Cutting Slack
hello to the hierarchy of my besties: irl besties, internet besties, fantasy besties; the hierarchy of my haters: just the three of you, followed by someone who goes by the alias k.s on google reviews; an ever dwindling number of exes who can read, a handful of people iām just getting to know who are about to know me too well too fast, and anyone else who has stumbled upon this highly specific page on the internet!!
if youāve been here before, you know the deal. iām going to weave a web of little jokes into a somewhat coherent story and then as a reward for knowing me you get the opportunity to see 20 things i hope to receive for my birthday, which, i hope you knowā¦ is tomorrow (26 september); iām turning 94.
The joke web:
In february 2023 after the company I co-created sold to one of the corniest companies on the planet, I quit because they wanted me to set forth eight hours a day I would be available to do work. Seven years into a job Iād put 8 hours a year into, this was a startling task.
Also, they wanted me to become a member of slack, or get on slack, or write to them in slack. Or do something, whatever one does, on slack. You can do a lot of things to me, but what youāre not gonna do is make me go on slack. Many have tried in the past and not a one has ever succeeded.
Not to sound like Mark Cuban - or myself in [redacted] years -Ā Ā but an 8 hour workday was not for me. And I explained this. I told a woman alleging to be my supervisor that every morning I woke up, I did cult for 20 minutes, wrote in my journal for 45 minutes, went for a 1 hour walk, came home, showered, drank a little poison, read for one hour in my garden, did some dilly dallying on the internet, and then I went to an appointment*, and by the time I was done with all of that it was already 4pm and thatās wind down time in my culture.Ā
Where did she want me to find 8 hours?!
(*i realize appointment time is not a thing (everyone can understand) but Iām gonna have to save it for another post. appointment time is sacred in a directionless little bugās life and it deserves to be explained properly.)
If you think Iām joking that I laid out this schedule to a woman who was born inside a human resources complaint folder and whose dearly departed soul resides within a ludicrously capacious bag somewhere, I beg you to get to know me better.
Fundamentally, she did not understand and spiritually I was not the messenger to enlighten her, so I decided to quit.
I am impulsive by nature but this decision was incredibly thought out. I wrote down a list of pros and cons and I titled the cons list āthings Iām not aligned withā and I listed 11 things.
āI dont want to be managed!!!!!!ā (this is a literal copy and paste) topped the chart.
To follow? āCorporate weirdnessā, and, simply: āSlackā.
On the pros list I wrote: āFreedomā, āI will finally be freeā. (LOL!) Underneath it, it says āTake a fucking risk.ā
I sat with these lists for approximately three minutes, and then I wrote an email announcing my resignation. And then I quite literally never spoke to anyone there ever again.
This all leads me to one short pivot before weāll arrive at our final destination of my birthday list.Ā
When I mentioned earlier that I am impulsive by nature, I mean that I quit my job because someone said there was a question posed to me in Slack and I needed to answer it came to Ohio to visit my dadās (RIP) childhood home and my (then) girlfriend convinced me to call the number on a commercial real estate building and within 45 days Iād signed a lease and 90 days later I had packed, driven, and moved my entire life across the country.Ā
When I moved here, I knew no one so I did a lot of things you may think only people who are on reality dating shows do, like: go to an espresso martini making class, cook marshmallows over an open fire in a state park at night with strangers, slide down a snowy hill on a plastic saucer as an activity, or attend a local ratās birthday party.*
*disclaimer for anyone here who doesnāt GET me bc Iām scared to be misunderstood: i loved all of these things Iām not mocking them; Iām simply holding a light to the absurdity of my *on the spectrum, agoraphobic weirdo* ass doing these things in earnest because i needed to not kms. ā”ĢĀ Ā kms stands for k*ll myself.*
(Of course all of these things on a reality dating show would involve two people, whereas in my case I did all of those things alone.)
As a treat for my efforts to be a member of society, the universe provided me with the unique gift of meeting the anthropomorphic version of my intrusive thoughts!!Ā
Weāll call her Gloria (for no reason) and in our first phone conversation she had called everyone in the state of ohio āfat, lazy and bipolarā and told me my business would fail.
One minute after we hung up, she texted asking if I wanted to sauna with her right now. Now mind you, Iāve been doing shit āfor the loreā since before it was called āloreā and men were just telling me I was insane (simpler times!!) so I grabbed a bikini and drove 9 minutes ready to go in a sauna with a random lady Iād never met.
And go in a sauna with a random lady I did... fully clothed for a reason that both confused and relieved me. In that sauna, Gloria repeated the aforementioned phone topics and added a pointed ānobody wants to work out; you will failā while staring at me in a box heated to 130 degrees.
āItās okay. Everything is always working out for meā I told her as she persisted in her negativity, because I lacked the ability to just tell her to shut the fuck up (and also because that is true).Ā
I considered the possibility of her behavior coming from a good intentioned place, like when cars driving the opposite direction flash their lights to let you know they just passed a cop (as if that ever hits). I considered it was an act of humanity, one unstable woman to another; trying to save me from the hell she thought was inevitable given her own - self proclaimed - āfailureā. (she had opened and closed a studio of her own.)
So I let her keep flashing her dumb lights at me, showing up to my studio uninvited in the middle of my buildout telling me I should see if my landlord would let me out of my lease, texting me little foreboding horror stories about the perils of being in the fitness industry, sending me local businesses that were closing as if to say āi told you so; iām warning you.ā
āYouāll seeā she said multiple times, as if to predict my ultimate demise in a way Iād be able to reflect on in the future, remembering sheād warned me.Ā
In those moments and in the months of desperation and grind leading up to the opening of my business I had no other choice but to move forward blindly, confidently. Long before I met this psychopath I had prepared for the possibility of failure. Unlike this woman, however, that preparation involved the potential of having to say āI failedā¦ now what?ā rather than āI failed. Iām the rule, not the exception. The journey is impossible.ā
Itās been almost two years since I left the career I thought would define me, and while I certainly havenāt failed, Iām not writing this from the other side. Iām writing this from the beginning of a long journey Iām prepared and excited to be on that began the day I decided to take a fucking risk.
Two years ago I couldnāt find 8 hours a day to work and now somehow Iāve found 14-18ā¦
and not a single one of them has been spent on slack.Ā
The Gift Portion!!!Ā the intangible: for the dismantling of nextdoor dot com, for all my bad memories to be erased, to win the war against seed oils, for the ai to stop(!!!), that the person who sullied my google reviews finds God and healing bc going against me is a form of psychosis, for great deals on this upcoming amazon prime day, that natalia grace is ok, that i never hear a telephone ring again, for watermelon to be in season all the time, that nobody is ever mad at me, that all eggs would turn to donuts in a way that would not have negative implications for chickens or negative repercussions for farmers, that everyone bounces back from whatever inevitable side effects ozempic will have, that my frequently used emoji are all safe and sound after getting rearranged, and for everyone I know and love to read the source by dr tara swart, and that they are all happy, healthy, successful, and in love forever.
the ones you can buy: these shoes (size 38)Ā or these shoes (size 38) also these (and you guessed it! 38) i want to fix my brain here, a casual five day immersive neurofeedback experience this watch this large suitcase or this one i cant pick this gorgeana kind of urgently, this these shoes (great deal alert!!!!) (size 38) i think the trajectory of my life would change if i owed four of these and maybe some other things to go with it big year for shoes ā¦ huge a stunning linen spray this practical thing her this or something else from her(e) these, white, small also kind of urgently, these this definitely the max mara teddy coat in the absolute smallest size and this is the last time Iām gonna put it here!!!!!! ykto!!! (lol!!)
