Renovation Story Leads to Another Country

Yes, the internet drives us crazy and there's too much of it. But if you collect phrases and headlines like I do -- the crazier the better - then the internet can also perk up your day. Adding to my collection is a straightforward story about a young woman who buys a house for a pound and found a way to renovate it, though she hadn't any money.

Of course I love stories like this, being an avid fan of all things renovation, and read eagerly how she took a crumbling shell of a house with boarded up windows, a leaking roof, rats, asbestos and no electricity or heating to a really cool home. The best part was that she did most of it herself. She had no knowledge of how to build a home before she started and just dived in, quitting her job as a project officer at a university. And oh--this all happened in the U. K.

The story, photos, and journey made a great story and I was completely hooked. Then-- something even better came along in the very same story. 

The author mentioned, casually, that the renovation was finished and she was now working at several part-time jobs to make ends meet:

• University Project Officer
• Yoga Teacher
• Tutor
• Online Dominatrix

Bringing in about $2,505 a month (which seems low when you add the dominatrix position. Though perhaps this profession loses something when it's virtual and you can make a lot more in person?)

I've known only one dominatrix in my life - the girlfriend of a dear friend--and I've no idea how long they were together. The dominatrix was absolutely beautiful in a country-girl way, and reminded me of a young Joni Mitchell. She also seemed extremely shy, and I could not imagine this woman bending someone to her dominating will. 

Yet, according to my friend, his girlfriend made a great living in her chosen profession.

So there we are. project officer, yoga teacher, tutor and online dominatrix.

I don't want to obsess about this story (though I am, which is why you're reading it), but I have so many questions. 

• How do you become an online dominatrix? 
• How much can you charge for something like that? 
• Is there a training school? 
• How do you learn about what you're supposed to do and say on the job?

My last question: is this worth exploring? 

Not as something I'd do - (though I have to admit it's got me curious.) I'm most likely thinking about characters, and this is quite an intriguing one.

So. Have you ever been a dominatrix? Known one? If so, send me a note at jennazark.com.

I promise to read every word.

Photo by Maria Vlasova on Unsplash

Zooming Bed Court

The past year (and now this year) has been full of Zoom stories. People getting to see theater or go to meetings or church or synagogue - all good stuff.

My favorite stories are about how people are in their PJ's all day and fashion designers like Norma Kamali are creating designer PJs for this very purpose. (Doesn't that defeat the purpose?)

My MOST favorite story is about a lawyer who supposedly tried to argue a case in front of a judge while she was in lying on down in bed. The judge admonished her and I don't know what happened after that.

Did she get up at that point? Was she wearing designer PJs? Did she have to excuse herself to get dressed? Somehow I imagine she just propped herself up in bed and said "I'm sorry, your Honor." Did she say anything to explain why she was lying in bed while arguing a case? I'm guessing she wouldn't go into that.

Did the judge let her continue? I hope so. I hope she had on flannel pajamas, not the designer kind, and she was a really good lawyer who got her client whatever he or she needed in spite of being a laze-bucket. 

What time was this case, anyway? I hope it wasn't at noon. Could this whole thing be the first scene of a movie? It could, couldn't it?

Is the story true or is it apocryphal? What does apocryphal mean, anyway? Dictionary says "Of doubtful authorship or sanctity."

Maybe it is, but who cares? I like this story and I'm sticking to it.

Our protagonist is a crackerjack lawyer who had one too many cases going on, plus a little too much wine the night before. Things might not be going so well with her love life. She drinks. She gets depressed. She's in New York during the surge and it's hard to socialize. 

Instead of being able to find distractions, she's getting anxious and feeling afraid of everything. Spending more and more time in bed. The case is at 9 a.m. and she wakes at 8:45. Her computer, luckily, is on the bed with her. 

She turns on the computer and manages to get to the Zoom court appointment just in time. But her face looks puffy, her pillow falls over and suddenly she's lying down when she meant to be sitting up. She's trying to talk but sounds garbled and the judge admonishes her.

"What are you doing? Are you in bed?"

"Your Honor--"

"ARE YOU IN BED?"

She tries to explain but instead receives a long lecture. Her client is none too happy, either.

Does she win the case? Does it get postponed?

I'm sure it gets postponed for three weeks, at least.

On the other hand, I myself have gotten to a Zoom meeting less than a minute before it starts. Never done it in bed though. 

Something terribly illicit about that, which must be why I love it.

So I want to raise a champagne glass--at least one.

To lawyers who argue their cases in bed. May they always win them.

Laptop in bed photo:  Jared Tarbell

Getting the Want

Did you ever want something really, really badly and not know how to get it? Of course you did. But what do you do when that happens?

