I have a long list of things I want to tell you. I meant to say something about Christmas. I meant to tell you it’s okay if life is hard right now and that sometimes Christmas makes us sad. I also wanted to tell you about the girl I interviewed to be my assistant who told me she was “super attractive” and then explained her employment gap as “a spiritual journey.”
I also need to share some additional sex advice that involves using the line: “My vagina is like Motel 6. It’ll always leave the light on for you.”
I tested this and it works.
But I haven’t. Because I’ve been too busy adulting. I’ve been on conference calls and I’ve been getting professional licenses and I’ve been talking to people about KPIs and ROIs and drinking wine in my car at 11AM while pretending to look for a flash drive.
I’ve watched other people stop blogging when the going got tough and I always thought “That will never be me! I am devoted! I am an internet ninja! I have 9,832 notes in my phone full of embarrassing bullshit that people need to know about!”
And then I got a job working at a startup.
My wedding engagement, back injury, and various nervous breakdowns didn’t wreak as much havoc as this new employment has. But I suppose it’s all supposed to be worth it. And I get money for doing it. And money buys tootsie rolls and the new Adele album, which I still haven’t downloaded because I spend all my time listening to audiobooks on how to create the next Google.
It’s a weird balance, trying to keep one foot in the writer world and the other foot in the MUST CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY AND PAY TAXES world. And I don’t even know what that means, because I spend all my time on the couch, avoiding society, and I’m the one who set up all the tax information for my new employer and I didn’t know what I was doing so I probably won’t be paying taxes anyway.
Not knowing what I’m doing is basically my job description. But I have a lot of super cute blazers from Banana Republic and I wash my hair twice as often as I used to. Which isn’t really saying much.
I miss the internets. I feel terrible for how many unanswered e-mails I have. I took two weeks to send back edits on an article that I don’t even remember writing in the first place because it was back in that zen-crusted time of unemployment when all I worried about was how many different mismatched sock combinations I could come up with.
Please don’t quit me. I’ll be back soon. I haven’t even told you some of the worst things I’ve done. Is that intriguing? Or do I sound desperate? Do I need to make a sex tape? I can make a sex tape. I’ve seen plenty of them involving Nu Bay Nude Girls already, so maybe I should give it a go.
That’s a joke. And not funny because of feminism and personal trauma.
Except it’s a little funny.
Or maybe I’m drunk right now. I’m probably drunk right now. There’s like an 89.7% chance that I’m drunk right now. Or bad at math.
Probably both.
Has YOUR life been overwhelming lately? Are you drunk right now? Can I see your sex tape?
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Relax. We’ll still be here. You’re Aussome. As for the sex tagline thing. I always liked the lyric in Salt N Pepa and En Vogue’s Whatta Man, “He got me open like a 7-11” LOL Memories. I mean, listening to the song, not being open like 7-11.
Haha! I don’t remember that line! That’s hilarious. My SIL and I watched that video last summer and her kids were around and we were like “wait.”
I hear you.
Adulting is horrible, awful but steady work.
Also FYI, practice does not make a person a better adult.
So just know I adore you.
Thank you Sherry! I really don’t want to put any more time or effort into this adulting thing than is absolutely necessary. So far, it’s definitely not paying off.
I’m SO inconsistent with blogging because of my job. During the summer, I have all this free time to read and comment and write and I feel like I’m finally getting in a groove, then busy season hits and it all goes to hell. Such is the nature of life. We’ll be here for you when you get to us! Adulting is hard, and we can all relate 🙂
Thank you Erin! Are you a teacher? You sound like a teacher. Do I already know what you are? Other than awesome? I’m sucking up. This is what it’s come to.
Teacher is a good guess! I’m actually an accountant. Which is way less cool. I’m busy January – April (taxes!) and then again in the fall (taxes – round 2!). No one likes accountants, so I’ve become an expert at sucking up to other people.
Totally sober here and I think it’s just a chaotic end to a chaotic year. At least you’re still getting some wine breaks.
There’s a bottle of wine in an adorable little fur coat on my table and I am just itching to open it up. But I will adult and be sober like you, Charles. And I think you’re right about the chaos. Hopefully we get a respite soon.
As long as you brought the flash drive with you, wine in the car at 11am is a great way to remember to grab the flash drive you left in your car.
