Tiger Woods’ friends are afraid for him. After sticking his nine iron in anything with a hole and a heartbeat ("Fore! Teen!") he’s close to a nervous breakdown, and closer to a divorce. Of course he should take an "indefinite leave" from his job.

I’m not equating moving to humping your way out of millions of dollars, a marriage, and a career, but I am insinuating that losing my mom and living in a creepy, empty house with a temperamental boyfriend and very nervous lapdog during the holidays can be considered living under a significant amount of stress. But I’m not taking an indefinite leave from writing anytime soon. At least not until the buxom barmaids start crawling out of the woodwork to air my dirty laundry.

It’s safe to assume that if you work, you will one day be employed while suffering through a period of seemingly unbearable stress. This can be caused by a break-up, family illness, eviction, spiteful roommate, or any number of other unsavory experiences. Prior to working as a copywriter, I remember my never-ending hangover getting in the way of certain desk jobs. Another time, I impulsively moved the same weekend I resigned from my job, though the events could have easily reversed their order. I dealt with the fallout of a friendship, discovered that a paramour of mine had a live-in girlfriend of  several years, and dated a mentally unstable barista who worked down the block, all while managing to keep my head above water, and above the photocopies, when I was a receptionist. Work often sucks. Working when you’re dealing with more important shit sucks more.

The closing date on the house has been pushed to the first week of January, courtesy of attorneys’ vacations. Currently we are huddled over our laptops in a very cold, very empty house. We have a television on a plastic container, a couch that is stained with I’m not sure what exactly, a mattress on the floor, and a functioning fireplace. We have a lot of fires, which would be cheerful and a nice, seasonal touch, if we weren’t using them as our sole source of warmth. After the first week it got a bit Chekhovian.

In Portland, we each worked under less-than-ideal conditions at certain points. Simon had an older man as a landlord who had a crush on him. The sixty-four year old chap hovered in his doorway for hours trying to start conversation while half-heartedly attempting to restrain his overly-barky, inbred, Lassie-doppelgänger of a dog. Simon would huddle over his laptop trying to block out the sound, only to be driven out of the house. In coffee shops, where the majority of caffeinated kids knew him as a DJ, he would spend his hours between the keystrokes trying to politely dodge conversation. In the meantime, if I wasn’t at home I was "accidentally" spilling tea near anybody who laughed loud enough for me to hear over my earphones. When I was at home I was trying to avoid my roommates in their various stages of intoxication. There’s a reason why companies rent office space.

Working under stress is bad for your health, and not just because it can drive you to inhale cartons of Parliament Lights or swill a bathtub’s worth of gin. Sleep distress, tense muscles, headaches, diarrhea or nausea, and extreme fatigue often set in, not to mention the panic attacks, poor diet, and deportment of a dung beetle. Even worse, studies show that incessant stress can lead to high blood-pressure, cardiac problems, addiction, and ulcers. You can go bald.  You can stop menstruating.  Each of us has done one of the two.

When undergoing stress, other than suddenly having my ovaries post a Fail Whale, I feel like I’ve eaten a pair of knitting needles, and I chronically clench some muscle in my lower jaw that causes the back of my neck and shoulder blades to knot up like a pair of stockings in a clothes dryer. I’m also prone to chronic nightmares when dealing with a heavy load, which works against another tried-and-true piece of stress management advice: get enough sleep. I take a shit-ton of fifteen minute cat naps in order to cope, which I look at as my little equivalent of a corporate food court or holiday bonus.

There are ways to avoid stress that seem obvious, but you don’t have to become a yoga-mat toting hippie in order to prevent blowing your gasket. Take breaks regularly, and not just to drain the dragon. Synaptic pathways in your brain need time to recharge themselves, ’cause if they keep doing their thing, much like Lindsay Lohan hitting the club circuit, they burn out in spectacular fashion. So take breaks when your nose is making out with the grindstone, and take them often. It’ll make you a better worker. Science says so.

Eliminate distractions that you can control. Turn off the television blaring breaking news, and turn off your iPod if it’s your turn during a game of Words With Friends. (My username is AinsleyOfAttack, for those of you looking to decimate me in Scrabble.) For distractions you can’t control, be creative. If you’re a new parent, see if another freelancing new mom or dad would be willing to alternate two hours of babysitting duty. If your roommate is having ridiculously loud sex in the apartment when you’re looking to get things done, leave a polite, if not outright passive-aggressive, note under his or her door, and then go to the nearest library or other quiet, WiFi-saturated area. Or just suggest a threesome and expedite the whole process. Blame it on the need to heal your synaptic pathways.