Right now I'm wanting the pandemic to end and to be nearer my son, sister, niece, cousins and other family; but making that happen is super hard because I'm thousands of miles away with a job that's really right for me.

It's times like these and wants like these that sends me into a whirlpool of magical thinking. When I lived in New York and took for subway to work, I used to choose something I wanted and concentrate really hard on it.

Sometimes the things I wanted would really happen. One of those things was a production of a play at one of my favorite theater companies - Circle Repertory Company.

There was no way in the world I would ever, ever have dreamed that this particular dream would come true--but it did. I don't know why, exactly - it happened in a very happenstance way. Perhaps working hard at what I loved to do and joining the Playwrights' Center (again, thousands of miles away from New York) brought me to that moment.

The funny, as in odd, not fun funny thing, is that when I wished for a play production I was in my twenties in New York, trying hard to be a professional in the theater world. Yet the production didn't happen until I was in my thirties, years later, and had moved away.

I guess what I'm thinking right now is that we have the ability to make our dreams happen and shouldn't give up if it doesn't happen five minutes after we wish for it. We also have to try and have the courage to take the steps we need to take.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And while I'm writing to you here, what I'm really trying to do is talk to myself. Because if I don't ask myself what I want and figure out how to get it -- I'll regret it.

Anyway. I had no intention of rhyming that. But I'll try and save it so I remember it next time I'm writing a song.

What do you really, really, really want right now?

What can you do to get it?

Questions I can't necessarily answer (at least not the second one).

But I know enough to keep asking.

I hope you do, too.


Make a wish photo: Garrett

Hibernation Envy

This young man has the right idea -- I want to hibernate for at least three months from January through March. A few quick reasons:

1. Driving to/from work in the dark scares me to death and the number of crazy, nasty, ugly drivers inches from my tail far outnumber any nice ones (if there are any).

2. The endless amount of time computers add to our lives makes everything take longer. Seriously, didn't you get more done when every last piece of paperwork in your life wasn't password protected? And do you NEED to be at the computer in a house that is barely adequately warm when you could be curled up on the couch reading with your cat purring in your lap?

3. Walking to the mailbox is a complete chore after dark, which comes way too quickly after 4 in the afternoon.

4. My husband slipped on the ice on our driveway this week and dislocated his shoulder. That's at least $5,000 worth of medical bills we didn't need and can't afford. Wouldn't have happened if we were hibernating.

5. Food bills are ridiculous. If you were asleep for three months of the year, you could avoid them.

So okay, we're not able to hibernate, but WHY do we have to go anywhere in winter (unless we really, really want to?) I know you're going to tell me to move to a warmer climate but I can't right now, so why can't we have a new rule that you get to hibernate (physically or metaphorically) if you live in a colder state?

I know. You can tell I'm in a mood. But you would be too if you were me.

Since you aren't, I hope you're keeping warm, wherever you are. If I wake up in time for next week, hopefully I'll be a little less out of sorts (and a little closer to spring). And it will be a little lighter at 7 a.m. or at 5:30 in the evening.

Or I'll have figured out how to hibernate.

Hibernating boy photo: Jane Rahman

Summer at the Lake: a Labor Day Lament

Labor Day weekend always feels a little sad to me, because it either means back to school or the end of summer (or at least close). Because we now live near a public beach and lake, I get to be closer to the water than I ever have been and try to walk by it every day.

Walking by the water makes me think of a non-existent summer by the lake that I always wanted, growing up. We were in a suburb of Manhattan and my mom would drive us to Welch Lake every summer.

At the lake, I swam all day, my sister flirted with beach boys and my mother sat in a chair under an umbrella and watched the water. She was completely unathletic and it's only now I realize how boring it must have been for her. But she wanted us to swim and have fun, so brought us faithfully through the years.

Now I see children visiting grandparents, bare feet curling in sand. Boats tied up while the kids stand on paddle boards, balancing themselves expertly in ways I never learned to do. I think of my New York city characters and wonder what they would think of these lazy lake days. They'd wish they had them, like I do.

Summers on the lake would have the smell of those lakes; not salty fresh like the ocean, but a darker, more brackish smell that's not unpleasant. My husband's family cabin is up by Lake Superior, and it's always been too frigid for me, but we've gone swimming in rivers nearby, and that's been fun.

Lake summers need grilled meals and s'mores and live music, which my husband's family always has; we are often there over July 4 and sometimes Memorial Day, and once we went on Labor Day. The lake is beautiful in fall too, but when I'm around it, I always want it to be summer.

There is just something about summer air and water together that makes you feel so alive, and so calm at the same time. It whispers of shared secrets and secret loves, and a way out of the daily grind that promises so much more than it could ever deliver.

