I have to give myself some credit, I put on a brave face. Raised on Henry Rollins and windmills thrown in pits, I was always a tough kid. When my parents split, I handled it with a studied, tearless resolve, calmly aware that whatever legal drama that was about to unfold would be far better than more years of animosity and arguing in the house. As a goth teenager, I only cried if I got eyeliner in my eye, using the aesthetic of mourning and melancholy as accessories, along with a pair of sturdy combat boots and a metal lunchbox. As with a lot of feisty, overly well-read sixteen year olds, I had a tendency to replace pain or sadness with anger, as though yelling or breaking juice glasses was more noble than curling up with a box of Kleenex for a good old-fashioned howl. As an adult, I held onto the belief that sorrow was tantamount to weakness, and processing anguish was something solely reserved for people who had that kind of time.

Last March, my mom was diagnosed with cancer following a routine scan to figure out why her back and stomach were bothering her. As they called us to the doctor’s office to share the results, we knew it was bad. Doctor’s usually tell you what you need to know over the phone, ’cause they have long afternoons of golf to get to. When we went into the exam room and were told that my mother’s liver was covered in metastatic lesions, I felt as though my skeleton caved in, but I pursed my lips and asked the doctor the necessary questions as though I were interviewing a writer for House. I looked at my mother, so small and shocked, and I knew I had to rise up and take charge. Not because I was so close to her (although we spoke frequently, we didn’t really get along) but because she didn’t have anyone else to be there and step up. It felt like the right thing to do, and moreover, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. Selfish, I know. Over the following five months from her diagnosis to her death, I made a point to try to keep myself together, and for the most part, I did. It took a lot of yoga, a lot of aggressive music, and several Yankee games, but I was able to stay sober and present for my mother, without casting more than a fleeting internal glance on how I was feeling. I figured I’d deal with it later.

After mom died, I had to execute the funeral arrangements, clean and sell her house, get rid of cars, animals, things, and find a place to live. I didn’t have the spare time to get all soggy and snot-covered. A lot of people observed that I didn’t seem to be grieving. They asked me if I was okay in that tone that led me to believe that they thought I was about to skinny dip in the East River wearing some concrete Converse. I kept saying that I was fine, that it would hit me later, when everything was done. I didn’t believe a word of it. To me it was just lip service to get the perfume-soaked old broads off my back, and to shut that stupid hospice grief counselor up. I was fine. I’d read Camus and Hesse in grade school, I’d learned how to cut through emotion with logic, to temper desperation with reason and philosophy. I. Was. Fine. Similar to the way women mourn in Bali, I tried my best not to cry, as though that were a humiliation, a demonstration of how incapable I was to cope and take care of what needed to be taken care of.

Two days ago I was walking to a cafe to do some work. For the past two weeks or so I’d had nightmares every night. Not always graphic ones, like zombies eating my dog or Rush Limbaugh flashing me his genitals, just uncomfortable dreams, ones that made me wake up restless and exhausted. Some of them about my mom, most of them just about random shit. On my walk I was wrestling with this fatigue when something happened, something inside of me broke, I guess that’s the only way to put it. I couldn’t stay at the cafe. I went home. I was agitated, frayed, unable to focus. I looked at my apartment, everything having been moved in and unpacked, Simon’s issue of The Economist and his gloves on the chair, my books all lining the shelf. I saw the photograph of my mother holding me, one of my favorite ones. According to my mom’s handwriting on the back, we’re at the zoo. In the picture I’m an infant, reaching for the camera, while my mother smiles, holding me at my waist. I started to cry. For four hours I collapsed into a drooling, mucus-spewing mess. (To be fair, I didn’t help myself out by listening to The Magnetic Fields and Cat Power while this was going on.) I struggled to work, but found myself staring at the screen, the window, the floor, sobbing. Even in my days of alcoholic emotion, where I’d break the nearest plate to emphasize a point, or make out with somebody’s girlfriend to express joy, I’ve never felt overwhelmed quite like this. Trying to rely on logic to pull me away from the puddle of fluids I was creating, I struggled to think of a trigger. I couldn’t. Still can’t.

In normal people, responses to grief can be really intense. Breathing problems, cotton-mouth, appetite issues, and nightmares are commonplace. Repetitive motions to try to ward off or avoid pain can occur. (I will admit to a vigorous shaking of my head when I have a particularly vivid memory.) Hallucinations are even reported in certain cases of early grief. Basically, it’s scientifically proven that it’s okay to lose your shit. But six months later? Is this a sign that I’m one of the ones who starts a motel and harasses people with a knife in the shower?

I’m not sure what the grieving process is, or what’s considered normal. I’ve lost a grandmother, a dog, close friends, and I’ve always processed it as an event, just like writing about something difficult. I answered the questions in my head, the who, what, when, where, and why, and let that serve as an epitaph. As though understanding something disarmed its potential for an emotional response. As though telling myself that death is just a part of life and it happens to everyone, move on, would get me through the loss of my mother without much more than ten minutes of yowling in the pew of a church next to her bright pink coffin. Maybe for some of us mourning isn’t something that we do in a house of worship, or among the company of friends and family. I’m beginning to realize that I can only really be vulnerable in my solitude. Which is makes sense, when I think about it. It used to be that I could only be vulnerable when I was talking to my mom.

In Ethiopia, grieving family members are given assistance by a community group called an edir. The edir cooks, cleans, and donates money to the family. Many cultures respond to death by helping: feeding the family of the dead, planning a funeral, hosting a party, performing religious rites. I didn’t feel let down by my mother’s Catholicism or by the community of people she surrounded herself with, they were like worker bees, plying me with baked goods and teary-eyed stories. In response, I felt as though I needed to be there for them. My mother was the kind of person who refused help even when she needed it, and, like my stature and love of Neil Diamond, it’s something that she passed on. Perhaps the other day was some sort of delayed response, the "later" I kept waiting for, a moment where I was alone and there was nothing to do other than work and sit and think. It’s in those moments that I realize I won’t hear her chopping basil while listening to Cher, or smell her Obsession perfume as she puts on her coat, or hear her gasp for air in the way she did when she truly laughed at something, never again. I’ve suddenly come to realize that this isn’t a vacation, she isn’t coming back. My mind and my insides have slowly grown accustomed to the tiny moments of defeat, I go to call her, I can’t, I try to plan a visit to her house, it’s no longer hers, I want to send her an email, but I don’t even know the password to her account to delete it. When she was dying I told her that I found myself mentally treating it like she was going on a trip,  like a cruise or a Caribbean adventure. "Me too," she responded. "Isn’t that funny?"

