Pour myself a cup of Ma'ambition

I wish that, once per year, I were permitted a Dolly Parton day. Like I could wake up, roll out of bed (and stumble to the kitchen...) feeling zombie tired and angry at the world, catch a glance of my pallid face in the mirror and say, "Good lord, I need me a Dolly day." And lo and behold, my bosom would begin to heave, my spine to shrink, my hair to lighten and curl until I was a 5'1" bombshell with a squeaky twang, a spine of steel and the ability to maneuver gracefully in high heels. This scenario is what I was fixated on all day as I stood behind my desk, squinting at an Excel spreadsheet listing various floggers, harnesses, cuffs and collars while my boss enjoyed music from an internet radio station specializing in "the 80s" to drown out the shrieking of my perennially ringing phone.

(OH MY GOD, I just got attacked by what I thought was a giant cockroach but was in fact my hairpin getting caught in my hoodie. Anyway.)

See, there's a balance that must be maintained between apathy and stress: If I care about achieving something, I don't mind enduring the stress that goes along with its pursuit; if I, however, don't give a smoking dung pie about something, the maximum level of stress I'm willing to endure becomes much lower. Such is the case with work---not just my current job, mind you, which is relatively bearable, but paycheck work in general---and so every day I attempt to calibrate my stress level with my apathy for my job. Sometimes my calibrations fail, however, and I find myself suddenly suspended above a bottomless pit of expectation and pressure and tension for the sake of something I just don't care about. Period.

On the other hand, getting paid to "do what I love" is not something I want, either. I suppose I believe that commodifying my writing would drain the joy and spontaneity out of it. Most of all, though, doing it for a living would invite the application of rules to the one part of my life that is subject to the rules, whims and direction of myself alone. I have no interest in that---there are plenty of rules for everything else. My queer friends can't get married legally, my father had no recourse when the company for whom he worked for 25 years laid him off, and because I have insurance coverage, I am required to pay $40 a month for birth control. And then there's the subtler codes, like the requirement that I acknowledge with a smile, nod or response the catcalls I endure as I walk to work in the morning or risk inviting outrage and insult.

Where am I? Right, so anyway, there I was at work, squinting my way to my daily migraine, when "9 to 5" came on my boss' radio. It was a ludicrous moment; I had a flogger in my hand. Suddenly, I could see myself as Dolly having a day out of "Falling Down." En route to work, some jerkface would holler at me and I'd pop him in the nose with my mighty flogger. At work, the Marketing Manager would ask me to write another article for the site for no pay and I'd sashay into her office, slam my flogger on her desk, and say all squeaky, "Hell no, I won't do that!" After work, I'd go find Lily Tomlin, and we'd go share a cigar in the Ruby Room over two glasses of bourbon-spiked ginger ale.

Oh well. I keep telling myself to sit tight for just 12 more months and set off for school next year with nary a financial woe in the world...or, if April finds my mailbox vomiting rejection notices, resign and take off for a year-long road trip around North America.

Starting at Dollywood.