August 25, 2011 • 1 note

stop being self righteous.

I understand that life is hard. Everyone’s life is hard in some way. Sometimes life is hard because you’re homeless and sometimes life is hard because you’re unfulfilled.  Life is hard. Life is not fair. Life is not easy. I get it. You can stop telling me it’s so hard.

 Life isn’t easy when you’re finishing a four-year program at a state college and have a mysterious illness.  Life’s not fair when you walk at graduation on Saturday and find out you didn’t graduate on Monday. Life is hard when you wait tables in a costume in the middle of Michigan.  Its not fair when you have to take a community college online class to complete your bachelors of fine arts to yet again not graduate due to a clerical error.  Life is not easy when you break your leg in the beginning of the summer. It’s hard when you have 80K in student loans and that eight-dollar-an-hour-job at razzamatazz (read: “boutique” for upper middle class white women who over consume) doesn’t actually pay. Life is not easy when you live with your parents in a giant metropolitan wasteland. Life is hard when your car dies in a Cleveland winter. Life is not easy when your friends are scattered and you have to adjust to being without the community of school. Life is not fair when you are twenty-two.  Life is hard when you pick yourself up.

Life is not easy when you move to New York. You take a bus and two suitcases and hope for the best. You find a job with health insurance and a sublet with strangers and try to have fun. You heal and recover from the tragedy of matriculating. You live in a yet-to-be gentrified-area because you can afford it. You figure out how the city works. You meet new people and catch up with the friends who were here before you. You remember how you like to live. You remember how to live without a bubble. You are poor and everyone around you is more rich or more poor. You deal with creatures and creeps and chalk it up to city life experience. Sometimes people look at you weird and sometimes you get bumped in to. The subway is rough and the weather is volatile. You become nomadic because you have to be. You are living without but you love it.

This is a hard city to live in but you knew that when you moved here. You’ve been reading the internet and listening to music and watching Igby Goes Down since middle school. Your assistant job is shitty and your boss is pig and you do all of his work. The men you meet are strange and you don’t believe that they will understand your blonde-midwest-girl mentality. You eat the cheapest deli sandwiches and make a bag of tobacco be your cigarettes for the week. You take aimless adventures for entertainment. You attempt to make peace with yourself and the city at the same time. You find the cheapest bars to have the most fun at. You try to remind yourself everyday that you moved to New York because you knew you could make something happen for yourself. The city is a constant reminder that you are a person in the world and so is everyone else.

When I say “you” and “life”, I’m of course referring to my own life. I understand that life is hard when you are twenty-three and I’m trying to make the best of it. I have first world problems, second world problems, and third world problems to work on every day. I am living without the shortcuts offered to my privilege and it will make me a better person. I am following my own path.  I’m working hard now and I’ll have to work hard forever. There is nothing wrong with working hard. There is nothing wrong with reading and absorbing and thinking for yourself. There is nothing wrong with being twenty-three and poor and trying to figure it out.  

 So stop telling me, world, that I am wrong.

August 23, 2010

Staying motivated can be difficult. Sunday afternoons can be lazy. Yesterday, I chose to be proactive in my laziness and watch television for educational purposes. I went without cable for so long, and then arrived at Mom and Dad’s to find digital, on demand, anything goes cable to watch at my leisure. Sure, I became a waste of life on the couch for a while. A broken leg was a good excuse, but really, I wanted to watch shitty TV all day instead of anything else, just because it’s there. I’ve become creative with my intake of human interest documentaries and tacky competition shows. Each hour of programming can be a veritable Aesop’s fable hidden beneath RuPaul’s wigs and the scrolling soundtrack listings at the bottom of my screen.

While spending a Sunday afternoon binging on remote flipping, I theme each hour so that my lessons are diverse yet scarily cohesive in their teaching. Yesterday’s theme was “Don’t End Up Like This”. It’s reoccuring in my syllabus, but none is less needed than the next.  Head to head, “Teen Mom” and “Hoarders: Buried Alive” was the most capitivating and sweat inducing hour of “class” I’ve had in a while. 

Do these people KNOW how ridiculous they are? I don’t have much room to judge, sitting on my couch eating saltines and week old babaganoush, but come on, really?

