Dear Rapture,

Well, once again, you’ve stood me up. You’re a jerk, all right, Rapture, but I know now I was wrong to get my hopes up. I was an idiot to think that this time, yes, it might really be different — that, this time, I might actually get to levitate nude in a blue, God-drenched sky, for once in my life. Not counting the incident/wardrobe malfunction on the Sea Dragon ride in Wildwood, New Jersey, of course.

Yeah, it’s May 21, 2011, and we’re all still here. The only clothing on the floor is the dirty laundry I’ve been putting off doing for a week, figuring our date would get me out of a few last loads. What a sucker I was, man.
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My father told me I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, except for three things: a lawyer, an advertising executive, or a certified public accountant. He said he’d disown me if I went into any of these three fields.

“Disown”: a funny word. As if he owned me in the first place, a lower middle-class American daughter of the 70s and 80s — child of Kool-Aid and shag carpeting and Tupperware — as if we had any family money to withhold. He intended it to be funny. He knew I would get the joke.

Still, I recall the way his lip curled above his cigarette at mention of any of these professions, as if these three were somehow worse than all the others. I didn’t understand his disdain, but for the most part, I heeded his advice — comic or not — mostly due to a skill set that kept me out of those realms. My writing career has occasionally nudged me within the bounds of the advertising world and its seductions, but I’m hopeless with numbers, as well as on-the-spot debate, verbal sparring when it counts.

Last evening, a new acquaintance asked me, predictably, what I did for a living.

“Are you a professor?” she asked first, guessing.

“No, I’m a writer,” I said. The word “writer” has never rolled easily off the tongue for me, but what else am I, at this point? I write. I barely get paid, sometimes, but I write. I write for embarrassingly little money, most of the time.

“A writer! That’s fantastic,” she said. “What do you write?”
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You know what I love?

I LOVE when a luxury company that charges $175 for a single necktie tells me that it would like me to write a play (!!!) for its upcoming marketing campaign, but that I will not be compensated for my work or my time, thankyouverymuch.

Uh, say what?

I told them where they could stuff their neckties.

Sadly, I receive emails like this weekly. There’s an endless stream of companies looking to exploit writers by suggesting that — in this economy — writers are lucky to just “get their work out there, get seen.”

It kills me that they’ll have no trouble finding someone to write for them under this ruse.

Until writers take themselves seriously, ain’t no company going to bother to do it.
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I lost my last steady writing job just when my ex and I separated. The company was downsizing, like most other companies were two-and-a-half years ago. But I was the senior copywriter, the ONLY writer. I was sure they couldn’t dispense with their only communications person.

Uh, yeah. Not so much. They didn’t lose any sleep over it.

I, on the other hand, lost a lot of sleep. It was the job I had been counting on to see me through the divorce, to be a constant during times of brutal inconstancy.

I switched back into freelance mode, but the only people worse off than writers were freelance writers. Unemployment thankfully saw me through. I don’t know what I would have done without it, I honestly don’t. Unemployment made it possible for me to hold it together, to at least provide some sort of security for the girls as my ex and I tried to navigate the divorce waters.

Now I am considering what I want this new life of mine to look like. Freelance work has dried up completely. Queries go unanswered. Old contacts apologize profusely, say they’re sorry, but there’s just no writing work at the moment.
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This is the week.

This is the week of nothing going right. I’m used to the hard weeks by now, but this one takes the cake.

My old MacBook was running hot and unhappy. I had stuffed it to the gills with photos and music, and I knew its days were numbered. So I bit the bullet and ordered a new one, since writing and photography are What I Do. I figured I shouldn’t feel guilty for that. But of course, of course, I did. Starving children in the world! My children are starving from their self-imposed vegetable strike! Earthquakes! Floods! Who am I to think about a new computer?

Then I decided I wouldn’t be able to help anybody if I didn’t complete a freelance assignment from time to time.

The new computer arrived, all shiny and fabulous and wonderful. I was determined to Do This On My Own. This is my first computer I would be setting up with no help from any men in my life. I wanted to rock my own world and transfer everything from the old Mac to the new one with zero assistance. I wanted to hear myself roar, baby.

Uh, no.
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“The job requires a lot of multi-tasking. Do you have experience in multi-tasking?”

I was just asked this at a job interview recently. I did not snort. I did not smirk. I did not sing, “I can bring home the bacon / fry it up in a pan / and never ever forget the woman I am.”

I simply said yes. Of course.

Employers all want multi-taskers. I have yet to meet an employer who is not looking for a great multi-tasker.

You’d think employers would be slavering over parents who have been out of the work force for a time, raising their kids. But most of us parents who have taken time out to stay home with the kids hesitate to mention our superior multi-tasking skills. I don’t know a parent who can’t multi-task. The minute you bring home the squalling infant and realize that you won’t be peeing for three years without simultaneously jiggling the creature on your lap, you learn the meaning of “multi-tasking.” The first time you are lean out of the shower, dripping, to find your shrieking offspring’s dropped pacifier under the bouncy seat, you realize you are multi-tasking for life. Faxing while using the credit card machine and answering a client’s irritated query? Ho, ho, ho. That’s Multi-tasking, Jr.
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I have a desk.