Although I’m not taking this route, if you’re struggling with the loss of a loved one, grief counselors can be helpful. If you belong to a temple or church, your clergyman or staff there will have resources for you. Groups like GriefShare can help you find a support group, there are even ones that are based online like GriefNet. Contact your local hospital for other support group options, and, of course, if your loved one had hospice, grief counseling is available for a year or more following death. Most cities have grief counselors available as well, the best thing to do would be to look up a nearby mental health practitioner or a counselor certified by the American Academy of Grief Counseling who can help give you guidance and strength to get through the aftermath.

I have approximately one week until the closing on the sale of my mother’s house. For some reason, probably because the date kept being pushed back due to attorneys going on vacation, I developed a sort of lackadaisical mentality, as though the day would never come. Although I am naturally a neurotic, type-A personality, who does random shit like clean the area behind the base of the toilet and alphabetize her spice rack, I quickly adapted to our Trainspotting-esque living conditions. I can tell you with anal-retentive certainty that there is an empty box of Nerds (Simon’s,) three library books, and the wrapping paper from five Christmas gifts on the floor. I can also tell you with equal steadfastness that I will not be picking any of these items up off of the floor today, because I have adapted the mentality of, "We’ll do it before the closing."

Only now it’s before the closing. So I have to get up off of my ass and do something before a green baby starts crawling on my ceiling.

My broker was a good friend of my mother’s, so she calls to check up on me more often than most brokers do. Or perhaps I’m just flattering myself, after all, she’s aching for the closing just as much as I am since she can’t pick up her 4% commission until the papers are signed and the lawyers have given awkward man hugs or chest bumps or whatever it is that they do after they’ve done some maths and netted top dollar. Last night she called and proceeded to go through the list of things I need to do before vacating the premises. I scrawled notes as she yammered on. By the second page I started to feel as though I needed a Pepto shot with an Immodium chaser. Apparently my dog-whistle pitched "uh-huh"s gave away my panic.

"Now, honey," she said in a voice that let me know that she had children. "Don’t hesitate to call me if any of this makes you feel overwhelmed."

I’ve learned in sobriety that you have to ask for help, otherwise you risk really fucking yourself up. God knows that this situation strikes a nerve with me. Back when I was drinking I moved impulsively, leaving behind entire apartments filled with shit that I suddenly "didn’t need," along with social circles wondering if I’d died (an email from the director of a poetry group read, "Next time you decide to leave the state, tell someone.") When I see a cardboard box I start to get itchy. It’s as though the slow slope of the key coming off the keyring ignites some sort of reaction in me. I want to change my phone number, dye my hair, and pretend that NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED. Only this time around, nothing happened. Well, other than my mom dying, but that isn’t anything that moving to a different city can fix.

I’m not good at things like this, to put it mildly. Moving requires organization, which is fine when you’re talking about a project, such as writing the text for a website, or tracking edits on an article, but I lose my ability to focus once serious shit is involved. My eyes start involuntarily glazing over and I suddenly feel myself under the pressure of a very demanding nap schedule. But I can’t shy away from this. The family of four — one of which is an infant daughter named Ainsley, swear to God — is expecting an empty, "broom clean" house to move into. Until then, it’s a race to see if I can successfully get this shit done without knocking myself unconscious or going out and becoming a Lindsay Lohan impressionist.

At this point in reading you may be wondering, “What is it that you need to do that’s so goddamned demanding that it has you whining like a New Jersey housewife whose flight to Miami is delayed?” Here’s a taste.

- Dismantle a king-sized, wrought-iron bed frame, then throw out said frame and accompanying mattress and box spring. I should mention that all of these items are on the second floor of a very narrow two-story house.

- Go through a decade’s-worth of dried goods in two pantries. My mother was a hoarder. When I cleaned out the over-stocked freezer I discovered that there were batches of tomato sauce and cookies labeled from years before she moved. Meaning that she moved food with her in 1999. I can tell you just from standing on a chair and peeking that there is a bottle of ketchup whose color  and logo suggest that it’s been around since U2 was an indie band, and there’s a bottle of unopened A1 whose sheer presence is terrifying since my mother didn’t cook steak or burgers and I haven’t consumed red meat in nearly seven years.

- Choreographing a stranger coming by and picking up the rest of the furniture, including my mattress, while somehow preserving my ability to sleep and comfortably exist for the remaining forty-eight hours of life in this house.

- Cutting off and canceling all of the important stuff, like gas, mail, lights, camera, action. Due to the fact that the only time I can stop twitching with nerves is when I’m planted in front of the television watching CSI or LeBron James (in both situations the nervous tics are appropriate,) I don’t want to cut cable until the very end. Unfortunately I think I have to drop off all of the cable boxes at some undisclosed location, because cable companies live in an alternate, incomparably selfish universe, much like Paris Hilton and cats. 

- Orchestrate moving nineteen boxes and a stair-wary dog up five flights into my new apartment in a five hour window following the closing. It’s a walk-up. Also, figuring out how to get furniture delivered on a Saturday when my brand-spankin’-new super isn’t in the building. Hi! I’m your new tenant, here to inconvenience you from the get-go! Don’t mind the yelling! I do this all the time.

Of course, these are all what Simon commonly refers to as "white people problems." What he really means is that they’re insignificant, "luxury problems," if you will. I agree. But I look at my panic and dread as a positive thing. Six months ago my main complaints were the way chemo was useless, my mom’s ascetis had swollen her out of a wardrobe, and I didn’t know if we would be able to pay our mortgage while simultaneously trying to sustain her healthcare coverage since she couldn’t work. Those were problems. Moving furniture? Potatoes so small they couldn’t adequately feed dust mites. The fact that I’m popping an ulcer over what sort of couch could fit in a seven-foot-long one-bedroom apartment means that my stress level has actually gone down. Life has returned to its normal pace.

I’m always going to have complaints. Not only is it in my nature, but I think it’s part of the modern human condition. Life isn’t perfect unless you make a conscious effort to see it that way, and even then, it’s usually a blend of perception, positive visualization, meditation, and medication. So even though I can’t just "om" my way through the move, I can observe the simple fact that my inconveniences are now non-life-threatening. And although I would trade my easy problems for my mom back in a heartbeat, it’s good to know that when life goes on it doesn’t make too dramatic of a flourish. Unless, of course, you count an artichoke colored couch being hauled up a staircase by a five-foot-tall alcoholic.

Happy New Year. This one’s gonna be better.

