Upgrown & Overblown: When I Was Twenty-Two  



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The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
- Robert Benchley



I'm not bitter. I'm sweet. I like salt. But my stomach is sour.
The people i've been working a freelance job for have done it yet again. I'll begin at the beginning:

There was this thing called the internet. I didn't rightly care much about it when it came about in the early 90s - not to say i wasn't involved in it as i enjoyed the computers, but mostly for gaming. I ditch UNCG (am i at least an honorary spartan?) and move to New York City on September 11th, 1997. I begin my worklife here as an Admin Assistant for Christie's Human Resources. I was in close contact with much of the greatest art humans ever sold, much less made. My favorite memory of my years there was when I helped this lady along with her 'dream':



It sold for $48,402,500. And while it hung in their galleries I touched her right smack on her hoohoo.
Maybe they can clone me from any erstwhile DNA still lingering on her artfully unrepresented vagina.

I moved from Human Resources to the New Media department, as showing pictures and words over a computer was 'new' to them, I guess. Taught myself HTML, haven't learned much more since then, but I came to love the design and typography aspect of a netsheet and stuck with it.

So this guy who works there as the head of a department asks me if I want to come work at something called a "start-up" - I look into it. The basis is online surveys for kids, disguised as a way to tell 'people' what you 'really think' about what you are sold and told, and get some 'points' towards things like Amazon Gift Certificates, etc. What was really going on was a huge SQL backend tied to all these questions, which I ened up coding and tying to the database, which basically enabled you to tell a potential client what a particular 13-year-old Hispanic girl in a certain zipcode ate, bought, hated, and who she wanted to be President. However, they could never figure out how to get this shit together in a real-time web-based app. So, they sold quarterly subscriptions to a well-designed print report to big companies at $50,000 a pop.

I built the first two redesigns for these guys, by the seat of my pants, as I had never built a website before in my life. They didn't seem to notice that it took me a long time to do things, but they ended up well. They did, however, notice hundreds of flyers for the new band I was in spilling off the printers late-night, as well as a fair amount of $1.54 postage inputs to zipcodes far and wide across the continental US. There were beers, all-night Quake Tournaments through the LAN, and in general the exact thing that we thought would crash the company but no one talked about.

I was twenty-two, and making nearly twice as much money as my mom ever made teaching in the Guilford County Public School System over her entire career. I also had something called stock options, which sounded cool.

The office on Spring Street began to fill up, and we filled another office down the hall, with people in various departments. Interns and various salespeople, t-shirt rollers and VB coders, to resident in-house survey takers. It was insane, fun, and my grandparents visited me once and met my bosses.

Then, the Venture Capitalists started wondering when we would start making any money, so, in an act of good faith, they began separating us in groups who would stay in the big room and those who would go to the little room, for an internal meeting. Those who went to the little room were asked to clean out their desks and have better luck. I stayed through three of these 'concentrations.'

We moved from Spring Street to a big, open loft on the almost top floor of a building in D.U.M.B.O., which was apparently going to see new commercial and residential development. Those of us who didn't get canned - number it 30 or so, prolly less - went over and worked hard. Summer '01.

I was living with a girl at the time who was older than me, and wanted to get married before hitting a particular age - not so much married to me, but so that she didn't have to think about NOT getting married. At least that's what I tell myself now, and that's how it seemed when the shit went down.

And indeed the shit went down. September 11, 2001 was my four-year anniversary of living in NYC. What a way to begin a senior slump. The company was supposed to get bought out by some Netherlandic holding firm who specialized in community portals on the 12th. My dad was also about to sell the options for a book I had named "Over" about a massive bio-terror event that wiped out 93% of the Earth's population. I think that was supposed to happen on the 14th (the deal, not the catastrophe). I could be mistaken.

So, the biggest symbols of cooperative world finance were gone, as were the hopes of seeing twenty-two (now twenty-three) through to a positive conclusion. My nervous system was shot. The company moved to a small, exposed brick railroad office on Jay Street, about 4 blocks north of Ground Zero, due to cheap rent and the boss knew a guy. My relationship was going south, as I was waking up every night at 3am in a cold sweat from nightmares. I was moved from a salary to a day-rate consultant fee ("we'll need you for two-and-a-half days next week"), but I asked to stay on and answer phones for free, as I had band shit to organize and two years of MP3s to burn. They let me, then I went on my first big tour.

Three months later, I was a complete and utter nerve ending. The tour did NOT make us household names, but I figured out what happened to Jesus, Kennedy, and my parents. I was shortly thereafter diagnosed bi-polar, manic depressive, etc. Unemployed. Engaged. Hitting my head alot with fists and walls. Pretty sure she wanted to do the same.

It was not pleasant.



Fast-forward to 2005.
I worked it out. Very much the better for everything that had happened and finally understanding the breadth of consequence. My decision outweighs any decision that is ever made for me. So, I decided to be happy.

Sure enough, I fell in love and life made sense again. She'd had hard times, too. That's important.

ZOIKS! Out of the blue I get a call from the old bosses of the company! Do I want to be a freelancer for web and print projects borne out of the still-smoldering ashes of the company that had helped me and so many of my former colleagues find a path to poverty and near-autism? Boy howdy!

So, I build a couple websites and embark on the longest print project I've ever been a part of. 200+ pages of list after list after list of the same celebrities and brand-names I had left behind at the old company, with little stats next to them, referring to some sort of business world-relevance. They talk my rates down as they give me more work. I'm temping at a job(s) and doing this stuff on the sly, printing thousands of pages without getting caught. I need the money. And further character building, I suppose.

I hadn't invoiced them for a few big projects, so I do. Between their hemming and hawing about achived back-up for shit they'll never look at, a month goes by, with removals of invoiceable items and a replacement with some concession fees.

I sound like an asshole. Feel like one, too. Didn't I remember these guys?

So, I slide their last requested disc through their mailslot like they asked and expect a nice, fat check in the mail so I can finally get that new laptop on my own. it doesn't come. STILL doesn't come. STILL.

Get an email this morning:


He sent it to my ex-fiance's address.






...

This life will try us, sentence us, and hang us, and these days it's via email.


I'm thankful for my life and everything I've gone through, am going through, and WILL go through.




But the moral of this extremely personal, albeit vague, story is this:


Smoking can ruin your health.
The end.










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