I’ve found that having a plan B helps, too. If you were hoping to hole up in a local diner and finish working on that web video script, but a bevy of screeching harpies dressed in the skin of teenage girls comes in once you’ve logged on, know where there are other spots nearby to hook up and tune out. Have a list of places on hand for moments like that and you’ll save yourself the stress of searching while on deadline.

Speaking of lists, write them. It can help you to stay organized, which is often the first thing to go when you’re under duress. Look for the humor in the situation, may it be your dog sleeping in a pile of your boyfriend’s laundry, or the crickets on the floor of the bathroom. (Okay, maybe they’re not funny at all.) Remember that you are not what you do for a living.

Perhaps the best advice I can give is the weltanschauung I follow most stringently. At risk of sounding out of touch with the modern musical world, I follow Ian MacKaye’s lead, sorta. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, but the fucking…well, everybody’s gotta have a vice. Being sober and a non-smoker keeps my body from feeling shittier than it already does when I’m at the end of my rope. Eating well and trying to get a full eight hours of sleep help, too, but I can honestly say that I have no idea how I managed to work when I was actively drinking. I must have been an excruciatingly annoying co-worker. But fun at parties!

All of this said, the holidays can make work awesome if you’re in an office. There are often cookies in the break-room, holiday parties, and a vacation with a Christmas bonus looming in the days ahead. For the freelancer, this time of year can make it slightly more stressful to apply pressure to clients and to hunt for work. But whether it’s the "most wonderful time of the year" or just an average week in March when you’ve scheduled the visit from your in-laws, there are always going to be times when work is going to march lock-step with some other seemingly insurmountable obstacle that life has thrown in your path. Keep your head up, keep your stress level down, and recognize that this — like the absolutely grating Gap commercials with dancing models — too shall pass.

I always was a skittish kid. If my family went out to eat at a restaurant, I was convinced that I was going to be poisoned. If I went on a roller coaster, I was sure that I would slip out from below the safety rail. If I slept with the covers not completely covering my head, vampires and/or aliens and/or serial killers would “get me.” Don’t even get me started on visiting Sea World.

As a teenager, my fascination with death turned more predictable. A fan of Joy Division, The Cure, and Nine Inch Nails, I wore all black, down to the nail-polish. My repeated internal mantra throughout high school was a cheerful mix of “I hope you die” and “I hope I die.” Reading Baudelaire and the obituaries were just some of my pass-times. Looking back on it, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that I was widely considered to be The Weird Girl in my school.

Now, as a less neurotic adult, I regard death as less of a fashion choice, more of an inevitable mystery that will one day figure me out. When Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die came out, I knew that it was the perfect book to go on the shelf, right next to The Vampire Encyclopedia. Author Michael Largo has tried his hand at an eclectic mix of work, including slinging sloe in the East Village, publishing poetry, and sorting mail. His previous books include The Portable Obituary and Genius & Heroin. I wrote to Michael asking him to shed a little light on muckraking the morbid, and how he’s wasting his time above ground.

Jerk Ethic: How do you want to die?

Michael Largo: Accession would be so much easier, but I don’t think there’s enough time to qualify. How I wouldn’t want to die comes to mind first. Not like Tycho Brahe*. Not like Lenny Bruce, or Kerouac. Dying like his buddy Neal Cassidy did, alone and walking along a railroad track in Mexico, that has an alluring pathos to it. Something Byronic would be good, like a catching a baby dropped off the Empire State Building. The baby would live and I’d die. That’s a good last line.

But, seriously, the Odin Syndrome is the best way to go. That’s when your allotted breathes are suddenly used up and you die in your sleep, and hopefully in the middle of a cool dream.

*[Editor's Note: Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's death has been debated since it occurred in 1601. It's rumored that he bit it after eleven days of being sick, due to either mercury poisoning or a severe infection, which resulted from holding his urine for too long. Historians think strained his bladder to the point of death in order to maintain propriety at a banquet, where getting up to take a leak would have been an egregious insult to his hosts. Lenny Bruce was found dead in his bathroom, accessorized with the trappings of a morphine overdose, and Kerouac was claimed by cirrhosis and internal hemorrhaging as a result of being a boozehound.]

