stairwell, I imagined telling about it at a dinner party in twenty years.
Then the bugs came. And there’s nothing ironic about a fly problem.
I love my roommate and I love the park near my apartment. But I want to move. Not even to a nicer neighborhood. Just to a nicer building. A fly-less building. But I can’t afford to.
A certain type of person will meet me, hear what I do and say how great it is. And it is great—to wake up and create, to do something you find personally fulfilling, to not have a boss. Then I’ll have to give a sentence to describe it, and the whole thing sounds ridiculous.
Last week, I collected the scenes and putting together a very rough draft I’ve what I’m hoping will become Raronauer’ed, The Novel. I did the same thing six months ago and I ended up throwing most of it away, so this draft might not even count. Rereading the past few months work, some parts seem amateurish. And even if it is good, it doesn’t matter. The odds are