Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Chapter 13 - HELP WANTED: Tales of a Free-Spirit Professional


A warm welcome to visitors - old and new! Please click on the right side of the page in the archives to follow this post from the beginning. It ALL starts in June 2011, so take a look and follow along. As always, thanks for reading and enjoy.

I WILL be posting through the Holidays!

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Photo courtesy of www.photobucket.com
I tried to keep in touch with my friends from the Madsen Group, but as my father wisely put it, “Work friends are because of work.  Once you lose that common thread, there’s not much else left.”

Harsh words from a normally gentle man, but he was right.  Two months after my departure, I’d only stayed close with two people; one of whom had left the company shortly after me.  My other friends all had jobs so my life of freedom and leisure slowly turned into a monotonous routine of, “What will I do to fill up my day today?”

Music wasn’t really happening.  I think I was better at dreaming about being a famous singer than actually becoming one.  I had a lot of ideas, but I was too afraid to try any of them.  Plus, I was slightly disappointed that Puff Daddy (I refuse to call him that other nonsense) and Clive Davis weren’t waiting for me in the lobby the day I quit my job.  Hadn’t they heard I was ready to take the music industry by storm?

I was a rock star in my head and keeping the dream alive inside, meant it would never die.  It also meant it would never thrive.  I couldn’t think about that, because If I did, I’d have to do something and it was just plain safer to sit on my couch.

Plus, I had money to worry about.  A convenient distraction and harsh reality as my finances were starting to tighten.  And while I was still getting unemployment, I needed to come up with something else to do for cash.

Enter Hunkmania.

One morning, as I sat in the car doing my usual street cleaning/writing thing, I ran into Tony.  Tony was an entrepreneur in every sense of the word with several different businesses going at once.  One venture, Hunkmaina, was a male strip show for women he had launched eight months ago.  It was doing well and he was taking things to the next level by going into full advertisement mode.

“I’ve got these postcards that need to be mailed out,” he told me as he leaned his large frame against my car.  A former male stripper himself, Tony had arms like an orangutan and the presence of sleeping giant.  He was a guy from Queens who had a head for business and a thirst for a good party.  “I need someone to put labels and stamps on the cards and send them out,” he continued.

“How many are we talking?” I asked, sitting up in my seat and resting my chin on the open window.

“A lot.”

“A lot” turned out to be over 5,000 and at ten cents per card, I’d found my much-needed extra income.

It was a decent gig in that I didn’t have to get up early and I never had to leave my apartment building (Tony lived downstairs.)  It didn’t really help my loneliness, though it gave me something new to talk about.  Since that common thread of work was gone, I’d have to come up with things to talk about with my friends from the Madsen Group.  

They were counting on me, after all!  You don’t know how many people wished me well and patted my back with envy as they admitted they didn’t have the balls to do what I was doing.  It was a lot of pressure to show those people that I would succeed.

“You’re pursuing your DREAM, Liz,” my friend, Marla had said when I’d called my first week out to complain about being lonely.  “You don’t get to be lonely!  Get out there, girl!  DO it!”

I was doing it alright – exchanging numbers with my new parking buddies and working for the guy who broke my heart a little over a year ago.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I used to be in love with Tony?

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