After buying my new leather ankle boots, I’ve noticed several things about the world when you’re 4 inches taller on almost-tippy-toes.
Your posture appears more pronounced therefore your posterior becomes rounder, your legs are more slender and the people around you become aware of your arrival, denoting your importance. Clip clop. Oh shit, I need to catch this lift. Clipclopclipclop. People who are slightly more cultured and have been wearing such shoes in expert mode are relaxed, like they’ve bought time in the currency of clops. Clip. “How are you George?” Clop. “Yes, very fine weather for making money,” Clip. “Ah yes, my time is very expensive.”
Balancing work and study has become a juggle of minutes and value. I found a lump in my left breast which prompted a test which was inclusive yet dubious, calling for the need to book another appointment several months down the track. With that shudder of mortality, I realised more with time and wasted paper that my Masters degree is merely an observation and practice of putting a smoke machine in a mirror store. I need to do the footwork. The clip clop, but perhaps sometimes in sneakers.
Further, my life has become a Goosebumps Choose Your Adventure book – a thought process which often aided my life in high school but only in a more Boolean-of-divine-power sense. If God wanted me to do X then A would happen. If They so chose that Y was better, then there may be an absence or an alternative of result A. This time, it’s more tangible. If my boyfriend breaks up with me this weekend, then I will get a second dog. That’s just a fact. If no emergencies happen before Christmas, then I will get a new car. Reward myself for a lack of serendipity.
The liberty to make all these choices comes from years of faking being an adult. Despite having to pay bills and clean dog poo off my lawn, I feel a bit like I’m new to this adult thing. I haven’t yet mastered the power of a 12 hour day at my desk because desks are boring and yet, the work is there. It’s so very there. I choose to work long hours because I have no hobbies and because when I’m idle, I remember how sad and unfulfilled I am. How my job as a Communicator is to sell things I don’t care for in methods that nobody notices and how that is the definition of my career. It seems rather trite to be banging on about meaning and money, but if I buy enough shoes and boots and get to pay for my son’s drum lessons, maybe the lack of substance in how I coax money into my bank account could be distracted by the little bits of joy I get out of the results.
