Choose life

So I got a job. The pay is scads more than my last job, it has great benefits, and the hours are regular. I should be happy.

Ah, but when has a "should" ever interfered with my ability to find the cloud attached to every silver lining?

The job is web editor at a non-magazine, non-media website attached to a product owned by Murdoch. I have left the magazine world. I can't even pretend to be on a masthead at this point.

At first, I saw myself in a little digital movie, in homage to the final seconds of Trainspotting, my face in closeup like Ewan Macgregor's as my voice, sans cute Scots brogue, recited, "Fuck magazines. Fuck Hearst. Fuck Conde Nast. Fuck Reader's Digest and its quaint Pleasantville offices. Fuck Cathie Black. Fuck the beauty closet. Fuck stilettos, a pair of which I've never seen on a magazine editor's feet. Fuck sample sales. Fuck Mahnolo Blahnik. Fuck cocktail parties. I'm on to something greater and better. I'm like the rest of you. Indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing the gutters, getting by, looking ahead, to the day you die...

Then, in my little pretend digital movie, I ran smack into a glass wall, broke my nose, and fell down. Because what was I running towards? A stoogey job at Newscorp. What the hell am I so happy about?!

And didn't Irvine Welsh only leave heroin addiction to tumble into a 10-year romance with / dependence on ecstasy?

Anyway, it's a gig. Allegedly, I'll be able to keep freelancing while I'm doing it, because the writing is so mind-numbingly easy. Of course, the last time I had a job that was mind-numbingly easy, my mind actually became numb and I wrote exactly one goose-egg the whole year. Plus, as my friend Judy para-said, "If you're not hungry, you get lazy." But uh... worst that happens, I pay off my credit card debts, right?

I'm going to put "Anyway, it's a gig" on a t-shirt. Then I'm going to put on the t-shirt, sit in the middle of Times Square, commit hara-kiri, and set myself on fire. Maybe I'll make it into Gawker!