To me, chassis, piston, and crankshaft are stripper names. If you asked me to venture a guess about what each of them did, I’d probably say some snarky comment about you needing to go back to your mom’s basement and watch Bladerunner again, you Cheetoh-eating, D&D-playing geek. Of course, to the well-informed, responsible car owner, they are parts of your automobile. But this idiot couldn’t tell you the first thing about cars. When I hear “horsepower” mentioned in a commercial, I still imagine Honda’s newest model being led to some straightaway where it was raced against the Belmont’s finest.

A car I do not want or need was an item left behind the wake of my mother’s death, pun intended. Back in ’99, after my parents’ divorce settlement was finalized, my mother decided to do something extravagant for herself to celebrate. This resulted in a purchase of a Mercedes-Benz SL500 convertible in a color referred to as “champagne,” with an interior that Simon calls “peanut butter.” Model year? 2000. Number of miles on it when my mom went to the Masarati lot in the sky? 40K. Personally, my dream car is a new paint job for my bicycle, but I will swoon into a puddle when confronted with a mint-condition hot rod, preferably if there’s a tattooed man involved in its maintenance. But, seriously, hand me a skateboard and I’m happy. My mom’s ‘cedes-spending spree was ridiculous in my eyes, but it made her happy and feel like a new woman, so I couldn’t scoff too much.

Now that she’s gone, I’m the asshole with the Mercedes. Please buy my Mercedes. Please.

So far, my attempts to sell it have included a Craigslist posting and a doe-eyed sales pitch to any person over the age of forty who looks like they have a steady job. Of course, the main problem here is that I am wholly ignorant when it comes to sales, cars, and selling cars. Not to mention the fact that I’m impatient as all get-out and distrusting of people.

I own a used Volkswagen Jetta, model year 2000. This gray, beat up, lovable vehicle replaced the first car I ever had, a 1998 VW Golf that was totaled by a speeding 90 year old in a Cadillac, resulting in a mild shoulder injury and phobia of the elderly. If you asked me to tell you about my car, I’d say it goes fast and has a good sound system. I’d tell you that its prime features include a passenger seat that’s easy for the driver to make out in, and a fun console that glows blue at night. I don’t know how many miles are on it, how many miles it gets per tank of gas, or why the radiator decided to blow out in the center lane of traffic on a highway last week. Also a mystery, why Goodyear originally tried to charge me $1,300 for the repairs, but knocked it down to $822 when I turned on the waterworks. Apparently cars require fewer repairs when their owners are pathetic.

I knew I was in over my head when the first response to the Craigslist post was the question, “Can I have the VIN#?” Vin number. I was about to research what vin was the prefix for in Latin when my dad emailed me back. “Vehicle Identification Number. Should be in car someplace.” I didn’t point out that calling it “vehicle identification number” and putting a hash mark after its abbreviation makes it read “vehicle identification number number,” but I did take note of it. If I wanted to seem with it, I’d better just call it a vin.

Once I located the VIN, which took three trips to the car, a YouTube video, and some words that included a hash mark or two of my own among other symbolic punctuation, I was able to respond to the email. Several more were exchanged, and a date to view the car was set. On Monday at five-thirty I met Gene, a forty-something Polish gentleman with a close-cropped beard and sandals. He arrived ready to go, and set about circling the car like a lion circles a fallen gazelle. I assumed that this was a sign that Gene knew about cars, had possibly driven one just like it, and wouldn’t turn to me – the staring half-wit dressed like an extra for a 1998 Hole video – for any information that would make or break his decision to settle and speed the thing out of my life.

“How do you open the trunk?” he asked.

I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I would have had more luck trying to rip open a hole in the fabric of the universe. If scientists had recorded it, it would have been a screaming example of how humans are similar to monkeys when confronted with the unknown. The answer to Gene’s question was you press a button. But it took fifteen minutes of random knocking, twisting, and head-scratching to get there.

Gene started the engine. Gene twisted the steering wheel. Gene figured out (without consulting me) how to pop the hood and look at the robot inside of my mother’s car. “Is that the gallbladder?” I joked, pointing to some knot of metal and wires. Gene looked at me earnestly and answered. “No.”

There was some inspection of some things I couldn’t explain or tell you. I gave up trying to exude any aura of confidence or intellect following the trunk fiasco, so I basically just stood back and observed a man acquainting himself with a car.

“We go for test drive now, okay, yes?” Gene asked and commanded. Okay. Yes. I hopped in, realizing that I’d left my cellphone, wallet, identification, and oblivious boyfriend in the house. No matter. I was in a German convertible belonging to my dead mother with a stranger who was either interested in purchasing the vehicle, or interested in abducting a tattooed, androgynous moron. Unless the ransom was going to be a box of Raisinets and a bundle of RSS feeds, I seriously doubted I’d ever see Simon again.

“Where can we go to test engine? Open it up. Nothing crazy,” Gene said.”

I am the kind of driver who is more afraid of the police than a fourteen-year-old suburban kid who smokes pot for the first time. I do not know where to speed anywhere, because I try to obey the speed limit everywhere. Due to my inherent aversion to math, I respect numbers of any kind.

“Uh. Left?” I said.

The car suddenly began to imitate a personal massager. It trembled. It shook. Separate from requiring two double-A batteries, it vibrated. I might know nothing about cars, but I do know that they are not designed to induce orgasms.

“What is this?” Gene asked.

“Uh. I don’t know?” I said.

We drove for twenty minutes or so, the vibrations becoming intermittent, at times less severe, other times I felt my teeth rattle in my jaw. Gene stopped at every traffic light, revved the engine once or twice, brought the car up to sixty-five and dropped it back down to the school-zone-friendly thirty-five, and finally made the U-turn to lead us back to my house.

The word mechanic was used. My mother’s car could be hiding a deep, dark secret beneath its gilded exterior: the need for a brand new transmission. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care. It can’t be that bad. After all, Transmission is one of my favorite songs by Joy Division.

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

Thank you to everyone who donates. You keep the wheels on the bus going ’round and ’round.

Hire us if you have a need for speed. Or just, you know, text.

There were the prayer cards to select out of a book. I tried to compare the sets of wallet-sized laminated pictures of saints, each looking skyward as though rolling their eyes at my indecision. I couldn’t choose between the Holy Family Edition and the baroque Old Masters Series, so LeighAnn suggested fifty of each. Next were the prayers to go on the back, like the Bible equivalent of fortune cookie fortunes. I debated whether or not my mom would have been pissed to have the Fireman’s Prayer on the back of her mass card. Instead I chose some passage about death not being so bad, ’cause God was going to flip the resurrection switch eventually, yadda yadda. A smattering of accolades about life everlasting, with a dash of fire and brimstone thrown in. Amen.

