Some People Get Ready To Go To Work. I Get Un-ready.

After establishing how my work habits affect my sanity, sleep patterns, and ability to socialize, I've now begun to detect a correlation in the toll they take on my appearance. In short, I basically look ugly when I'm approaching a deadline.

There was a time, not so long ago, that I held jobs that required me to face the world, and every day I would dutifully groom myself in varying degrees of fanciness for the day (or evening) ahead. No more! There are weeks when I work on projects and whatnot for part of the day and then go out, but by now I am beyond fooling myself into thinking I can treat this book like a 9-5, or even 12-8, and go out each night after working on a portion of it. No. I need isolation for days on end. I need endless cups of coffee at insane times of the day and night. I need terrifying, jagged sleeping patterns that make sense to no one in the world. I need to live like a lunatic for a little while. And what lunatic has the time or inclination to care about what they look like?

This means for about a week each month, I end up resembling a cross between a mental patient, a forgotten casualty of MTV's 120 Minutes, and a frazzled housewife.

Example: Today I am wearing black stretch leggings, some weirdo sundress that reminds me somehow of 10,000 Maniacs, and a ratty black cardigan. For some reason, the more comfortable I feel, the more I look just like I did in 9th grade. Too bad I no longer own a pair of black Chuck Taylor high-tops to further draw together this insouciant, carefree (really) look. Then I could really nail 1990. I suppose it's moot point, though, when I haven't even gone near a pair of shoes today.

Inevitably and mysteriously, I always develop exactly one stress zit when I am at work like this. Definitely and reliably, my hair gets twisted up in a messy rat's nest on top of my head, not to be reckoned with for days. I end up clipping my nails short so I can type easily. Not like I usually have Staten-Island-Real-Estate-Lady claws, but it's just easier.

Over the next couple of days, pajamas (a full-on pair of which I will refuse to wear, lest I somehow trick myself into thinking I will get a satisfying night of sleep) will meld and blend with actual clothing, so I may end up wearing a permutation of my current get-up to bed, and then tomorrow, refresh, say, the leggings with a paint-splattered Joy Division shirt, which will then end up being worn to bed the following evening.

I guess it doesn't matter when I can't really leave the house anyhow. Plus it's fun to re-groom and look like myself again at the end of it all. Some people pay $$ to go to some spa and emerge with a nimbus of dewy glow around their prettified selves. All I do is let myself look like shit for a while and then get back with the program, so I feel as if I have made a great effort, but in reality just look human once more.

This concludes maybe the most shallow thing I've written in a while.
Xoxo