JE: You’ve been published in almost every medium — poetry, fiction, non-fiction — how does writing each form differ in process for you?

Largo: Poetry is my first love, in a steamy window kind of way. It is absolutely freeing, without outline or plot, but so difficult to stay in that place, to be entwined, to capture that spontaneity of observation required of a good poems. I read some poems everyday. Right now I’m rereading Poe’s poetry and Robinson Jeffers before I begin writing.

Fiction is wonderful, making up new worlds, especially if it clicks and has life after a hundred pages or so. Non-fiction is like getting to be an archaeologist, digging and dusty, but then you find that bone. It becomes like a thrill, like a hit, when you discover some new fact, some hidden correlation. It’s like being Jane Goodall watching gorillas. Jane Goodall was so interesting.

JE: What’s your worst research experience?

Largo: Three times in the last year I’ve been hit by seagull shit. All near the Battery in New York City. I’ve been doing research for the next book at a number of old churches in that area, it really makes a tremendous mess. Everybody says it’s good luck — for the cleaning industry anyway — but I’m just glad it wasn’t from an albatross.

JE: Have you visited the East Village recently? What do you think about it? I hung out down there when I was in college in the late nineties, early oughts. It blows my mind to see it now. I can only imagine for people who spent more time there in the area’s notorious heyday. Before the condo-and-Starbucks takeover.

Largo: I was there for thirteen years, mostly through the ’70s and early ’80s, and it was such a dynamic time for me: crazy, beautiful and raw. I go there sometimes, but not regularly, not so much for how it has changed; New York City has being doing this cycle of transformation, like it’s something alive, over and over. It’s the ghosts I meet there in my head that makes the area not a “must see”. Shoot me if I ever become a Springsteen Glory Days kind of character.

JE: What’s the most boring job you’ve ever had?

Largo: Sorting mail drove me a little nuts. I was a night watchman at a college parking lot. I had to sit in a glass booth, lit up inside with fluorescents, so that you couldn’t see a thing outside. The sergeant banging with his nightstick on the glass during the deep hours of the night, checking to see if I was awake, used to scare the crap out of me.

JE: Do you have any writing rituals?

Largo: I have a Magic Eight Ball. Though I have a rule that I can keep shaking it until I have the answer I really need.

JE: What is the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?

Largo: My face with a hangover.

JE: You grew up in Staten Island, but I read somewhere that you live in Atlanta now. Is that true? How is it different from your time in New York? I’ve been writing a lot about my move from New York to Portland to, finally, Norman, Oklahoma. It’s a big change. So I’m always interested in hearing how those who succeed in the field handle the stresses of moving.

Largo: For me New York is home, especially after I did the genealogy. I have ancestors that were among the Dutch, and then siding with the Torres during the American Revolution. But for me its good to live in different places, and I made Miami a home base for years. Atlanta is big and small, which is what I need right now.

JE: Why did you move?

Largo: For one, I wanted to be closer to the CDC, to hope to get to another level of record access.

JE: Do any of your children want to be writers?

Largo: They do actually, some anyway.

JE: Are you working on anything now?

Largo: Yes, a book about mystics, martyrs and prophets, utopias and cults.

Spooky.

As a final, um, exit line, Tycho Brahe was noted to have said a real kicker before he kicked it: “Ne frustra vixisse videar!” Which translates as “Let me not seem to have lived in vain.” Words to live by.

You can see more of Michael’s work at his website, FinalExits.com.

Drop me a line and tell me how you’d like to drop dead: AinsleyDrew at gmail dot com.
My deepest respects to all those who donate. Thank you!

We’re alive and kicking. Hire us.

I think relaxation is bullshit. I’m naturally hyper, I jump at loud noises, and I shake my leg when sitting. I am not a human zen garden. I consider meditation an infringement on time that could be spent working or sleeping. My hobbies include masturbation and showering. I am a workaholic.

I also have insomnia, chronic back pain, and I clench my jaw. It makes eating and oral sex difficult.