Caskets come in metal or wood, and you’d think wood would be cheaper, but no. Good ol’ alloy saves you some coin. Fifteen-hundred dollars for a metal box to put a body in, and my mother insisted on having a closed casket wake. At least that meant that the lining wouldn’t be a determining factor. I selected a coffin the color of Pepto Bismol, possibly because I hoped it would settle the unease that was tossing itself across my stomach each time LeighAnn used her unnaturally smooth fingers to turn the display pages.

Throughout the wake and funeral process I was reminded of a nightmare I used to have as a kid. In it I showed up to a dance recital that I hadn’t been aware of. I didn’t know any of the steps or the songs, and wound up standing center-stage, trying to distract the audience from the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. In reality, walking in the door with my mother’s name, with the pink coffin and the photographs I’d provided surrounding it, I waited for someone to give me a clue. Do I kneel? Bow? What do I say to her boss? Is there some sort of secret sorrow handshake? Some sort of special recitation I was supposed to be giving? In the middle of the ordeal I left the crowd of cooing, sniffling adults to crouch by my mother and whispered into the explosion of roses on top of her. “Mom, you didn’t tell me it was going to be this big of a deal. You’re so lucky you don’t have to be standing through all of this. You sure got out of this one.”

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at gmail dot com
Thank you to everyone who donates.

Totally employable, mostly adorable.

After five months of fighting metastatic pancreatic cancer, my mother has gone on hospice. For those of you lucky enough to be unaware, hospice is an organization dedicated to end-of-life care. Basically it provides everything a patient and their caregiver(s) need in order to stay comfortable towards the end of an illness or terminal condition, including medication, hospital beds, oxygen, even commodes. (Chocolate peanut butter frozen yogurt and the first three seasons of The Tudors are not included.) All I had ever heard about the organization up until this point had been good things. My aunt and grandmother had been on hospice, and my childlike understanding of the group was that they were a gang of nuns that acted as kindly drug pushers. Close, but not quite. First of all, we’ve only met one nun, and she was awesome, though she could have used a habit. Secondly, the drugs are necessary.

My mom is now on morphine. After experiencing her first high, she said she felt funny. I assured her it was normal, and that most of the musicians I listened to in the ’90s felt the way she did for the duration of the decade. Other than the nodding, there have been hallucinations, ranging from the amusing — “When did you get that big, black tattoo on your back?” — to the bizarre — “Does that say fennel?” As I deal with the bedsores, the dosing, the discomfort, the bathroom issues, I have to wonder about these hospice people. Why on earth would someone do this for a living?

It feels like a million years ago that I contemplated being a home health aid in Portland. I was desperate for work, destitute, and had a friend that cared for the severely mentally and physically impaired. He could get me a job in an instant. I thought about it. I was really, really hungry, and I didn’t know where rent was coming from, but there were a lot of things that made me hesitant to sign on the dotted line. For one, it was a lot of bathing, clothing, and feeding of adults who, according to my friend, didn’t really comprehend much about their state of existence or what was going on from moment to moment. My friend also told me that it was often very lonely work, but that the money was good and more than made up for it.

I chose not to do it. I would have felt odd caring for a stranger like that, it was way too intimate to be with someone in exchange for a paycheck without Robert Redford involved. Although I’m sure it was irrational, I also felt like it was a bit of a violation of their dignity. I had enough issues with leaving the door open to pee in front of Simon. I couldn’t imagine having someone I didn’t know wipe my butt and spoon feed me vegan burritos.

I imagine that hospice is similar to being a home health aid, only your patients have the shelf life of a carton of milk. My mom often wondered how her oncologist handled the fact that most of his patients died. Hospice is like that, only without the miraculous tales of recovery. On their website, if you go to apply for a job, it reads, “Contrary to the myth that hospice work is sad and depressing, our nurses say it is the most rewarding work they have ever done.”  I can’t believe that. Hospice nurses and volunteers take care of people on their way to taking a dirt nap. It’s that simple. Granted, I’m feeling a bit cynical, as my position as the caregiver leaves me pretty exhausted, frustrated, and morose. My mother is dying, there’s nothing I can do. For the  hospice worker, my mother is dying, there’s nothing they can do. Morphine, anyone?

Taking care of my mom has been the most effective form of birth control I could imagine. Bathing, feeding, clothing, and assisting her in everything from taking a pee to walking to another room has informed me that, no, I am not patient enough to shoot a little Mini Ainsley out of my love canal. But she’s my mom. I love her, I ache for her, and I wish this weren’t happening. Again, if you do have a kid, I can understand, it’s yours. You want it to be happy, healthy, to prosper. You can smile as you get up in the middle of the night to give them a glass of juice, and you can patiently troubleshoot the accidents that they’ve left in their Spiderman skivvies. They’re kids. Watching an adult be infantalized (let alone my own mother) is painful and humiliating. It’s hard for me to not feel completely inept, angry, and terrified, and I’m her only child. But doing this for money…or as a volunteer? I can’t comprehend the motivation, let alone why anyone would want a job like this if they have children in their own home.

I believe in the goodness of humanity, this blog alone has taught me that much. Every time my wallet has gotten dangerously thin, someone has randomly sent a donation. Each time I feel like the worst writer to ever tap Morse into a keyboard, someone leaves a comment or writes me a funny, complimentary email. Despite my philosophy that had developed over years of listening to goth music, people have proven that they are, in fact, not all bad. But it’s unfathomable to me that people dedicate their time to helping people like my mother, complete strangers, in their last weeks or months of life. I don’t know if I’m humbled or ashamed of the fact that I can say unequivocally that caring for the dying is something I cannot do, outside of the situation I’m in.

If you are the opposite of yours truly, and are the kind of person who would thrive doing this sort of thing, first of all, more power to you. You are a better person than I. Next, you can apply for a position on your local hospice website, or by calling them and asking if there are any opportunities available. To work with hospice in the Long Island area, you need two years experience in homecare or hospice, a valid driver’s license with a car to match, knowledge of medication, an understanding of how to control various symptoms, and language skills. If you speak Spanish, Chinese, or Korean, even better. If you’re able to calmly explain basic procedures to a completely clueless chick with tattoos and a foul mouth, you should get hired now.

If you’re on the other end of the hospice can-and-string like me, I have to let you know that, so far, they are incredible. In the dead of night, if you notice that your loved one is itchy, you can call them and they are there. If you just want someone to talk to because you’re scared and alone, they’re there. If you need a refill on Roxanol, they will have it delivered to your door. They can’t make the pain of the loss stop, but they help to try to make me comfortable, just as they do for my mom.

I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone for your support. Even though I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to update this blog as regularly over the next few weeks, I promise that I’ll keep posting. Feel free to drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at gmail dot com. And thank you to everyone who donates.

Ministry of Imagery is still open for business.