I do the same thing with cigarettes. I’d do it with whiskey, but then I wouldn’t get out of my car…
I’ll be here 🙂 I’m just a pathetic little smalltown librarian who likes to read about fellow femme fatales just trying to keep it liveable, laughable and loveable.
Wine or no wine.
Now pull up them big girl panties and double check that tax program set up…nothing like getting a letter from the IRS, “…ignorance is no excuse…”
(Yup…got that one year when I was doing the bookkeeping for Daddy’s farm… whoops.)
Ignorance is no excuse?!?! Lisa. This is what my entire life is built upon. Don’t rock my foundations now!
Life is often overwhelming..no worries..we’ll be here. 🙂
I can’t believe it’s taken me ten days to reply to this.
SADNESS.
That’s OK, I only get online for an hour or so every few days anyway… And there’s no way you’re getting rid of us that easily.
I hope not 🙂 And dang! That’s an impressive gap between interneting. You are probably way more human than the rest of us.
Ah, my pretend red-headed niece. I’m twice as old as you are and adulting is still hard! So don’t worry, we will all be here playing in your sandbox…messing with your stuff….doodling on your walls….. 😉
There’s an upstairs room in my Bro & SILs house where the kids have free reign on the walls. I think I need a room like that. You’re invited 🙂
I’ll be there and bring my own box of crayons too! 🙂 I’ll even share…..
My sex tape is mostly my wife asking, “is this on now? Does the red light mean it’s on?” and then me saying, “I’m done already,” followed by several minutes of her weeping and mumbling some shit about some guy named Steve she knew in high school and his thriving medical practice. You can totally see it, if you want. Also, jobs suck and adulting sucks and lots of other stuff sucks too, but it’s cool that you keep track of them and then write about them too.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I love this comment so hard. Forgive my late arrival. I fail at all things. Except for keeping up with your end of days saga playing out on Facebook. It’s my favorite new thing.
If you ever find the time to make a sex tape, I would prefer that you use it to write another post. I don’t think there is a shortage of sex tapes on the internet, but this adulting thing is obviously leading to the shortage of your posts on your blog.
It’s true. I’m probably way too late to the sex tape trend. What is left to do when sex is already taken???
Maybe don’t answer that.
all good. come back out to play when you can and get a break from all that time spent adulting.
I plan to! I didn’t bring my work laptop home with me tonight– so that’s a huge improvement.
My wife won’t let me make a sex tape. If I ever make one you can watch it.
I am a little tipsy, and you’re one of my absolute faves. I’m still here!
Ooo! Tipseh! And thank you!
Can’t wait to catch up on the 9,800 notes about bad decisions! And there’s a good chance I’m drunk right now too, so you’re in good company.
EXCELLENT. I wish I were still that high percentage of drunk. It’s all sobriety over here now. Sobriety and very adult looking socks that are majorly harshing my mellow.
Yes. No. No.
But only because I’m a tea totaling prude.
I respect your teetotaling!
I’ve had a bad attitude. I could make that a real job if someone would pay me to have it. 🙂
ME TOO. But it’s so much more fun to just find everything absurd and amusing.
Adulting sucks donkey balls. I’m having to do that more than usual at the moment too. Hang in there, internet sister of mine. We’ll get through this.
Can we please get through it in the next few weeks? I think I’ve hit my threshold.
I wanted to add some insightful comment about if you think a full-time gotta-be-responsible job kills your blogging time, wait until you have more kids than you can handle foisted on you (& no one on the Internets seems to appreciate what you create in the moments you carve out for it), but I need to mention something far more important.
So what’s with this ad on your page featuring some slinky young thing who saunters into this expensively-furnished bedroom in her bra, panties & high heels, runs her fingers over a closet full of men’s dress shirts, invitingly sprawls over a king-sized bed, then flees the house the moment the police arrive? Does this have anything to do with the girl you interviewed to be your assistant? Did she actually flee because there weren’t any goats in the bedroom? Will this ad result in your blog being blocked by my employer’s firewall for being “inappropriate content”?
Really?! That’s an ad?! Mobile or desktop? I mean… Seems well targeted.
FWIW, I saw the ad on a desktop computer.
