Monthly Archives: July 2013

The Ten Greatest Things I’ve Ever Done

Posted by katie ett on July 30, 2013 – 12:00 pm
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The Ten Greatest Things I’ve Ever Done, Chronologically

• Managed to find the most perfect best friend for me and love her immutably for nearly 30 years

• Came in second to said best friend in both of our elementary school spelling bees (losing on the words convertible and monstrous, and she’s such a good best friend that she never brings up how much better she is than me) but went on to win basically everything ever in school after that

• Loved my mom through her year-long battle with brain cancer–during which she lost the ability to speak, write, and eventually even recognize her family–but came out of the ordeal being much closer to my dad

• Spent an extra year at The Ohio State University to write a senior thesis in narrative nonfiction about my feeeeeeeeeelings

• Moved to NYC with one box of possessions and $3,000 to my name and made it WORK

• Won a poetry contest based on a six-word piece about my mom’s meatloaf

• Learned to appreciate the farm in Ohio that I came from

• Somehow cultivated amazing taste in food/music/film/fashion despite growing up on said farm

• Started a photography business on nothing but the love of it and the support of my ex-boyfriend

• Cut my hair super-short before leaving for vacation in Puerto Rico last week. The haircut is really the entire purpose of this post. It was such a good decision that the rest of my accomplishments pale.

You? Tell me in the comments, or better yet, on your own blog.

That Time When My Job of Seven Years Broke Up With Me

Posted by katie ett on July 16, 2013 – 12:00 pm
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I lost my job on Thursday, so between the breakup and the unemployment, I’m now one dead dog short of a country song. Much like the breakup, the layoff was both so obviously coming and so completely unbelievable that I’m still having a hard time deciding how I feel about it.

I got this job more than seven years ago through a temp agency. I was originally skeptical about the fact that it was at a software company and turned it down, but then the agent told me I could wear flip-flops to work, and I was sold. I showed up the first day in a skirt and blazer and then wore a t-shirt and jeans every day after. And yes, non-stop flip-flops. It was an office of forty men and, like, two women, and the entirety of my job as an office manager was to stock office supplies, take checks to the bank, and cut cake for the birthdays we seemed to somehow be celebrating multiple times per week every week. My manager was a German guy who vacillated between calling me into his office to watch videos of puppies skateboarding and telling me I wasn’t worth the money he had paid the temp agency for me.

Luckily, his job became “redundant” a couple of years in when we were purchased by a larger company, and then all of the executives in my office became redundant, and then I got a series of new managers in places like Connecticut and Chicago and Massachusetts who each visited to check up on me exactly once. I became close friends with all of the guys in the office, and we started taking summer vacations together. I began a second blog and then a third and then a fourth. I had meandering phone conversations with my best friend and day-long IM sessions with everyone else. A TV was installed behind my desk, and I listened to eight hours of “House Hunters International” and “Property Brothers” or whatever else I wanted every day. I met Kamran for long lunches at steakhouses and brasseries. I moved into a dreamy apartment with one of my co-workers. Another co-worker taught me Photoshop, and I started a photography business. I supported hundreds of meetings and training classes. I met every single person who came into the office. I gained an intimate knowledge of inkpens and recycled paper and shopped office supply sites religiously for deals on soda to stock our office fridge. I loved that job, both for the actual work and for the fact that it paid me for doing my hobbies most of the work day.

Unfortunately, the company was based in Canada, and it was trying to move everyone to the head office, so people who left my office weren’t replaced, and the entire customer support department was eventually laid off. This year, we got down to a total of ten people coming into work on a good day. And then the highest-ranking guy moved to the new office in California, and people started asking me what was going to happen to the NYC office. We were all the way downtown in the Financial District and had an amazing view of the Staten Island Ferry and the Verrazano Bridge, and I’m sure the rent wasn’t cheap, but the company had moved in right after 9/11 and got a discount for being willing to give the area a chance, and people who had been there longer than I had thought our lease was at least through 2016. So I was dreading the idea of having to pack the whole place up in three years, but I never thought anything worse than that would happen. But then my manager announced early last week that she was coming into town, and I got a little worried but thought maybe she was just visiting all of the east coast offices. But then I figured out that she was driving straight down to me from her home in Massachusetts. And then she arrived and started asking way too many questions about how I run things around the office. And then she started locking herself in the conference room and making whispered phone calls. I was dying to just straight-up ask her if she was there to fire me, but I appreciated that she’d driven down to tell me in person and didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

And then she laid me off with an HR person over the phone who told me over and over that it had nothing to do with my performance and everything to do with them not needing an office manager for an office of ten people. I didn’t cry and I didn’t cry, and my manager touched my knee in compassion anyway. And then I started crying and didn’t stop. Imagining not seeing my friends every day. Imagining having to find a new job that couldn’t compare to that one. Imagining being just another person who dreads going to work. Having my phone taken away from me. Having to pack up seven years of shoes accumulated underneath my desk. Thinking about having to move back to Ohio because I can’t afford to live here anymore.