When I started freelancing it was because I had been fired for the first time in my life. It was out of necessity and panic, and at that point in my life it seemed pretty clear that things weren’t going so well for me. Not only had I been fired, but I was newly sober, and still walking passed the smoke-filled bars that lined Portland’s rainy streets with a hankering for several shots of whiskey and a drunken dance-off with a stranger. I had no savings, since I had drank it all away, so I lived in an unfinished house with no stove, decorated with exposed insulation and nails springing from every flat surface, and with three guys who tended bar at night and tended to strippers even later at night, all of which would not have been a problem if one of them hadn’t been ejaculating into my closet. (No joke.)

Granted, there were silver linings to all of this: I was no longer tethered to the bottle. At least I had a roof over my head. All three of the bartenders were Southern skinny boys covered in tattoos, basically the walking equivalent of my wet dream, so if they wanted to spunk in my stuff they could have just asked or invited me to watch. Most importantly, I was no longer working at a job I didn’t enjoy, where I didn’t get any personal fulfillment, and where I didn’t get a chance to write. For too long my life’s goal that had been relegated to the back burner on my hot plate. At the time I hadn’t understood the power of positive thinking, though slowly I began to realize that poverty when you’re attempting to do something you love sure beats regular, old poverty.

These days I have a lot of shit swirling around my pot. I’ve moved away from the love of my life and our home of only a few months in order to take care of my mother as Stage IV pancreatic cancer takes over her body. I’m still poor. I’m learning that the depths of my crazy are far deeper than a shot glass. I could craft a complaint for every minute of the day, but what good does that do me? All it would succeed in doing is make me sound like a whiny, ungrateful reality show contestant, and it would rob me of the ability to enjoy the primary bitch-free part of my life: I write for a living.

Sometimes it’s hard to stay positive. But you have to.

Recently I was trying to look up statistics on freelancing in this economy, and I discovered one of those Associated Content articles labeled “The 5 Main Advantages of Being a Freelance Writer.” Now, I always view AC articles as the equivalent of generic, store brand products, which is maybe a little unfair. But thisMyTussin of Internet research had another pet-peeve of mine, right there in the header. ” Doing The “Write” Thing Can Actually Improve Your Life.” A play on words with write, in quotes, really? I had to see what was listed. I assumed the five would include having time to spend with your family, being able to listen to Crosby, Stills, and Nash at work, and being able to take pottery classes at night. Instead they were pretty run of the mill: flexible hours, being able to live wherever you want, a controlled working environment, income tax deductions, and the completely perplexing “Choose Your Own Level of Income.”

In Portland, our list went like this: being able to sleep in, having sex on the job, and feeling good about ourselves. We could only come up with three, but as we’ve learned with pitching ideas to clients, present only your strongest first. The other two would have probably included some mention ofDJing, burritos, Boggle, and body modification.

Things have changed. We’ve survived doing this for some time, albeit it always feels like we’re teetering on the brink of touch-and-go. Certainly if and when I’m stupid enough to have children of my own, I wouldn’t want them to live the way we lived out of necessity for a while there. But I will always want them to follow their dreams, in that cheesy, Hallmark way. (“The Benefits Of Freelancing, starring Stockard Channing, only on Lifetime!”) The benefits of what we do aren’t as simple as that list, and certainly they fluctuate in their accuracy.

I’ve often marveled at the fact that Simon and I studied screenwriting. Do we write movies? Nope. Do we work in entertainment? Nuh-uh. So were the umpteen-thousand dollars spent on our degrees wasted? Well, not exactly. We write promo shorts for companies, tiny spots that they can integrate into videos on their websites, informing customers what they provide. We write scripts for in-house training videos. At times our work involves pacing, dialog, and an innate understanding of how to craft a story arc. The lesson learned in this is that we never know where our craft is going to take us. Sometimes we writewhitepapers , other days it’s a press release, or a product description, or even a letter of resignation for one of our friends. So long as we’re writing and getting paid for it, we don’t care, and this path is not exactly set with traditional milestones. Where most companies have promotions and bonuses, we just have more projects. It’s fun not to know what the next gig is going to give us. The inability to just set our wheels on the track and wait for the next predictable thing to come our way allows us to really live in the present, which sometimes sucks (yes, there are projects that really suck, but, hey, every day can’t be Christmas.) We’re able to flex different muscles, and learn about how to adapt our words to each client individually. It’s a benefit I couldn’t have predicted.

Even though what I do to chase paper is identical to what I do for fun, writing for a living has transformed my writing outside of work. This is another boon to the job that I couldn’t have understood when we started out. After all, how does writing a press release really impact writing a piece of fiction? Turns out that the answer is majorly. Tiny technical details learned on the job get stuck in my brain mush, such as where to put an errant punctuation mark or the difference between complement and compliment. These anecdotes get integrated into my process when it comes to the fun stuff. Moreover, working with a wide array of people in different fields really influences my approach to stories, poems, blog posts, whatever. To use a tired, patchouli-scented analogy: it’s like a yin-yang. One side of my work informs the other, profession and play overlap.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit to this job right now is that it allows me to be here for my mother. I’m not sure that I would have been able to quit my 9-5 and moved across the country if my mom had gotten sick while I was “traditionally” employed. I don’t know if I would have felt the pull of family over the pull of health benefits and a steady paycheck. But being freelance allowed me to pack my bag and get home fast, without so much as questioning it. And being able to make my own hours has allowed me to attend every chemo appointment, sit in the waiting room during every doctor’s visit, and run any errands that she can’t do herself. My mother is a divorcee who lives alone with a variety of poorly-trained animals. She shouldn’t have to battle a terminal illness alone. I’m grateful to the guy who fired me now. He’s given me the opportunity to say goodbye to my mother in what I can only look at as the most wholesome and fulfilling way. I’m able to be of service, while also being on the job. Death takes no vacation time.

Simon and I are not corporate kids. We like to wear ratty tee-shirts, we stay up too late, and we like to blast Joy Division while typing at our desks, which are usually kitchen tables. In order to be sufficiently creative, we have to create an environment that fosters that kind of thought pattern. We can’t wear suits, but we can take conference calls with the kind of professionalism reserved for meeting royalty. We can’t clock in, though we can clock our hours. We can suck, but we can’t suck up. Fighting with the boss has often included expletives and make-up sex. And although some of our peers might get all starry-eyed and jealous that we don’t set alarms in the morning, and commuting to work consists of pouring the hot water over the tea bag and sitting down, there are plenty of trade-offs. Not having health insurance, the lack of savings, the fact that we seem immature, all of these come to mind. And while I may find myself listening to punk rock but day-dreaming of a spouse, some kids, and a well-manicured lawn, I wouldn’t trade this job that I love for any conventional American dream, no matter how much I fawn over the L.L. Bean catalog. (Shut-up.)

