War: Day 17. Ukraine is doing a mighty fine job against Russia right now. (Go, Ukraine!) The threat of nuclear annihilation is in the air. Covid is still doing its thing. Meanwhile, people are too burnt-out to wear masks anymore, so you know what that means… It’s all too depressing, so I’m going to live in a dream world for a while. It’s gentler here, and the weather is better than it is in Ukraine. Or Russia. Here’s to living the dream: self-un-employment…
After two years of not working for any sort of substantial, grown-up salary, I have discovered an added bonus of being self-employed (which really, in this day and age, means unemployed, or at least it does for me. I know there are plenty of actual jobs available). Being self-un-employed, I can have a clean house. I do have a clean house. (Like, a really, really clean house). Since I resigned from my previous job, I have had the time to do a lot of things that I never had time for when I was working 50 hours a week. For instance, I sweep all of the floors in my house… every day. (Is that normal?). I have cleaned all of my silverware and all of my silverware drawers. In detail. I have had time to not only wipe every wall and every cupboard with those lovely blue, thin, re-usable, cheap rags, but to actually wipe the cupboard drawers and the drawer edges, too, as well as the grooves of these edges. Then, (stay with me here) I noticed with horror that if I wipe the edges, there are corners of the edges that still do not come clean. The dirt just gets sort of pushed into the corners, actually drawing attention to itself. The answer? Q-tips. This requires the very next level, which Jack and I used to call “tweaker clean.”
Once, after completing a thorough “tweaker clean,” I reflected on my language choice. I decided that the phrase, tweaker clean, is not very polite. Even though I don’t, at the moment, know any tweakers, I have in the past. Interesting type of folk. However, Jack and I agreed to re-name “tweaker clean” to Q-tip clean, because that, my friends, is much more polite. It’s also clearly specific. So, there I go, off to the races, Q-tip cleaning away. This is just one of many things that I can do with a Q-tip: I can put an end to the hideous, still-dirty corners of the edges’ detail of the grooves. Fantastic! It works. (You’re welcome to try for yourself, too.) While I do sweep the floor every day, I don’t Q-tip clean every day. It’s a process, and it takes commitment and a long time to do it well. I don’t have that kind of time.
This level of tweaker-cleaning-renamed-Q-tip-cleaning, is one of the excellent benefits of being self/unemployed. It’s an excellent benefit, I assure you, and hubby agrees. He hadn’t, until now, even noticed the dirt in the corner of the edges of the detail of the cupboards (phew), but he definitely noticed it once they were clean. It’s fantastic! It looks like an entirely different kitchen!
Now, much like a previous (really, really previous) post with the excessive detail of the failed wrapping of my niece’s birthday present two years ago (she was 10 then, and now she is 12), I realize this may not be interesting to you. Sorry. The muse took me. I still don’t know if my niece ever played the Harry Potter game we gave her, but I do know she wasn’t bothered by my aforementioned crappy wrapping job. She tore into it. She was happy. Kids like gifts, so…
Unlike gift-wrapping, I have mad cleaning skills, as you might have deduced. I obsess with cleaning, even though I am not a tweaker. I think it’s because both my Mom (Virgo) and my step-dad (OCD) are also obsessed with cleaning. I got it from them. There you go: one of the benefits of being unemployed. A very clean house.
Underground” by Steve Hayes
A second benefit of not working is learning stuff. I once spent more than half an hour watching YouTube videos on “how to fold a fitted sheet.” I’d always wanted to learn, so it seemed like as good a use of my unemployed time as anything. To begin, I watched Martha Stewart, but she went a little too fast with her demo, so I couldn’t practice as I tried to learn. I really have to practice as I learn; it just works best for me. I watched a second video, and that guy was pretty good, too, even better than Martha, but I still didn’t quite master it. Finally, I watched a third guy who showed folding a fitted sheet, s l o w l y enough that I could practice as we went along together. It was a pretty good video, and I sort of learned how to fold a fitted sheet. At the very end, he offered yet another option, which was to not fold a fitted sheet, but just to put it back on the bed after the laundry was done. I like that third option, so that’s the one I choose. Learning.
The third benefit of being un/self-employed is that when you want to spend your time cleaning your house to the minute detail of corners of baseboards, walls, etc., you have the opportunity to blast some good music while you do it. I do it. I blast. This key benefit, for purposes of my discussion here, is that if I had an unexpected craving to listen to an Eric Carmen song, “I can’t live if living is without you,” which I did, I discovered that when my husband is out of town (as he is at present), I can CRANK that amazingly, cheesy song (and yet still so, so good). Not only did I crank it, which I enjoyed, I also got to enjoy my next key discovery: I am an amazing air-drum soloist. I had no idea I could be such an amazing air-drum soloist. Apparently, I have heard that particular Eric Carmen composition so often that when it came to the drummer’s solo, I jammed with the best of them. How I even knew the drum part is beyond me. It was a startling revelation, because I hadn’t noticed how often I must have heard “I can’t live if living is without you,” let alone enough times to play it. In the air. However, I did. I rocked it. I matched that Eric Carmen’s drummer beat for beat (or, maybe I just pretended I did, and that felt good, too). This was an amazing experience for me…because I don’t even play the drums.
To summarize, if you want to enjoy being un/self-employed: you should play all the cheesy music you want, as loudly as you want, while Q-tip cleaning the corners and the details of your walls, your cabinets, your whatever. If you want. Come to think of it, I probably need better taste in music. Or a job.