It’s blue and squat, with a wide top drawer, and a row of drawers on the right side. World War I era. The owner of the antique store where I found it was happy to let it go for a song—$60, if I recall correctly.

“Can you believe someone painted it blue?” he said. “Ruined it.”

I am all for colorful ruin. The blue is lovely, and is the only reason I could afford to buy the desk. Inside the top drawer, someone carved the initial “W” and “1914.” That charms me.

Virginia Woolf wrote about the necessity of a woman having “a room of one’s own.” Space is scarce. I dream of a room of my own—not a bedroom, but a room for writing, for creating. A room with images I love, tacked up all over the walls.

For now, I settle for a desk of my own.
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Yeah, so, I bought a shirt at Target today for $4.98. That’s my sassy, naughty splurge, peeps. I feel dirty, oh, so dirty. Go on. Lick me. I taste just like the armpit of a 12-year-old in a Chinese sweatshop.

I’m writing this while waiting for an unemployment insurance rep to get to me. Twenty-two minutes, the recorded message said I would need to wait. Gives you an indication of roughly how many folks are calling unemployment these days.

I’m calling to check on my eligibility for another unemployment extension. Some folks argue that I might be eligible; some folks argue that I’m not, that that well has dried up for good.

I have learned a few things about public welfare in my time. I know what government cheese looks like, I know that state health insurance means well but is a tangle of red tape, I know what WIC stands for and that it saved our lives, for a time.

Here’s what else I know: Did you know you can still receive unemployment benefits with an occasional writing gig here and there? I was relieved to find that out. That will be really helpful while I work on putting the finishing touches on my new dominatrix den. I hear it’s rewarding work. Good pay, very undemanding clients.

Thank you for holding. All claims representatives are still busy. We are experiencing an extremely high volume of calls.

Yeah, I figure it’s worth a call, to see if the government is still including me in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to keep three figures in the checking account. I figure it’s worth 22 minutes.
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Here’s a career tip for single moms everywhere:

Don’t cry over the dead mouse under your desk.

Yeah, I made that move. 

The poor little guy looked like he was sleeping. Except he was wrapped in a cobweb. Which meant he’d been resting in peace by my foot for quite a while.

It happened during the early days of the marriage coming apart, and something about that little fella sent me over the edge. I’d been holding it together pretty well at the office until I came in one morning and found him.

O, wee, dead mouse. You did me in.
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I spent the majority of last week at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago.  Though I’m a blogger myself and interested in maximizing my own personal opportunities in the space, I was there for business.  I have worked for BlogHer for three years now, selling digital advertising to agencies and Fortune 500 companies.  It is the best career I’ve ever had, and I love it, in large part, because I am wholly excited about what I sell.

Marketers, more than ever, have realized that Moms are the primary decision makers in household purchasing decisions.  And they know that many of these women have turned away from TV, radio, and newspapers in favor of the Internet.  In particular: Moms have turned to blogs as a way of understanding, absorbing, sharing and relating.  And the big brands, in turn, are looking for a way to reach these women who write blogs, and who read them.  I feel privileged that I have both the knowledge and the opportunity to help connect companies with the audiences of the smart, tech savvy women who are paving new paths with their writing about parenting, products, relationships and life.

But I’m also a little worried about the possibility that these Moms - whose attention is so very coveted by these big brands - might be sabotaging their golden power of influence by overreacting to marketer’s attempts to reach them.

***

I woke up early on Sunday morning at the Conference to respond to email and peruse through the trending topics at Twitter when I saw conversation that made me suck in my breath.  A few tweets told me quickly of a happening at the Conference: a Mom blogger had attempted to take her baby to a Nikon invite-only event, and had been turned away - the event was at a bar: a cocktail party.  The Mom was offended and apparently so were dozens of other Moms - so much so that they initiated a hashtag to aggregate the conversation - #nikonhatesbabies.

As someone who works in the digital ad space to sell marketing on Mom blogs, I obviously have both a bias and a vested interest here.  I want my customers to see Mom bloggers and their audiences as savvy and valuable.  I want them to see Mom bloggers as business women as well as lucrative spokespeople.  When I see stuff like this, I cringe: it makes me wonder if companies will stop attempting to outreach to us, if they will eventually dismiss us as too dangerous, vocal and shrill.  We’re such a diverse group, we Mom bloggers - but I still feel we all have a responsibility to conduct ourselves professionally and with integrity.  Labelling a company as “baby hating” because they denied an infant entry to a cocktail party seems to me a giant mis-step.

***

Chris from Notes from the Trenches has a brilliant post on this subject, and I particularly like Kristen’s, too.  My own opinion is this: Nikon invited Mom bloggers to their event in hope that they would woo the women as writers, as business women, as consumers.  The fact that they did not allow a baby at a cocktail reception was not a personal attack on Motherhood, and I wish the offended parties could have contacted Nikon via email or phone to rectify the situation if it was that offensive to them.  I believe the punishment in this case is much worse than the crime, and has the potential to hurt the reputation of Mommy bloggers as savvy business women - as well as fierce adorers of our babies.