The real value of the work we do is simple, it still makes us feel good about ourselves. Being able to invest your passion in your profession comes with a weird sort of salary like that. The IRS might not understand when you label “being awesome” as a deduction, but, trust me, you wake up for work excited to start the day, even if you can’t afford a muffin. So here’s to work and play being united, to positive thinking, and to doing what you love. Turns out that even if you can’t afford a Miracle Bra, you can still feel like your job is some ridiculous miracle. At the end of the day, you can’t stick a pricetag on feeling supremely badass.

You’re welcome for that video.

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. And thank you to everyone who donates! It’s yet another thing I’m grateful for. I’d buy you each a bra made of diamonds if I could afford it.

Hire us. See us in action.

Over the years, I’ve collected rejection letters the way that most people collect books or underpants. I’ve learned that they’re part of the process, they’re pretty much inevitable, and, most of all, no matter how shitty my hair looks on any given day, they’re not personal. Also, it doesn’t matter how much good karma you try to generate by tossing pennies into the Salvation Army’s cup, or by smiling at post-office employees, the business of being rejected has nothing to do with how good of a person you are. The trick is to convince yourself that it has nothing to do with how good of a writer you are either.

My first rejection letter came on an afternoon in my preteen years. Coming home from a soccer game, which we had lost, I discovered a piece of mail on my desk, next to my goldfish bowl. My goldfish, of the five-cent carnival variety, was floating belly-up in the vase that served as his bowl. My fledgling poetry career was doing the same in the envelope. I lay down on my bed and took a nap.

Over the years I became desensitized, nay, even brazen about it. Stumbling home drunk at four-thirty in the morning, I’d struggle with my mailbox key and discover the latest gently-worded “fuck you” in the tiny compartment. I treated it no differently than the bevy of men and women I’d sauntered up to over the course of the evening, leaving with little more than napkin scrawl and a potential future outbreak of herpes simplex. Rejection is part of life. I stopped caring and started treating it as less of an occupational hazard, more as simply part of the job description. So long as I was still submitting I was still a writer. I became a hope junkie.

A few weeks ago I started work on a satirical essay that was pretty close to my little robot heart. It made light of caretaking and parents, it poked fun at some of the less-than-pleasant aspects of helping a sick family member at home. Of course, I drew on some of my personal experience thus far, as I’m lending a hand to my mom and playing the role of Falcor in our Neverending Chemo Story. I edited the shit out of the piece when I was done with draft one, and made sure that it struck the right balance between wholly acerbic and sorta poignant. I mulled over it, took my time, gave it breathing room, and…I liked it. That’s rare.

I thought of where to send it, after all, it’s not like there’s a gigantic market for gallows humor, unless I’m completely mistaken. Then I thought of McSweeney’s. Probably my favorite website, chock full of chuckle-worthy good writing and brainy wordplay, of course they’d accept a quirky little piece about homecare! They are the website that’s filled with genre-transcending prose and lists,  a sanctuary for the some of the most daring of swashbuckling pens. Maybe they had a slot open for a hopeful nobody.

As glib as I’m being, it wasn’t as if I simply expected to be accepted. I truly believe that I suck, just as much as the next fledgling creative, and certainly I acknowledge that I suck much more than those who have been lucky enough to find themselves in McSweeney’s. I’ve had more than one list play the role of skeet for their editor’s marksmanship. I hadn’t cared in the past. But this piece was different. More polished, closer to the marrow, locked within the birdcage beneath my nonexistent breasts. I edited it, spell checked it twice, said a small agnostic prayer, and sent it to their site editor, wishing it godspeed.

The days that followed were filled with what keeps me doing something so stupid as submitting to publications. I became buoyant with growing expectation, dancing along on my Converse, the Gene Kelly of my own rags-to-riches story of ambition, perseverance, and a flash fiction piece about cancer. My dreams were filled with literary success, launched by my little lampoonery. I’d make a name for myself. I’d be paid to write essays and articles. I’d make a living. I’d have Simon wearing a loincloth, fanning me with a palm frond, and feeding me green grapes by hand. (And vegan soft-serve by mouth.) Life was gonna look up. For the first time in my life as a writer, I was convinced I’d be embraced by the warm, snuggley arms of an editor on his ivory throne. Welcome, the letter would say, to where you’ve always wanted to be. Cherubs would sing and play Röysksopp on little harps. Chinchilas would do the hula.  Maynard James Keenan would write me fan mail. I would be in McSweeney’s. I would.

After my mom took her first monster dose of Xeloda, I ran out to buy her the B-6 vitamins she’d forgotten to take to prevent neuropathy. It was there, in the pharmacy parking lot, under a heavy, gray sky that I checked my email on my dented, pink Sidekick-ID.

“Hi, Ainsley. This one is not without its moments, but overall the conceit is just a little too dark to win me over. Appreciate the look, though. Hope you’ll keep trying.”

The sort of devastation one feels when dealing with acute failure is palpable. I’m not talking about the closing pitcher who blows an occasional game, or the still-beautiful pop singer whose third album doesn’t break the top ten on the charts. I’m specifically addressing the sort of failure that one feels when one believes, in no uncertain terms, that they will achieve great success. I hadn’t gotten all flushed and dewy eyed when Brown University bitch slapped my dreams of grad school in my early twenties, I didn’t let out a wail when Poetry Magazine sent me a very off-handed “thanks-but-no-thanks” in the tone of Sarah Palin. Like I’ve said, rejection is part of the game, if you’re truly a writer it should come as natural to you as the alphabet. I have no idea why the four lines from McSweeney’s caught me like a gerbil swept up the nozzle of a vacuum, but they did. My self-esteem, what there was of it anyway, has yet to recover, which strikes me as peculiar.

Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a woe-is-me thing. Sure, I’m destitute, have no new clients, and spend every errant wish, from stars to birthday candles to 11:11 on the car dashboard, on the simple hope of making a living as a writer. Absolutely, my current situation, living with my mother as she battles terminal cancer while my partner stretches out in bachelor bliss on the couch in what once was our house in Oklahoma, it sucks. No bones about it. But the hard rejections, the ones that are more of a broken jaw than a flavorless jawbreaker, those are just another key in the QWERTY of life. Rejection is like entry fees, each varies in the amount, and there are few you can avoid. You want to know what would be a shame? To not resubmit the same piece — maybe edited slightly to make it less dark, maybe not — to another publication or contest. To give up and say, “That’s it, done, fuck it. I want to organize shelves in Whole Foods for a living.” (All right, I admit it, I do. But I can write, too.) Even though this particular punch in the gut was a shocker, what can you do? I’m writing about it. And I’ll keep writing, for myself and for an audience I have yet to find. And maybe that makes me an impoverished fool, but it also makes me a writer. And a Leo! And maybe also bisexual, considering I do this hoping you all will want to take me out to dinner.