As for being “well targeted”, now that I think about it she could be a spy. And there was some kind of Apple-branded gadget featured in the ad — sorry, my attention was on other details in the ad, so I’m not certain if it was a sound device or a mobile computer — so she could be a hacker. But since she fled before the police came, I have no idea if she was a ninja. (Or maybe this was a clip from Tarantino’s next movie, “Kill Bill 3: Escape from the Mental Institution”, in which all of the women are ninjas unless shown otherwise.)
Consider this my contribution to your marketing research. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m behind in submitting random comments to various blogs. Don’t want people to think I’m gainfully employed.
You can’t get rid of me. You’ll never get rid of me. Don’t you know I love you? (I know this sounds creepy, but people don’t know that we totally bonded in Dallas and I’m allowed to say all of this now.)
Also, I had this tab open last night and my daughter was sitting next to me and started snickering. She was looking at the meme at the top and said “It took me a minute to read what was in her arms” and continued to crack up. She’s 12. So not only am I failing at adulting, I’m failing at parenting too.
Hahahaha!!!!! Oops 😉
*giggles*
*realizes her future children are cursed*
You are allowed to say all the things. Carolina Girl. In your black tank top.
I’ll be here when you’re not so busy adulting. Or when you wanna tell stories of adult failures and successes, whatevs 🙂
I have many many stories of failures, that’s for sure! Just need to sort them… rank them… categorize them. OMG the adulting, it bleeds into everything.
Startups are stupid, especially when you start them up yourself, and you have no time, and no money, and by you I mean me. I get paid zero dollars for that time spent, and it totally cuts into the other times which I enjoy far more – like well, reading HNHS, and listening to Jenny Lawson and wishing that I lived next door to my sister because she is fucking hilarious. I get to the point where I haven’t blogged in ages and I totally suck at being consistent at that anyway, and so in fit of creative diarrhea I change the purpose of my blog, rename it, get excited, and then stop writing for it because I go to work at night, and raise kids, and be nice to my wife. It’s a vicious cycle of creative neglect and I often wish that I had decided that my life goal as a child was to be a plumber, but instead I was filled with the nonsense that I could do anything I wanted – which clearly meant, nothing – I can do nothing, and anything, and right now it means eating soup and listening to my dog whine and making a really good post by Aussa all about me. Peace.
FAVORITE.
Gah our lives would be so much easier if we had just wanted to be plumbers, right? So much less angst… the yearning… the neglect.
I guess my dirty little secret is that I like the angst.
But I’m not ready to admit that yet.
Hey girl — I feel ya! Things happen! Seriously, DO NOT feel as if you’ve let any of us down, sex tape and tipsy or not. (I mean… if you made a sex tape you’d sure have an audience!) We’ve all been drunk and done stupid shit, and we’ve all been overwhelmed. I’m definitely overwhelmed… I just switched from free WordPress to self-hosting and there is so much to do! I announced Friday that I’m taking the week “off” from posting… but it only means I’m spending all my time doing behind the scenes stuff and I feel so behind! I can relate to you, that’s for sure! Take it easy, and nobody will blame you for being drunk! xx
The only reason I’m not too embarrassed to respond to this comment SO LATE is because of the content of it 🙂 Thank you! I’ll be popping by to check your site out shortly!
Heck your stuff is too funny to quit reading. It’s been a busy time a year for everyone. I have not been online with this blog since September so, I’m play catch up on all the funny stories.
Glad you feel me. I don’t even remember 2015. What? Where am I?
I’m kinda envious of your adulting…. I’ve been avoiding it and it’s making my life miserable.
ARGH. The adulting is a double edged sword, Nikkiana! I hope you’ve integrated a fair mix of it– just enough to not be miserable. Onward and upward, I say.
Perhaps you need to just skip the Adulting and get right to Alzheimer’s. Although you can fake that. I’m sure there is a post in fake Alzheimer’s somehow. Because it really is a terrible disease and you don’t want to get it just to get out of being an adult.
I am sooooo toast in the PC community.
HAHA yes this is quite terrible. Let’s never speak of it to anyone, other than each other. Though we won’t even remember that we’ve talked about this. Who are you again?
My life has been like this for 20 years, ever since I moved to Denver. The place is going full-tilt and people here in the professional world have expectations. Soon, anxiety will lead to insomnia and then you’ll have tons of time to blog. Trust me. I’m older than you and I’ve got 20 years on you regarding the moving-to-Denver-this-place-is booming thing, so I know.