Being freelance makes my work addiction less of an ugly confession, more of an admittance to a competitive edge. If you’re going to make money in this field you’re going to have to work…a lot. It’s okay to suddenly believe that weekends are optional, it’s acceptable to sit in the same position for hours on end, it’s beneficial to not take social calls, and people should understand if you suddenly wander off in the middle of a conversation because you “got an idea.” The ROI with freelance writing is great, but the investment itself is all of your time and mental capacity. All of it.

Everybody who works deals with stress on the job, no matter their title, field of occupation, or the country that they live in. Everybody knows that being stressed, sleepless, and cranky doesn’t make you the happy dwarf singing Hi-Ho. So what’s the world to do?

The Japanese have nap salons that let the average worker in Tokyo shell out the equivalent of seven bucks for twenty minutes of sleep in order to avoid karoshi, or death from being overworked. Even some Japanese high-schools have nap time. That, for me, was called algebra class.

In France they regard being stressed and sleepless as an epidemic that contributes to things like highway accidents. The country spent $9 million to investigate sleeping issues, and the Health Minister, Mr. Xavier Bertrand, is quoted as saying, “Why not nap at work? It can’t be a taboo subject.”

I might not think that napping is a go-to solution, and I definitely don’t put faith in this woo-woo relaxation crap, but I do believe in burnout. I know it intimately. For me personally it presents itself in sudden fits of crying, relentless insomnia, and an involuntary fixation on stupid things such as the YouTube video of a hamster on a piano eating popped corn. (I watched it eight times in a row and then my roommate intervened.)

There must be a balance between all work and all play. Even monks have to balance their checkbooks, even hippies have to pay their dues. In these times of gloom and doom, most of our workdays are spent worrying if tomorrow we’ll even have a job. So how does one cope with work stress, especially when you work from home?

Office yoga

Fans of workplace yoga insist that it’s a great way to retain mental alacrity and stimulate your muscles, all from within the confines of your cubicle. They say that keeping a peaceful mindset at work, and making sure that your body remains limber and well-stretched, helps to reduce stress, which, in turn, reduces illness, carpal tunnel, and repetitive stress injury. Desktop yoga is looked at as a proactive measure to prevent workplace absenteeism, which cost businesses upwards of $250 billion a year.

I decided to try one of the poses out myself. I followed the instructions I found at Everyday Yoga and sat up tall in my chair. I raised my arms, interlocked my fingers, breathed deeply from my so-called core, and slowly leaned from one side to the other. All and all, it wasn’t much different than the stretches I do somewhat automatically after sitting at my desk for too long. The pressure and pain in my lower back (caused by a crappy desk chair and a project that had me nervous) remained.

Because I like to try to stay positive, even in the middle of being a cynic, I tried a different site and a different pose. This one was a forward bend in my chair. I took a breath, bent over, and got a head rush. At least it was distracting. They say to repeat this pose ten times “with increased awareness of your breathing.” I don’t have time for that.

My Yoga Online has various yoga routines and poses you can do while on the clock, including Corporate Rejuvenation Flow and Worktime Energy Flow. Don’t be surprised if the hot guy from accounting asks you out when he catches you with your legs above your head. Also, if any men do office yoga, drop me a line. I seriously don’t believe men do yoga without a nagging girlfriend dragging them by the wrist.

Meditation

I have enough trouble meditating in the privacy of my own bedroom. There’s something about sitting still, in silence, breathing in and out, and visualizing nothing that just feels a bit like a waste of time. Before sleep I’ll try to do this every once in a while (it’s part of Step Eleven of AA, otherwise I’d totally say fuck all) but really I don’t get into the whole om-ing out thing. I mean, promoting deep breathing is always good, sure, but beneficial to your job? I’m not sold.

Before my Performance Poetry class in college we had to do a little of the “inhale, exhale, hold it, let it out slow” game that allowed us all to feel the depth of our new found love of smoking anything we could get our hands on. But if you’re going to try to tell me that stepping away from my desk and breathing with my eyes closed is suddenly going to make ten taglines and an About section appear behind my lids, well, I’ll ask you what you were smoking. ‘Cause, really, relaxation, to me, will be what happens when everything on my to do list is done.

For the sake of this blog, I tried it. It lasted three minutes before the incense gave me a headache. On the plus side, I figured out a new term for being unpleasant: “wearing the cunt hat.” Works nicely, doesn’t it? So if meditation helped me to make that discovery then I say it works.

If you dig the calm, cool, and collected approach, you can purchase a Workplace Meditation CD for only around nineteen bucks.