Having to stay home from work on Friday felt like punishment. But then I went for happy hour with my co-workers as usual and didn’t feel like crying anymore. And then we had a busy weekend, and it was time for Jack to go to bed, and I didn’t have to. And then I started feeling like I was on vacation. And then I started feeling like maybe I just won’t get another job. And then I remembered that oh yeah, my severance will eventually run out. And then I started freaking out again.

So part of me thinks that this is the end for me, my luck finally ran out, and now I’ll spend the rest of my life miserable. But part of me feels like this is only the beginning of the rest of my life, and maybe I’ll get a new job that ticks even more of my fulfillment boxes. Because as we know, everything works out for the best for me in the end. If I’m lost, it’s only for a little while.

The First Love

Posted by katie ett on July 10, 2013 – 12:15 pm
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You know what’s annoying? Waking up one morning and realizing you’ve had your First Love and you’ll never get it back. Not that I regret who I gave it to, and not that I would change anything. It’s just that I saved that thing for so long from boyfriends who didn’t quite have the stuff to wrestle it from me, and it feels strange to know I can’t have it back to give away again. Every relationship after this will be built on the dead body of KamKat.

Emo Katie is emo.

Emo Katie

Tell me about your first love.

Six Years of Dates

Posted by katie ett on July 2, 2013 – 12:00 pm
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You know what I miss most about being in a relationship, aside from the assurance that I’m superior to all of my single friends? Going on dates.

I found myself in my bathroom on a recent Saturday afternoon, wearing a dress and putting on earrings in preparation for going to a friend’s house, and it felt so wonderful and familiar for a second. I realized it was because it reminded me of all of those years of going on dates with Kamran on Saturday nights. It seemed like we had a dinner reservation at some swanky restaurant every single weekend for the last couple of years of our relationship. We were always trying to one-up ourselves the way drug addicts do–going to the newest best restaurant, the oldest best restaurant, all of the three-Michelin-star restaurants–hoping this week’s tasting menu would be even better than last week’s.

We’d plan what time to wake up, what time to eat lunch, what to eat for lunch based on dinner that night. My strategy was to eat a lot for lunch–the chicken fingers parm sandwich from Jackson Hole was a favourite–so my stomach would be good and stretched out, while he would only eat two sushi rolls so he’d be starving by dinnertime. I’d take a shower three hours before we were supposed to leave so I’d have time to let my hair air dry while we watched “Deadliest Catch” or “Project Runway”, sit around in pajamas until the last second and then put on my dress and earrings. Kamran needed my blessing on whatever sweater-vest-and-bowtie combination he’d chosen, and I needed him to straighten the collar on my cape.

I’d try to hurry us out the door by waiting for him in the hallway, and he’d have to run back inside to switch from the glasses he wore around the house to the glasses he wore outside that looked exactly the same, and I’d press the button for the elevator when he was still all of the way down the hallway, and he’d get mad. We’d take a picture of ourselves in the elevator on the way down to the lobby and then try to game whether to wait for a cab on Tudor City Place or walk down to 2nd Avenue and try to get one there. We always chose wrong whatever we chose and had one or two instances of, like, a stranger physically holding another woman back for us so she’d stop trying to steal the cab that clearly belonged to us because we were there first. And then we’d get to the restaurant, and the maitre d’ would ask what name was on the reservation, and we’d look at each other, and Kamran would ask me, “Is it under your name?” even though we both knew it was. And then we’d have the easiest dinner conversation, so much more interesting and voluminous than that of the other couples around us, and we’d get so full and so drunk that we’d just hold hands in the back of the cab on the way home and dazedly stare out the windows at the sights of 2nd or 6th Avenue, and maybe we’d talk about our favourite dishes if we could manage, but we’d try not to let on to the hardworking cabbie that we had just spent his whole paycheck on dinner.

The doorman would wish us a goodnight, and we’d never argue about who got to go to the bathroom first because he always let me, and then we’d collapse on the Murphy bed and watch “The X-Files” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” until we fell asleep or until it was time to order Second Dinner from whatever diner was still open at 2 a.m., depending on how teeny the portions had been at dinner.

It’s not that I miss these things specifically, though I loved every minute of them during those six years. It’s just that I miss the routine of it all. The knowing that I had this to look forward to every weekend. The knowing that I had reserved someone’s time. The being so well taken care of. It’s hard not to be nostalgic.