!!!! You’re here in Denver? You’ve survived for 20 years? That’s reassuring. And yes– I do find the expectations are higher here. Though that may be due to the fact I just moved from a cultural wasteland, so pretty much anywhere was going to have higher standards. But still.
Still hilarious as always Aussa. Never lose that. It will keep you sane (well only as sane as when you started lol) when the startup world goes kablooooey all around you and everybody else has begun to lean on you so heavily that you are the only one left to clean up the gooey kablooey! LMAO.
YES. If I’m good at anything, it’s surviving when things go kablooey 😉 I feel it could be any minute now. Ha.
Look at you, all growed up :-). This time of year is always a bit hectic.
Have a lovely Christmas!
Thank you Drali! I hope you had a great Christmas as well. And a better new year. And also this first 1/3 of January since I’m so behind in comments. Forgive me.
My life is completely overwhelming right now.
Argh. I’m sorry. You looked fantastic on instagram though! What a shallow comment.
Are things looking up now?
Very much so. I think it was the first trimester blues. Pregnancy hormones are not to be trifled with. And thank you!
I’m so glad to hear that! Hormones terrify me.
Overwhelming doesn’t even begin to describe it. The last 3 and a half months have been something else. And don’t worry, your dear readers will be waiting for you. 🙂 take care of yourself.
Thank you! And I’m sorry you’ve also been feeling overwhelmed. Has the new year offered any relief? I hope so. For all our sakes.
Balancing “Adulting” and keeping the creative kid inside happy is really hard, I’ve been trying to solve it for years and right now the “kid” is happy, but the bank balance is not. Sigh. It’s ok, do the best you can, you have lot’s of readers who love what you do, be kind and let us rewind that sex tape, re-runs are fun too. ;D
It’s crazy how often there’s a trade-off there, eh? I posted a gif on my HNHS FB page yesterday (that kind of made me look like an a-hole) of this kid crying when a reporter asked if he made money from his art. I found it so hilarious because it was so relatable. And then I fell on the ground and nearly drowned in a puddle of my own tears.
Hang in there. Sucks to have the “real world” suck up all your time. But you’ll find little moments for the blogiverse and they’re that much sweeter.
You can’t possibly be as bad at math as I am.
Oh, it’s a real problem. We will compete at BlogU this year. Compete to be the worst at math. And I will finally win something 😀
Poor Aussa… had to grow up sometime chick! So sorry it was before your 30th birthday 🙁
Adulting can totally be a pain in the ass, but it has its perks, right?? You get to be married to the love of your life and start a totally new adventure!;-)
In the meantime, we shall be here waiting with baited breath! 😀
It’s true, there are some great perks to adulting 😉
I think I just need to stunt my adulting skills for a bit and give more care and attention to my sneaking skills. Like sneaking in time for the internets. Because it’s what makes my soul soar.
In answer to your last 3 questions: No, for quite a while now, and a refreshing change from my previous life; yes, but I was sober when I read this most excellent post, and; look up “Nermal does Nanaimo” on Netflix, probably listed under ‘Horror’.
AH. I will look it up….
My SOP to Aussa:
http://texantales.com/2014/07/14/inputoutput-electricity-with-apologies-to-joni-mitchell/
Back in the day….I can say, “I knew her when.”
Love for Aussa (What is not to love?)
Thank you sir 🙂
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and your new hubs!
I’m such an asshole for being so late to reply to this. Merry Christmas/New Year/Impending Valentines Day to you guys too!
Hang in there, baby! Life is what it is and I’m pretty sure nobody is going anywhere. See you soon.
I hope no one is going anywhere 🙂 I hate when that happens. Thanks Sandy!
Holy Shit Aussa!!! I don’t quit anything I love. And I LOVE YOU!!! I’ve been here since the beginning and have no intention of going anywhere! (I was getting worried about you though) Hopefully both our worlds will become a little more “normal” (whatever that is) in the New Year! Keep on Keeping on Sister! Boo Yah!!! (insert fist pumps and hugs here)
Thank you Julie! I hope the normal is coming soon. Or, actually, the deliciously spectacular lack of normal. Normal seems to be what bogs me down 🙂
I have been blogging for 10 years and have never seen a quite quarter
10 years?! DANG.