“An oasis of calm awaits you. Gentle birds sing harmonies with flutes and guitars while the rhythm of trickling water surrounds you in an envelop of sound. [sic] This unique recording has been effectively used in workplace settings for promoting deep states of relaxation and meditation. It is a great tool for managing stress and anxiety.”

Sounds like a blast.

A Fancy Chair

I am not a chair freak, but Simon is. He has a vintage Eames aluminum chair that he paid $150 for thanks to Craigslist, and it was through that purchase that we met my now-roommates. The owner of said chair was the one moving out. I replaced her. So everyone got to relax about where to live due to a chair. Case closed.

The benefits of a good office chair are many. Think about it, what touches your ass more than the chair in your workspace? (The answer had better be a paddle or a lover’s hand.) An ergonomically sound chair helps to prevent those injuries that are lame to talk about: carpal tunnel, backache, migraines, eye strain. And they supposedly increase productivity, but I think that’s only for those individuals who shell out the $1,279.95 to $1,605.00 for an Aeron or Freedom chair and now find themselves needing to work harder to pay their credit card bill.

An overwhelmingly detailed description of what a true ergonomic office chair actually is can be found here.

Besides, having a nice office chair is intimidating to your fellow workers. Trust me. I might not be able to tell you how devastatingly comfortable these particular chairs were to my cheeks, but I can say that when Simon sits in his Eames he sure is able to make me his editing bitch.

So if you can’t nap to prevent burning your mental toast, you should take a full lunch hour, eat breakfast before work, don’t let your desk stay cluttered for too long. Some suggest turning off automatic email updates and IM clients. Let me just call bullshit on that. If I didn’t have my friends sending me their work complaints in real time I think I would be driven insane.

These friends, who include an entertainment producer, a television writer, and a physician, have offered their at-work relaxation techniques. They include reading, wandering around aimlessly, looking up surf reports, drinking water, and urinating. (The last two are related and were submitted by the same individual.)

In other countries, including future world dominating superpower China, relaxation at work is regarded like roaches in your salad bar. Even Spain, the country that gave us the siesta, has begun a series of reforms, even going so far as eliminating the nap for civil servants and striving to forbid workday snoozing for once and for all. Pasqual Maragall, a former Spanish government official, was quoted as calling a workday nap “not rational, it’s not efficient, and it does not pay in terms of family life.” Mexico, too, ended the siesta for government workers in ‘99. I should joke that, no matter what country you’re in, if you’re a government worker you’re probably sleeping on the job anyway, regardless of what Lou Dobbs thinks.

I suppose we each have to find our method of coping with stress in order to prevent going batty. If you’re figured out that, for you, it’s looking at kink sites on the DL, or reading this blog, or even a regular, old game of Internet solitaire, more power, and power naps, to you.

Tell me how you bliss out, email me at AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. As always, thanks to those of you who donate, send mail, or shout me out. You’re the bed I’m living the dream on.

If you, or someone you know, needs text of any sort, you can hire us.

Get distracted: Like It, Twitter, Shark Bros.

And no post is complete without giving a holler to the other half: Shows I Missed, pagecrusher on Twitter.

On my last day in New York I was driving down Main Street in Port Washington and got stopped behind a Lexus. Affixed to the bumper of said automobile was the bumper sticker reading

HYPNOTISTS ARE ENTRANCING

There was a tiny spiral that resembled a thumbprint on the left side of this statement.

Simon joked that I should rear-end the car and then say, “Sorry, I was distracted by your bumper sticker.”

When I pointed out, with bitter envy, that the sticker should read LEXUS OWNERS ARE GULLIBLE, I was informed by my counterpart that professional hypnotists make loads of money.

Really.

"No, my mustache is better!"

People stare at me a lot. I have a rhythmic, if somewhat grating, giggle. I’m not afraid to watch people sleep. I really, really need some cash.

Maybe I should be a professional hypnotist.

For those of you who are of generation MySpace, allow me to explain. Hypnosis, or hypnotherapy, is a method of harnessing the subconscious by inducing a trance-like state. It’s often associated with the New Age movement, natural healers, holistic health, Ouija Boards, and goths. It can be used to help cure anything from kicking cancer sticks to social anxiety to binge eating to having too much money. I’m skeptical, but then again, I hate everything. Maybe a hypnotist can help.