As a final note, I share with you some morsels on the misgivings of this profession, that I discovered as I tried to drown my sorrows in the comforting waters of the Internet:

The editor of the San Francisco Examiner rejected a short story by Rudyard Kipling by sending him this little love note, “I’m sorry Mr Kipling, but you don’t know how to use the English language.”

If you’re looking for more consolation, there’s always the Rejection Collection and Literary Rejections On Display. They’re nice little reminders that we’re all in this together. Don’t let the bastards grind you down!

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. And thank you to everyone who donates! Means a ton, makes me do a little dance.

Hire us to word you.

[Note: Just to update anyone who would have noticed, I'm sorry the blog has been less often and less, um, chunky of late. Things at home are understandably chaotic, my mother's first round of Gemzar was an absolute epic fail, as the kids would say, and the insurance company has rejected her doctor's prescription for the GTX chemo cocktail that they are basically regarding as a Hail Mary pass. I swear I'll get back to a bi-weekly Jerk Ethic as soon as I can, as writing is the only thing that has ever kept me feeling even half-way sane and happy. Thanks for sticking by me, and thank you for the emails, support, donations, and silent smiles. I would hug you all if I could. But I can't see you. Which I suppose is kind of creepy.]

When thinking about a method to reach out to old, but dearly loved clients, it’s hard to achieve the appropriate tone. Dropping a random email can seem a little needy, as though you’re looking for a hand-out. Trying to rely on word-of-mouth is risky. Besides, who’s to say that your most recent project that got the dogs to eat the dog food would impress the catnip salesman that funded last winter’s rent? I thought about kitschy methods of getting attention, either through Tumblr, Twitter, or even postcard mailings. But it was as a mulled this over with an open Inbox and a cup of rooibos tea, it dawned on me what I was looking at. A newsletter. Specifically one for Girlie Girl Army, their weekly update, a vegan-fashionista list of things that are current, cool, and cruelty-free. Of course. Ministry of Imagery needs a newsletter.

A weekly one would probably be too much to ask for. After all, between shuttling my mom to and from chemo treatments, catering to our client roster, maintaining some semblance of daily life and hygeine, and working on our own personal projects, there really isn’t much time to add yet another prioritized piece of penmanship. But newsletters are an effective means of knocking dust off old clients, and reaching out to potentially interested parties. But how would a company as destitute, deranged, and darn near desperate as ourselves craft an update that’s creative, catchy, and still business savvy?

Girlie Girl Army has a wonderful format of brief, punchy, hyperlink-filled headlines, all written in the same sexy, witty, animal-friendly vegan voice. The Rumpus has started providing punchy news pieces, delivered fresh to my Inbox every morning, with all the quirky culture my cereberal self can stomach. Vegan Outreach has a fast-fact-dishing newsletter that resembles an actual news page, with headlines, articles, and uniformly tasteful photos. These emails can either serve to inform followers, or to keep a site relevant. In our case, we’d be using the newsletter not only to remind past clients of our expertise, but to showcase our creative skills, hopefully in a way that’s funny enough and stylish enough to be forwarded to other companies and potential clients looking for wordsmiths to up their text ante.

The precursor to newspapers were pamphlets, printed in Germany during the 1400′s, they were basically the very first version of Perez Hilton, only in pulp form. The content was scandalous, the format brief, and several of the articles revolved around Dracula. No joke. The English equivalent of these little smutty buggers were corantos, equally slight pamphlets that were only produced when something noteworthy happened. Like…gas lighting…or…perfume. The first successful publicized version of a coranto was The Weekly Newes, put out in 1622.

In 1704, the first U.S. newsletter was started by a postman named John Campbell, who was a big fan of the Brits. He began heating the presses in order to rehash what was being blathered about in London journals regarding English politics and Europeans. Among the other things that The Boston News-Letter chronicled were ship arrivals, fires, deaths, sermons, political appointments, and accidents, not all of them happy. This was basically the way things went on for years, with the addition of the Sports section, Classifieds, comics (“AACK!”), and those kind of hilarious personal ads shoved in. That’s newspaper, in a nutshell. In the 80s, the increase in technology that the personal computer afforded allowed basic, boring citizens to publish pretty much whatever the hell they wanted, all from the privacy of their own dot matrix printer. Zines, fliers, postcards, and other methods of getting personal word out have been effective, but nothing has remained as up-and-up professionally for the self-employed maven quite like the e-newsletter.

The definition of a newsletter is “a small publication, such as a leaflet or newspaper, containing news of interest chiefly to a special group.” With the upsurge of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, forums, and the clusterfuck of other Internet outlets, it’s easy for this to be redefined as “email, not expected, from a business, about stuff.” They can be formatted in a eye-tasing manner, can lay into the HTML, be littered with links, and can even charge a fee.

Some rules that I’ve found while trying to be inspired include these common-sense tips for not completely alienating your base:

1. Don’t be that douchey guy wearing Ray-Bans in the bar. Don’t brag. Your old clients don’t want to hear that you’re the hottest thing since Zima. They want your voice, they want to hear if anything new has happened with the company, and certainly they’d love to hear about your success, but don’t act like Mr. Big Shot. Just tell ‘em the facts, and give ‘em flair. Hopefully they’ll realize they have a project coming up, and they could certainly use your services to give the work some words.

2. The “what have you done for me lately?” rule applies here. Special offers, promos, and anything that’s good for a limited time have a nice little place to nestle in newsletters. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have much to give away. Perhaps a blog post on Jerk Ethic all about your company and the amazing person you are would be tantalizing enough, but I doubt it. We all know that free burritos work better.

3.  Don’t fuck with formatting. But I don’t know if we’d put out so many newsletters that any of our clients would notice. There are enough flaming hoops to jump through in order to bypass spam filters alone. Ministry of Imagery has a simple look and a complex voice. Chances are, that wouldn’t change, even if we asked it to nicely.

As we stumble on our path towards reminding our clients that we exist — WE EXIST! — there’s got to be some creative stroke of genius that we’ll be hit with. There’s gotta be some way that we can get our voice out there, and remind people that we need jobs in order to feed ourselves something more than dust and dog-eared copies of Hit Parader magazine. Fake news? Free watches? Discount pills? A method of using a larger penis? I’m sure we’ll come up with something that will make this e-newsletter shine.

