Oh, god, please tell me I\u2019m not really going to be working seven days a week from now till the fall\u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about this time, each year, that I get really weird. Since 2001, I\u2019ve taken about five weeks off every summer to go screw around abroad. But then, last summer, I had brain surgery and, this summer, the money is (mysteriously \u2013 I swear!) gone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So I now find myself at a point where I\u2019m working more than when I put myself through college. Mainly to pay for the various extravagancies I\u2019ve picked up here in my third decade. Or is it my fourth decade? That sounds even worse. I\u2019m certainly far too exhausted to maintain this pace, yet there\u2019s no clear break on the horizon.<\/p>\n
All for the great god Money. Of course, my weekend job will have fully paid off the car I bought in March by the end of October. Can\u2019t beat that, and it\u2019s the main reason for this summer of sacrifice. Goddamned cars. I went 15 months without owning one and I loved every minute of it.<\/p>\n
All this work is also about recovery \u2013 slowly climbing out of the hole I dug. A combined hole of misplaced dreams (starting an indie publishing house) and things against my will (missing months of work thanks to the brain surgery).<\/p>\n
I made up for it with a brief two weeks in London last Christmas, but am otherwise pining for some sort of gonzo trip. Not that my month long trips are particularly wild. My idea of a gonzo trip is to tool around a Scottish island and drink whisky and eat the type of breakfasts that make my heart scream like it\u2019s in a high school stage version of Amadeus<\/em>. But my tummy says yummy!<\/p>\n I\u2019ll end up taking the equivalent of a month off, in both finances and time, in little spits and spurts throughout this summer. It\u2019s the only way I can possibly stay somewhat passably sane. But these will be fully paid leave days with friends around the country. And by \u201cfriends,\u201d I mean people who know what the last couple of years have done to my wallet and psyche. They buy me booze and sit around watching me for signs of spontaneous combustion. I\u2019m fairly convinced, in fact, that there\u2019s a pool going on as to which friend will get to witness my final collapse.<\/p>\n Little do they know that I have $500 riding on a sort of Chris McCandless collapse \u2013 vanish into the wilderness all brave and high minded, then die because I\u2019m an idiot. I don’t know how I’ll collect on that…but I’ll find a way, believe you me.<\/p>\n Besides paying off cars and, when not doing that, providing a cushion of extra cash that I can then send to Amazon as I peck away at my 20 page wish list, the weekend job also keeps me in booze. It\u2019s a rare day when I\u2019m forced to buy alcohol. The house is stocked, especially during the summer, with vodka, rum, scotch, and whatever else the little suckers on the ends of my unnatural, mutant fingers can lift from the dark folds of cardboard and cloth in the supply room. This way I can meet the pain of a seven day work week with heavy drinking. But it\u2019s guilt free alcohol, because I haven\u2019t paid for it. No hiding it from guests, no saving the last few drops, no eking out as much life from the bottle as possible. Just dump it in, throw it out if you don\u2019t finish it, stick a lit rag in the top and throw it at the Comcast truck\u2026whatever. No loss.<\/p>\n Which is why I take these short trips to bedevil my little group of friends. Hi, buddy, what\u2019s shaking? Nevermind, give me that bottle and make your wife dance for me.<\/p>\n If she doesn\u2019t dance for me, then I put my hand to the back of my head and say, \u201cThe old brain surgery is acting up again!\u201d Works every time.<\/p>\n I intend to return to my long vacation habit next summer. I had the recent surreal day where I was interviewed by the Washington Pos<\/em>t, and the interviewer asked me what my goals were. Why\u2019d I get into publishing, and where did I see myself? I hemmed and hawed, answered with the usual I lubs me some books stuff, and I think she picked up that there was something deeper. She pressed the point \u2013 why not a career? Why am I working a day job that\u2019s full of retards and a weekend job that hasn\u2019t advanced in responsibilities since high school? What do I want to do?<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t put up the front anymore. I blurted out my Life Plan: Become a night watchman at some place like a museum, or some lonely industrial park. Travel for three months out of each year, mainly palling around and drinking. Retire at 65 into a used Airstream on a desolate hillside somewhere on my friend\u2019s wife\u2019s entirely useless 30 acre mountaintop inheritance deep in West Virginia.<\/p>\n Easy!<\/p>\n She asked if I would get lonely. I looked blankly at her and said that I had Netflix. Then she scribbled madly in her little pad, making a sort of breathy giggling noise. I\u2019m starting to dread the article\u2026<\/p>\n Right now, though, it\u2019s Thursday before Memorial Day. This three day weekend coming up is nothing because it\u2019ll be wall-to-wall ten hour shifts. My next break isn\u2019t scheduled until mid June, where I\u2019ll go lie on my back somewhere on the floor of a luxury cabin in West Virginia and moan about my life to anyone who\u2019ll listen. Or, more likely, I\u2019ll break out the Hurricane mix and the cheap rum and go insane with that and the first season of Twin Peaks<\/em> on a gigantic television screen. The poor souls joining me on this cabin adventure will then have to spend three days watching me pretend to be Dale Cooper.<\/p>\n Diane, I appear to have drunk all the rum and am now standing naked out on SR 89.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh, god, please tell me I\u2019m not really going to be working seven days a week from now till the fall\u2026 It\u2019s about this time, each year, that I get really weird. Since 2001, I\u2019ve taken about five weeks off …<\/p>\n