The American Psychological Association is quoted as saying that hypnosis itself can cause “…changes in subjective experience, alterations in perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior.” Proponents believe it can help decrease cravings, enhance physical performance, and even act as a painkiller for things as intense as childbirth. To which I say, yeah, okay. You try deep breathing as your method of coping with your cervix dilating to the point of passing a honeydew melon through your vagina, I’ll tell you that you’re cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs. But the application of hypnosis for medicinal purposes has been around since the late 1800s, and very few phony fads have that kind of staying power. In 1958 the American Medical Association published a report that can be summed up with the line “…the use of hypnosis has a recognized place in the medical armamentarium and is a useful technique in the treatment of certain illnesses when employed by qualified medical and dental personnel.” (“Medical use of hypnosis”, JAMA, 1958)

So even if I personally have my doubts, hypnosis is not a slap bracelet.

Also, don’t get hypnosists confused with those who practice mesmerizing. I get the impression that they’re offended by that. Kind of like an Irish versus Scottish thing.

In order to become a hypnotist you have to go to school, and get certification by one of the very few accredited hypnosis organizations, such as the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners. The group was founded in 1973 to self-regulate the practitioners of hypnosis and make sure that they didn’t all bond together to create some malevolent plan to make the human race their army of flesh-eating cannibal zombies that would eventually require Batman to come and destroy them and save Gotham. The ACHE explains the guidelines that you’re required to follow in order to become a certified hypnotist. They basically include between 200 and 300 hours of instruction and testing. I assume you have to also pledge to fight the forces of Grayskull or something, but I will never know, for it also requires $175 in order to receive registration and two years of certification. I do not have $175 to my name at this point. But, hey, thanks for playing.

Moreover, hypnosis itself is pretty thoroughly routed in a subject’s ability to succumb to the power of suggestion and, oh yeah, relax. It would be very similar to me attempting to perform an exam for Ipsilateral Testicular Hypotrophy. Google it.

Basically, in brief, I don’t have the money to become a hypnotist, which is good, ‘cause it’s probably something that I wouldn’t have a natural knack for. It’s likely that I’ll become a Lexus owner before I become a relaxation guru.

I kind of hope so.

Thank you to everyone who donates! You’re entrancing.

Write me a letter at AinsleyDrew at gmail after the count of three….

You’re getting sleepy…Very, very sleepy…

I am writing this from my “vacation,” which really means that I’m writing this from a different part of the country than usual. I’m sure the v-word conjures up images of palm trees, tiki torches, or ski lodges, but for me it’s more like my father’s pull-out couch and my mother’s VW. Both of which are awesome because they come with the single most important aspect an item can have to me: I don’t have to pay for them.

I took this little summer voyage in order to see my family, my uncle in particular, who is kicking the shit out of cancer. (He’s in remission. Take that, tumor.) To most people, however, the idea of a vacation serves as a break, a chance to escape the nine-to-five and just lay back on a chaise lounge waiting for the next installment of Girls Gone Wild to unfold at the beach bar before their eyes.

Most definitions of vacation include something like “leisure time away from work, devoted to pleasure,” which, to me, sounds like a different set of words, primarily “masturbation,” or “a full night’s sleep.” For a freelance worker the idea of a “vacation” is a little bit more murky than it is to those poor souls who clock in every day. Read the first sentence of this post again.  I am writing this from vacation. And I will be looking for clients on vacation. And constructing cold-call letters from vacation. And keeping up with correspondence when, seriously, there’s a beach in walking distance. But, instead or playing volleyball or surfing, I will be unable to silence the internal voice who tells me I’m lazy if I’m not working (I like to call this voice “Stanley Kubrick Junior.”) I will be unable to lay down for more than ten minutes at a time (fifteen if another person is involved) before I am roused from any potential reverie by the realization that I will truly starve before Christmas if I don’t dedicate all of my time to the QWERTY grind. I will not be the architect of my own professional demise by sleeping on the job. No rest for the wicked, or whatever that metal saying was.

There’s a less self-involved slant to this predicament, too. Let’s say the average American gets a fair amount of sick leave, and two personal days per year, in order to keep their mental ducks in a completely shootable row. Let’s say they save up, negotiate with their boss, and actually secure a week in Cancun or a few days in the Poconos. That’s their time to relax, their one-shot, scheduled, be-calm-or-it’s-wasted vacation. Good for them. They have a few boxes on their calendar where it is their responsibility to chill the fuck out. You show me when the freelancer can just sit back and sip a Tab in the sun. It’s called when I’m fucking paid to do so.