First, I became invested in Farrah’s story.  This teen mom is an adult. She is an adult and she can do what she wants.  She is an adult who doesn’t need any one’s help because she’s got a baby and that makes her an adult. I couldn’t figure out if Farrah had a job, making her more adult than I am, but it cut to commercial, so I flipped to “Hoarders: Buried Alive” for more life coaching.

“Hoarders” is a show that goes into the homes of high anxiety humans that live at indoor dumps.  Laura, the sad thirty-five year old that cartoon looking therapists and professional organizers were digging out of her own version Ariel’s treasure grotto, was my first case study. She never throws anything away. She never learned about trashbags or knew when garbage day is. Her kids are sad and stare at the ground.  Laura spent all her money on mountains of crap instead of soccer camp. The therapist, a cousin of Dracula, introduced a new motto to Laura. “I’m robbing my kids”, repeated eternally (into commercial) will make all of the junk disappear and keep your house clean forever.

The case studies went on for a full hour. More sad women with sad lives to teach sad, yet crucial, lessons while providing ample motivation to stay clutter and child free. I immediately got off my ass, donated two trashbags of clothes to purple heart and canceled my date with a kid from high school. In some ways, tv has been better than going to class. It has more immediate life application opportunities than the scientific method.

Lilo and the Insider provide the abridged version that’s posted, but much more scary and unrelatable.

August 22, 2010

hire me.

Suburban Whitegirl
4774 West 157th Street
Apartment 4F
New York, NY 10031
734-888-8888
suburban.whitegirl@gmail.com

Dear Working Artist,

I’m extremely interested in a position as your studio assistant.  I’m
fresh out of a BFA program at Farm Fresh Corn University in a northern
Midwest town and am ready to take on the duties of being a right hand
gal. Growing up in middle class midwestern school districts and going
to a nearby state school has lead me to the coverletter I write to you
now. In addition to being extremely skilled with an exacto knife,
intricate loom stringing patterns and hiding my beer cans in the trash
can right before the janitors empty them at 2:30 in the
morning.  I can find a jar of opened emulsion sitting in the light and
then prep, test shoot, reclaim, prep, shoot and pull perfect prints out
all within twelve hours of a due date.  My interpersonal skills are
somewhat weak however, because my professors didn’t understand what
this Internet thing was until yesterday. In less than four years, I
was able to manage to pay my rent, tuition and beer money while still
graduating on time.  I’m going to hide all the weird things I did for money from you, or disguise them in my exhaustive resume. These experiences give me the strength I’ll need as a member of your team.

Accustomed to fast paced environments where multi-tasking is a way of
life, I thrive in situations where small accomplishments contribute to
bigger goals. I’m self sufficient, a strong communicator and efficient
with my time.  A background in fine arts has left me extremely detail
oriented and patient. I’m a talented painter; take instructions well,
and excessively independent. I’ve had a very scattered schedule and
went to a mediocre state school because that’s all I could
plan on affording on student loans. I’m truly a great employee and the
best asset to your company you could imagine.  I hope you can find it
within yourself to understand where I’m coming from and give me this
job.  I’m trying to make a better life for myself here, I have student
loans to pay and traveling to do and therefore know that this position
is what’s going to make this all happen.

           Please, feel free to call me at any time that works for
you to set up a phone interview because I can’t move to New York
without a job. I can send you my actual resume if you’d like, but this
limb is really far out, and I don’t want ruin my real name by giving
you my earnest resume, but I will upon request.  My phone number
is 734.888.8888 and email is suburban.whitegirl@gmail.com so you know
how to reach me. My salary requirements are 35k plus benefits because
I pay my own bills and require a comfortable lifestyle. I’ll kiss your
ass gently to get a leg up for my own work in the art world. Don’t you
remember how that feels? I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks for your time,

Suburban Whitegirl

 P.s. My address is actually my childhood bedroom where I’m sitting
unemployed right now, so it’d be nice to hear from you ASAP. The
address given is a friend of mine that I don’t talk to very often who
lives in Washington heights as a failed actor/busser. Please don’t
mail him anything. The phone number is mine.