Out Of Control: Life As We Kn(e)(o)w It.

Okay, so no need to state the obvious… but here goes anyway: PYRAMIDROME HAS WITHERED UP LIKE SUMMER’S BASIL PLANT LEFT OUT IN THE FROST! But it’s okay. Let’s talk about it.

When I started this blog, it was more or less to convince myself that despite my severe feelings of personal worthlessness, I was still more or less capable of having ideas and gettin’ shit done. It kind of did the trick, as I was able to write about some stuff I found interesting, and have some other people read it and write stuff back. It was really cool how it worked out. I miss it, and I would like to propose a reinvigoration of this blog: FOR THE SAKE OF US ALL.

But yeah, gettin’ on with the deets. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve been swept up by a tornado of changes. I ate Chinese food on some Wednesday back in July. At the end of the meal, my fortune cookie had some good news for me, reading, “Expect a change in job or status for the future.” With a jaded smile, I tucked the small slip of paper into my pocket and wished like hell the cookie would for once get it right.

The very next day, I received a somewhat confusing e-mail. It was from a man at an Internet startup seeking interns on Craigslist, and he was replying to an application I had sent off only the day before. This baffled me, as I had begun to assume that the constant stream of e-mails I sent out every day were getting lost in translation, or at least sucked up by aliens and spewed out over another far-off corner of outer space. In hearing back from someone, my balloon strings were tugged back down to earth, and a heavy sense of gratitude overwhelmed me. PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE, I thought to myself. ALL IS NOT DEAD! I could have cried for the joy I felt in my heart, like at the end of Stephen King’s “The Langoliers,” when the final survivors escape the black hole/lapse in time and get happily dashed back into the hustle and bustle of functioning society.

Weirdly, the e-mail from the man at the Internet start-up suggested that I give him a call rather than meet him at some far off and horribly inconvenient location. So, I did, and after a questionably short conversation, it was decided that I would come into their office the following Friday to START WORKING. On top of all this, he said they would PAY ME for WORKING THERE. Upon hanging up the phone, I felt as though I had just stepped off the edge of a diving board, and was caught in that instant before gravity takes a hold—merely hovering in air, incomprehensiblly still, my brain floating easily between each wall of my lumpy skull like jelly in a donut. Had my reason for complaining and over-analyzing and pyramidroming my days away suddenly been lifted over my head like so much cold spaghetti? Only time would tell.

Over the next few hours the calm began to wear off. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I had a job! Glee set in and I finally made the plunge downward, free from my tethered state of pyramidroming-into-the-sun (as Icarus surely did, let it be known). That Friday I started working for M——-(let’s keep it nameless to prevent the Google spiders from crawling this and letting all my secrets pour wildly into my business life), where I’ve gradually become more and more at home with the idea of WORKING and MAKING MONEY and DOING BIZARRELY WEIRD TASKS THAT MAKE NO SENSE TO ME AT ALL (because, let’s be honest… this is what it means to do work for somebody else).

Now, I don’t want to go running a mock all over the weirdness of having a job, because let’s remember that horrible span from June to July when I woke up every morning at 11am to the sound of my own brain thumping itself into a coma. I am GRATEFUL to be able to get up in the morning, put on something that isn’t pajamas, slather some PB&J on toast and head out into the morning air. It really feels good to walk down the street, in the same direction as the morning before, heading off to a place where I am expected to be and expected to perform. Momma didn’t raise no slacker, which is why I made this blog back in the day of boredom, solitude and stir-craziness.

Since July, stuff has started happening. Somehow, I have managed to become engrossed in NOT ONE, but FOUR JOBS, all of which are INCREDIBLY WEIRD and kind of AWESOME. I have often thought of myself as somebody who’s most happy when living life off the beaten trail, which is why I’ve ended up with the resume I have, and which is most likely why this odd set of people have opted to take me on, each in their own way. I continue to be baffled and impressed with the simple fact that the places I currently work for are able to exist in this day and age. A successful Internet startup seeking to help independent designers and bands team up to sell handmade merchandise to niche markets? Improbable. A group of witty, humorous and talented artists coming together to confront the notion of reality, time and space through an alternative reality game based in the heart of San Francisco? Get real. An online store &blog selling prints made by awesome up-and-coming artists? Sounds great, but show me the beans. And finally, a project run by a bunch of lawyers to help underprivileged high school students work with local artists and not-for-profits while applying for college? GET OUTTA HERE. Somehow, I have become involved in a group of projects that each seem somehow too good to be true, which must in some way reflect my distrust for America’s economy and the improbability of something really cool being able to “make it.” However, it is somehow working out, and I am too fearful to sit for more than a second and think about all the stuff that could quite easily fail and send any one of these four projects crashing down into a pile of wishful thinking and good intentions.

Now that I have all this stuff going on, thinking about life via this blog has become something that barely ever crosses my mind… except when people ask me, ‘Hey, whatever happened to that Pyramidrome thing you kept e-mailing me about?’ At the thought of this I sigh, and think about how there are really just not enough hours in the day at all, and I work on weekends now, and I am just more or less out of control in all sense of the saying. It is so, so exciting to be a part of something that I believe in, and even though I sometimes feel like my time would be better spent digging a hole to China, I am grateful for each and every hour I’ve been able to spend at each of my jobs. I hate being this busy, but I am so much happier to be busy than idle. I think it is amazing that there are people in this world who are able and eager to start their own projects, to make money off of these projects, and to grow something imagined into something real. This is what I have always loved about art: the ability to imagine something, and then bring that thing into existence. I have respect for each of my jobs because at the core of each place is that golden nugget: the spirit of somebody who believed it might someday work out, and that their idea might someday employ some random girl from Vermont and give her something to toil away her days to.

So, in the spirit of this blog, I’d like to take back a statement I made back in “the day” (“the day” of course being those few months ago when I was jobless). When I started this blog, I thought that the word “pyramidrome” could come to embody the anger and hostility I felt towards the job market as born by capitalism, as well as my own state of mind when dealing with these sentiments in my everyday life. However, now that I’ve seen the light on the other side of the door, I must admit that the word must come to embody a new meaning. Specifically, I think that to “pyramidrome” must mean to FIND ONE’S PLACE IN CAPITALISM, while living a life that is at least somewhat meaningful, fun and productive. We shall all strive for the good life, and along the way, we will pyramidrome our days away in all sorts of weird places doing all sorts of ridiculous tasks, but we must remember: to do is to be, and to be is to be able to do. Whatever the hell that means, it’s better than bumming around, and that’s all there is to know.

LONG LIVE THE PYRAMID: LONG LIVE SOCIETY: LIVE LONG AND PROSPER.

Hope all’s well with the few readers that may remain, and please, SEND ME SOMETHIN’ GOOD! Just because you got a job doesn’t mean you’re done here, goddamn it.