Just so you know, your office monkey is currently unemployed and waiting to start her new blogging job! Woo hoo! Here's a little something I wrote about my "out-of-office" experience...
When I really examined my recent behavior patterns this morning, I realized that I’m giving off some very contradictory vibes. I mean, I am an avid follower of pop-culture—the trashier, the better, to be quite frank. I majored in “Video Production” of all things, and have been working in and around the entertainment industry since graduating college and moving to Los Angeles.
For all intents and purposes, one would assume that I should have—at the very least—basic cable.
And, as I sit on my bed in front of my hand-me-down television set with my hand-me-down rabbit ears propped on the top of it watching the third syndicated episode of Blind Date in a row, I realize that my media consumption is probably way below what the Food and Drug Administration would recommend for a woman of my height, weight, age and immaturity.
So, this morning, I decided to take action and forced myself to bone up on my daytime network television intake. Since I’m currently unemployed, I have the time. All I needed was a little motivation.
First off, there are the morning shows. Now, do you fancy yourself a Good Morning America individual, or are you more of a Today show person? Or are you somehow able to stomach the very real and uncomfortable tension between the members of Good Day Live?
Personally, I find myself gravitating toward NBC’s Today show. Perhaps you are assuming that all this hoopla about Katie Couric leaving the show, to be replaced Meredith Viera of the View, is the reason for my current interest in the show. If that’s the case, then you would be wrong. I’m no Johnny-Come-Lately. Honestly though, it has more to do with the fact that Channel 4 comes in most clearly most of the time.
Who would have thought that in this up-to-the-nanosecond age of technology and information, there would exist an individual under the age of thirty, whose television-watching patterns would be dictated by something as fickle as which channel is the least fuzzy?
But, I digress—back to the TV.
After catching a few useful recipes, a stern talking-to about how important sunscreen is at this time of year, as well as some make-up and fashion tips to help minimize any signs of aging that I may have already experienced at this point in my life, I made the transition from the morning shows, to the trashier arena of mid-morning network programming.
What’s your pleasure? Court Television? Trashy talk? To be honest, I found myself drifting off at this point and didn’t really snap back into focus until my beloved Blind Date appeared on the screen.
I could have opted for the Starting Over house, which I like to rationalize is the more intellectual choice, but decided that today I would indulge in what I would call a guilty pleasure, were there any guilt involved. As it is, any semblance of irony in what I deem to be awesome, flew out the window with my indie-rock cred a long time ago.
Blind Date. God, I love you.
It manages to soothe me in a way that only a show that simultaneously makes me feel both smarter and more socially adept than the average American, can.
Case in point:
Girl (to her very muscular date): So, what do you do?
Guy (after slightly too much thought for such a simple question): I’m a personal trainer.
Girl (in an extremely dry tone of voice): Well, that would explain the guns.
Something about the way that I could tell the girl was clearly considering having sex with the beautiful, yet mentally vacant stud with whom she was paired, despite a complete disinterest in his personality, made me love her just a little bit.
Commercials. This is when you get to see exactly what television programmers think of you. Ads for gastric bypass surgeries. Technical colleges. Get off your fat ass, lose some weight and get a job. Or at least a motorized scooter, so that you’ve got some means of getting to that check-cashing place so that you can finally afford to pay for that low-cost car insurance that company is offering. Yeah, maybe I’m unemployed. But I’m not fat. Jerks.
Back to the dates. Making fun of these people on Blind Date makes me wonder just how charming I would have looked on any of my dates, had they been videotaped. I feel a momentary pang of sympathy for the victims on screen, until a promo for tomorrow’s episode appears, featuring
“Pumpkin” from “Flavor of Love” on a date way before her infamous feud with “Brooklyn” and I remember that these are not normal people. They are a different breed of human—reality-whores. And then I return to feeling superior and all is right in the world.
As I continued watching, I became frustrated with my limitations. Why didn’t I have cable? There’s nothing on right now. I only have about six channels to choose from. This sucks.
And then I remembered something. And that something was my life before—life with cable television. I remembered what it felt like to flip through all the channels on the television set, without a single one catching my attention for more than a moment. And I remembered how frustrated I was that we only had basic cable and that’s why I couldn’t find anything to watch.
And that’s when I realized, there’s never always something good to watch, really. And honestly, that’s probably exactly how it should be. I shouldn’t get pissed at the limitations—rather, I should accept them and learn that maybe sometimes, it would be good to peel my lazy ass off the couch, go out and enjoy the beautiful California summer weather, with which I was blessed.
But let’s not get crazy here—I still totally need to sign up for Netflix because living like a cavewoman is getting kind of old.
Seriously. It’s like 18 bucks a month. There’s no good excuse.
So, here I am, a working blogger, happily waking up in quite a leisurely fashion and getting to do my work in my pajamas. I can eat breakfast while I write up my posts and have found that most of my work gets done from about 7:30AM until 10:30AM, leaving most of my afternoon free to do as I please. I don't have someone looking over my shoulder, checking on my work. There is no busy work here in my new office, which looks an awful lot like my breakfast nook. Things are good in a lot of ways.