With this country’s workforce dealing with a staggering unemployment rate, the astronomical cost of basic necessities like food and gas, and a housing market as out of whack as a game of Monopoly played at a coke party, freelancing is becoming the only conceivable way for some people to bounce back from being fired, or worse. Which can be great if, like it is for me, it gives you an opportunity to try your hand at something you’ve always wanted to do to earn your keep. But for many people this means several irrefutable facts:

1. You now probably don’t have health insurance.
2. You now probably don’t have extra money to save for any luxury items.
3. You now probably don’t have sick days.
4. You now definitely can’t take “time away from work, devoted to pleasure,” other than your sessions with the Hitatchi magic wand.

The irony here is somewhat epic. When I worked in offices and placed orders from the Staples catalog, there were always a few special pages devoted to “company wellness.” This included aromatherapy kits or stress balls that could be printed with a company logo. Fantastic. Companies counted money off the fact that potential overtime made me pop Pepto-Bismol like Tic-Tacs. Stress, it seemed, was accepted as being a part of work, or, rather, it seemed that work was a somewhat welcome residual effect of stressing out. Coworkers of mine spoke of long meetings and overtime the way that high-school football players talked about sprained ligaments. There was strength in suffering.

Let me tell you, all of the nights I stayed until eight, or worked on the occasional Saturday, or did so many tasks at once that my entire food consumption for the day was a Diet Coke and half a stale cupcake, that was not anxiety producing. Looking back on it, that was a diorama of worry. A second-grade theater production of unease. Real anxiety comes from the threat of eviction, the fear that you’ve made a grandiose mistake and ruined your life, the trepidation that comes when you recognize that you will likely never be able to afford more than one month’s rent at a time, that you probably can never foot the bill for offspring. Yeah, that’s stress. Put my full name on the thera-squeeze ball, Staples. Don’t forget to dot the “i.”

Among other examples of items that office supply companies think can help the average worker stop worrying about their deadline/mortgage/lack of retirement funds:

• Squeezable foam balls printed with what appears to be the planet Earth
• A “personalized” lavender aromatherapy basket (Guys, any takers?)
• A magnetic sculpture that also serves as a paperweight, featuring golf clubs and metal bits that resemble iron filings
• and, my personal favorite, this:

I can’t imagine a person with a home office, or a freelance writer armed with their laptop and a thermos of cold coffee, deciding to waste $5.50 on an object whose sole purpose  is to be gripped in order to release pent up tension caused by the job being executed in order to make that money to pay for said object. Cyclical? Quite. 

I’m nervous that as the economy plummets and more people are forced to rely on their luck as much as their elbow grease, the idea of taking a time out will be looked at as a fancy accessory to a “good” job. Possibly, over time, much like SUVs, organic groceries, iPhones, and a second child, taking a break from work will simply be considered a somewhat ostentatious display of success instead of a necessary breather. The Worldwide Health Organization has calculated that 72% of Americans are plagued with frequent stress resulting in related physical or mental conditions, and beyond this country the measure of stress is so the extreme that it is now considered a “world wide epidemic.” I’m sure that many yoga studios, meditation retreats, and bars are profiting off this. I’m also sure that changing my own perspective would help me to reduce my contribution to the freak out phenomenon. The trouble is, I don’t have time to think about it, I’m too busy worrying about work.

Write me, I’ll send you a postcard from out here. AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

Thank you to all of you who donate! You quell the worrying quite a bit.

Better yet, hire us.

Primal scream therapy. 

Also check out Shows I Missed. It’s better than office yoga.

Last night, after a particularly vigorous make out session with my business partner (heh), he looked up and stared off into the distance, which, as it were, was the sort of scuffed up, bare-as-hell corner of my room.

“What?” I asked. Was it my stupendously awesome performance in the sack? How much he loved me and wanted to carve a sculpture of my torso entirely out of watermelon? Was he adding to the list of reasons why he thinks I’m the greatest short, tattooed, dykey broad this side of Nassau County? My awesome — no, seriously, ask him, it’s awesome – performance in the sack?

“Oh. Sorry. Nothing. Just thinking about the work I have to do.”