Drop me a line, may it be to subscribe to the as-of-yet nonexistent newsletter, or just to say hi: AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. And thank you to everyone who donates. It means a lot.

Become one of those clients that I was talking about! Hire us to write for you.

My mother might be dying, but she’s not going down without a fight, and what I mean by “fight” is a lengthy, nagging discussion of how being a copywriter is not an adequate enough job for her daughter.

I can understand her concern. I was the kind of kid who always had a gig of some kind, one that brought in a steady paycheck to be blown either on Manic Panic hair dye, booze, concert tickets, or a Hello Kitty lunchbox. (Thank you, Marilyn Manson.) I’ve worked as a fish monger, surfboard salesgirl, secretary, legal assistant, a story department PA, whipping girl for a pilates studio, ice cream scooper, crystal shop keeper, and a green start up space-filler. I have always had a job. Now, perhaps it’s because I work from home, or maybe because I am dirt poor, but my mother seems to think I am unemployed. As in, “You need a job. How can you support yourself when I’m dead and you’re unemployed?” She apparently moonlights as a life coach.  No matter that I don’t rely on her to pay my bills, and that I contribute groceries and labor in return for my temporary freeloader status.

She emphasizes that she only says this because I need “something to fall back on,” and even a part-time job would help me out, or maybe get me out of the same clothes that I’ve worn since high-school. I try to explain that I am a copywriter, I get up at dawn and work, exhaustively, until my words are on the page or my edits have carved an angel from word-processing program stone. Nevermind that I don’t have weekends. Sure, I’m more broke than a Dane Cook joke, but I like to imagine that Ministry of Imagery is an viable company, since I do get paid in actual checks and spend my quite-long days working and being driven nuts. Anyway, to humor my humorous mother, and to stop myself from running smack into the walls in a panic, I present to you a list of jobs that I would happily apply for. But don’t get your hopes up, mom. It would take more than a sexy bisexual vegan or a tattooed MILF yogi to get me away from my paltry penny paying daily grind.

Produce worker at Whole Foods
Pay: A little over $10 an hour

I have written about Whole Foods and produce, and how awesome I find both. As a vegan, and an avid advocate of a more holistic approach to consumption, I think I would help contribute to the Whole Foods team by being another tattooed, twenty-something, health-conscious cog in the wheel. Reasons I shouldn’t be hired include the fact that I call the place Whole Paycheck and I’d sleep with more than one staff member. I do know quite a bit about fruits and vegetables, though, and I can tell you how to pick out good ones. Of course, “shitting where you eat,” so to speak, might lead me to get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I reach my hand into the fruit bowl. But hey, if it supplies me with my new-found addiction of nutritional yeast, I’ll arrange carrots, kale, and cucumbers until the sun goes down.

Tattoo shop apprentice
Pay for an apprentice? None. But tattoo artists are paid roughly $100 an hour, with some also getting a cut of the studio money.

Working at a shop, I assume the pay would be minimum wage. Or maybe some ink. Although I might not be able to turn serious coin with a gig like this, I think that my extensive experience on the other end of the needle would help me to treat clients with a little bit of dignity. Besides, I’m good at being ordered around, especially by tattooed boys (and girls.) And perhaps I might not be taking the traditional career-track of becoming an apprentice to become an artist, but maybe becoming an apprentice in order to become a shop manager might not be such a counter-intuitive career move. After all, I’m very talented when it comes to copy machines and keeping displays clean, and I’ve always wanted to own my own business.

I’ve got skills sweeping, spraying, I can learn how to sterilize and organize the autoclave, I can sweet-talk unruly clients, and I’m a scheduling maven, so if you own or work at a tattoo parlor near Long Island, New York, you very well may have found your next apprentice. Only I don’t want to become a tattoo artist, I just want to work in the shop. Preferably for money, that will be spent on tattoos.

Low-maintenance secretary
Pay: Secretaries make anywhere from the mid-twenties to 40K a year, depending on the size of the company and the skills required. For what I’m going for, I’m thinking low-twenties. If that.

I have had this job, and I love this job. Allow me to clarify, what I mean by low-maintenance isn’t that I don’t complain when my boss hangs out with “the boys” six nights a week, drinking beer and eating wings. What the lack of maintenance implies in this case is that this would not be a partner-track position. Part-time, or perhaps even full-time, at a desk, doing traditional secretarial tasks, such as answering phones, greeting clients, collating, copying, filing, and scheduling. The less demanding the position, and the more long-term it could be in its soul-sucking boredom, the happier I’ll be. Just let me write during work, boss.

Personal assistant for eccentric artist
Pay: A personal assistant usually makes somewhere around $18 an hour (or 31K) but it’s tough to determine ’cause the hours and requirements can vary day by day.

This kind of a part-time gig would be good, ’cause it would keep me busy, utilize my undying respect for authority, and would likely provide fodder for future Jerk Ethic posts. As Patricia Cohen wrote in a New York Times article about personal assistants, “The job requires walking a fine line between intimacy and professionalism, a bit like the nanny who is paid to feed, bathe and hug your child.” And I’ve learned from experience that perhaps the problem with this job, or maybe my personality, is that once you send me out twice during a rain storm in order to get the “best” kind of organic calimyrna figs I will start wanting to stick a fondue fork in your eye. Fuck that you’re paying me overtime, since it’s 11:30PM.

Editorial writer
…makes about 54K a year?! Oh, hahahaha. I give it away for free right here. Dammit.

Nutritional consultant and yoga instructor
Median pay for a nutritionist is between 45K and 50K, while a yoga instructor can make $5 to $10 dollars per student if they’re teaching in a community center.  If they’re doing private lessons, their fee can go up to $60 an hour.

I have to say, this one interests me most. The idea of learning about what makes our bodies run, and integrating different cruelty-free methods and practices that help it to run better, is kind of an inspiring way to make a living. Granted, I’d probably need an RD or MS, both of which require maths, so it wouldn’t be easy. And although I love yoga to distraction, I look more like Awkward Facing Pygmy than Downward Facing Dog. Also, I’m just not one of “those girls.” I think I’m too cynical, too negative, too entrenched in certain unseemly aspects of the Western tradition. (Hello, Perez Hilton!) I’m a hedonist, not a healer. But I do like the science of our bodies, and if I could apply my mother’s perceived lack of my own employment toward helping people, well, maybe karma will swoop in and cure cancer.

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. Thank you to everyone who donates! Seriously. Talk about karma.

Hire Ministry of Imagery, ’cause in spite of my maternal unit’s nagging, it is an actual job.

Like It. It’s like eating my brains, if you were a zombie.

My boyfriend is so awesome, he makes you stare.