december story

one minute she was safely ensconced in her office on 23rd street, the next thing she knew, she was out on the street with her work things crammed into a cardboard box trying to hail a cab on tenth avenue. it hadn't been much of a job, she thought ruefully , but it was a JOB , and now she was back on the street again, with the dreary prospect of posting her resume online, talking to head hunters, going to interviews, and trying to sell herself to some bored middle management drone, who would be looking at her breasts(not big enough) instead of at her face, where his/her eyes should have been. the trouble with jobs she thought was that they were jobs and not doing work that made her pulse quicken and her heart throb with joy,the way it would if she was doing what she'd been put on earth to do, to be an artist.that's when it hit her- she was 35 years old, unmarried, childless and she was going to do what she'd been wanting to do for 30 of those 35 years, she was going to become a starving artist. she put her hand down as a cab pulled up and shooed it away. starving artists didn't take cabs they took the subway, and on her way to the station she threw her cad board box which contained all her office paraphernalia, into a dumpster,and set off to begin her new life. this is the first installment of my fantasy new life- in reality i am 57 years old, married with 3 children , stuck in a job that i need to keep because my husband has been kicked out of his job. i went to a retirement consultation, and they told me i could have retired 2 years ago, so i'm hoping and even praying to a god i don't believe in, that ian will get a job and i can retire in september, and spend the rest of my life making art and writing. and what of my fictional counterpart? her name is ingrid murphy, and you'll be hearing more of her fictional adventures in the blogs to come.