Yeah, right. It was totally my awesome performance in the sack.

Being freelance is a strange mix of emotions. Fear, ‘cause you’re never sure if your present project will be your last. Frustration, because you know that you’re able to do really solid work if you were just given a chance. Self-pity, ‘cause you realize that you haven’t eaten anything that didn’t come with a powder packet in at least a week.

But mainly, at least for me, it’s the fear that I am being lazy.

I’ve said it many times, in part because it never ceases to amaze me, and in part because I really like to brag about it in order to justify my paltry bank account, but doing what you love means that your job permeates through everything that you do. I’m thinking about work while at stoplights on my bike, while watching Jeopardy!, and, yes, even after a completely exhausting game of coed-naked-combat-charades. Even if it’s just to write a blog post, or to help a friend edit a story, writing is on the brain nearly as much as food and sex. Honestly.

When there is no actual work to be done, leaving me with a free afternoon to skate around a parking lot or download more Diplo from Skreemr, I wind up going to that shady spot in my mind where I wonder: why am I not writing right now?

I’ve always had a somewhat excessive fear of inertia. It’s why I job hopped every year or so when I was working as a secretary, and why, after dorm life, I refused to stay in any apartment for very long. Stagnation equals death. And it’s almost as if I’m afraid that underneath this ferociously fighting, tenacious exterior lies a Sleeping Beauty on Quaaludes. As if I’m not actually ambitious, but really just a lazy vehicle running on the fuel of anxiety. Panic is my petroleum.

Moreover, in “real” jobs there is usually a boss, or a “higher up,” who is dictating what you should do and when. Work, for me, was often no more than drudgery, a seemingly endless string of days broken up only by visits to the coffee maker or the ladies room, where I’d sit long after my stream finished trickling, checking my text messages or sighing until I had been gone long enough that my boss either wondered if I was pregnant or suffering from an intestinal ailment.

Not having someone tell you anything other than the specifics of an assignment and a deadline means that you — yes, you — are the one who figures out how and when to get things done. There are no progress reports, no meetings, no “team building exercises” (unless you count genitalia jujitsu). When you are in charge, you can choose to wait until the last minute to feverishly churn out copy, or work slowly and steadily all along.

So there really seem to be two options for the freelance worker: embrace your freedom or constantly breathe down your own neck until you can’t sleep and are relying on over-the-counter slumber pills and a steady soundtrack of Aphex Twin to just get you through the fucking day so help me God.

And when everything has been handed in and the final check issued, I personally am still not able to relax. At all. I can’t so much as bike to get groceries without feeling like something — something – is missing, or off, or just wrong.

Was that the last client we’ll ever have?

Why am I not writing something on the side?

Who can I contact to get us more work?

Am I not holding up my end of the business bargain?

And so on and so forth until I have to dose myself some Simply Sleep and flick Windowlicker on repeat.

The definition of sloth is “a disinclination to work or exert yourself,” and it comes from a Latin remix of a Greek word — akedia – that translates into “the absence of caring.” As one of the seven deadly dwarves, Akedia is believed to lead to God’s wrath. I have Lust, Envy, and Pride pretty much on lock at this point. God’s wrath apparently includes really bad hair and a severe ant problem.

This paranoia might be one of the pitfalls of determination, though, or so I’ve been told. Often artists and freelancers of all kinds live with the self-perpetuating phobia that the conclusion of a current job will be the conclusion of their career as a whole. The fear I have of sloth is, actually, pretty good motivation to continue to look for work, refine our portfolio, and try yet again to craft a halfway decent story just for shits and giggles. So I suppose that, until someone calls me a lazy bum and brings photographic evidence to back it up, or I can’t retort to “Get a job!” with “Goddamn it, I’m trying!,” I should just sit back, relax, and let lust be my primary candidate for God’s disapproving bass-and-snare.

Also Sloth:

They don’t drink, which is another similarity I share with them. (They get refreshment by licking leaves that have dew and raindrops on them.) And they mate upside-down. Ahem.

AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. I will tell you the “Why shouldn’t you have have sex with birds?” joke if you write to me.

Donations are welcome, gratitude and swooning will ensue.

Who’s the boss?

David, not Goliath.

Links of interest:

Sloth 101

Sloth for the wicked.

Sloth for the Natural Geographic subscriber.