Getting Paid

I checked my account today and I hadn't been paid for a gig I did months ago. Instead of quietly fuming about it, or waiting to see when or if they planned to pay me, I emailed my contact person at the magazine, attached a second copy of my invoice and asked her to pay me.

Kindly, but professionally. Like an adult.

Personal Grooming

I'm paranoid about my eyebrows and upper lip hair. Silly, I know. But still. Hate looking mustachioed and like I'm squinting through a giant overhang of grizzly hairs when I look out on the world, like some part-bald Schnauzer who is about to snap at your fingers.

(Dog walking is making my breed associations more exact).

The only thing that helps my eyebrows is threading. Nothing else. Plucking leaves all the fuzz, waxing gives me a rash and shaving... I only did that once. My upper lip doesn't really need much work, but I don't trust myself to not miss those pesky hairs. But threading hurts like a beast and I can't do it myself. Plus, it costs money.

Also, there's the unwritten rules of going to the salon. You shouldn't go when you're sweaty and nasty and covered in dog hair. You should be clean, scented, wearing the right amount of make up and preferably have taken a paracetamol 45 minutes beforehand. (I DID admit that I threading hurts. I'm also a wimp.).

So... why do it? Vanity aside, I've realized that being totally ungroomed is one of the ways in which I avoid what adulthood means to me. It's a sign that I don't care, or that I don't think I deserve to look good, in exactly the same way I behaved when I was an awkward teenager. There's been a bit of regression in this aspect of my life in the last few years, so I need to man up about it. Ideally, when I reach true and awesome adulthood, I will no longer be vain, and therefore GENUINELY not care about what I look like. Until then, grooming it is.

Therefore, I'm proud t0 say I went, withstanding the inevitable mockery of the beautician about the state of my face. It turned out to only cost me $10 including tip, and I feel infinitely better about the state of my eyebrows, rather than thinking that "I'll do something about them this week".

A good adult start!

Operation Adulthood

"That's totally a blog!"

I've managed to reach 30 without any semblance of being an adult. Sure, lots of people at my age are missing one or a couple of the main components of official "adulthood". Maybe they are single. Maybe they're unemployed. Live in a semi-shitty apartment with roommates they're not convinced about. They may not have kids, or even pets. Perhaps they don't have proper health insurance, or don't make enough money to use said insurance.

These people have been known to bemoan their un-adultness, and are totally full of shit for doing so. Sure, they may have missed out on some of the markers of adulthood, but they are well on their way. They're on track, in subtle ways they don't even see: if you have at least a couple of those markers, getting more of them are much easier. You have the habits, you have the ideas and you don't have the obsession with being different and difficult in vague and undefined ways which I have.

Because me? I'm the real thing: arrested development. Living in people's houses, an eternal student, unpublished and largely, to be fair, unwritten. Pretty much impoverished. Pay-as-you-go phone. Have never even thought of how i would get health insurance, and have made a lifestyle out of working in jobs usually populated by teenagers or stoners.

And I'm done with it. Done with the childhood. Done with being a 20-something drifter. I've done that - time to grow up. So this blog is about how I do it.