Labor Day means summer at the lake is going to come to an end soon. In the Upper Midwest it means cold and snow will come and stay far too long. So every day before then is a gift that needs to last as long as possible. And we have to dive in, I think, not stay on the shoreline.

We just have to dive in.

And the Winner is Luck: The Great Recession

Someone asked me the other day if my life had ever changed completely and I laughed, because I think it's changed more than once. 


But no, they said, did your life ever really change completely?

Three times.

The first time happened when I was a newly divorced single mom with a five-year-old child.

The second time was when my father's health declined and he had to move here from New Jersey. (He kept wanting to go back, by the way, and for quite a while he thought we were in Alaska.)

The third time happened in 2008 when I was laid off during the Great Recession. I'm thinking about it because I'm working on a musical with a wonderful composer about a couple who is laid off in 2008. It's a comedy because we wanted it to be, but it wasn't funny when it was happening in real time.

The economy started slowing in summer and the first sign of it was that my husband was laid off from his food delivery job. He decided to go to trucking school as it seemed the workforce market was starting to dry up.

I worked part-time at a nonprofit where the executive director was leaving and a new one being hired. As a playwright, I needed the extra time to write my own work, and fortunately the part-time job paid almost as much as a full-time one. But in the fall, the turmoil in the banks and stock market began to take its toll on donations our nonprofit received; and one day in November, at least seven employees were laid off and from what I heard, a lot more followed in our footsteps.

I remember crying in the car as I drove home, knowing my husband's new job was going to keep him on the road at least five days a week, but usually even more. He wasn't going to make much money that first year, and now I had none; yet our bills weren't going to magically shrivel just because our old jobs were gone.

My unemployment office actually sent me to another office for counseling and there was also training available for how to interview. I cried so much during both sessions the people leading them were seriously worried about me. But it was easy to see what no one would say; that investment banks had preyed on a lot of unfortunate people, and caused what we now call the Great Recession.

It was, as Charles Dickens would say, the worst of times. If you were anywhere over 35, no one wanted to hire you when they could hire someone in their 20s and pay them barely anything. I sent out resume after resume after resume after resume. I had a couple of interviews and nothing more. And pretty soon, my savings began to run out.

I had one option left, which was to try and make a go of freelancing. The good news is that would give me a lot of time for writing. The bad news is that when you get up every day and try to find work, you don't have much time for your own writing.

I tried to let as many people as I could know that I was in the market, and somehow, very, very luckily, a former boss called me to work on some writing  projects for her early in 2009. In spring, a friend told me to call a local theater company to see if they needed help with grant writing, and luckily they did.

These two clients became a lifeline to me, plus a few other one-off clients who hired me here and there. But in 2009 I made $9,000 after making $44,000 a year at my part-time job. My husband made about $30,000 and we had to live on that, plus whatever I got in unemployment insurance -- which wasn't much on the weeks I was freelancing.

With a son in college, I had to call the school to ask for help, and luckily there too, the school adjusted their billing. If they hadn't, who knows if our son could have finished college at all? What was scary and sad was that too many millennials had to leave school during that time--and have never caught up since.

Luckily our son's school worked with us to help him get his education. Luckily my freelance clients liked what I was doing and gave me more and more work. Luckily I had some LUCK that kept me afloat, and I will always be grateful for that. In the next couple of years I was able to do better financially until I was making close to $47,000 on my own.

In 2012, I ended up being able to become part of the staff at the nonprofit where my former boss was hiring me for freelance. But I still remember the recession years, waking up every day feeling scared and anxious and wondering if there would be enough work that week. I remember seeing a lot of people falling through the cracks during that recession, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

We think life is solid, but in fact it's really not. At any time we could lose our jobs or get sick or have to take care of older parents. No one wants to think about it, but any one of us could lose everything we have and never be able to get it back again.

So when people ask now about whether my life ever changed completely, I can only tell them yes, and say that chances are good their lives will change too. Someone reading this right now may have to start over just like I did. If that happens, there are two things you need more than anything else--belief in yourself and luck. 

Belief in yourself is important, but it's not just a matter of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The Great Recession taught me I was pretty much at the mercy of high seas--and that all of us are. (I also think it would help to have a government that understands this, and I hope we get one soon.)

Because it wasn't just grit or determination or talent or stubbornness that got me out of it (though it's good to have all those things).

It was that here and there, on my journey, I was lucky enough for the wind to blow my way.


***

To learn more about the Great Recession, visit these sites:

Great Recession History
The Great Recession: Federal Reserve History
What Really Caused the Great Recession?




Recession key photo: Mike Lawrence


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