Posts tagged “work”

  1. I. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN When I am driving across the desert at 85 miles per hour just after sunup moving back from Iowa channeling my mother’s father who died on the job trucking liquid nitrogen in three-day stretches around the country I am thinking about how perhaps the most subversive thing a female can do is travel alone. In the past year, during which I have I have lived in five different cities…

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  2. Are you real? Well, yes. Is it raining outside now? ...I'm in a basement.

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    The Dali show, from seven years ago, I missed. Can I still go now?

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    Who replaces your American flags? May I speak with them? URGENT.

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      We close at five. If I arrive at five, when would I need to leave? Five.

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    I found a Miro in my attic. Can you buy…

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  3. I’m standing on the sidewalk watching a woman put on makeup in her car—concealer on her neck, to be exact—and I wonder if she has a hickey or just an insecurity that she is trying to remove, or at the very least, briefly cover up. I am in the midst of leaving a man’s house, where I perform for an hour or two twice a week. Not a sexual act, no, just improvisational comedy, though…

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  4. This may well be where my nervous breakdown will come: here, in this IKEA. Today I am a fake writer writing in a fake office at a real desk, model name KLIMPEN/LALLE. Its main characteristics are whiteness and modesty. Its chair is rather uncomfortable, but IKEA isn’t paying me to be here, so I don’t have to be anything but honest. The Amtrak residency, this ain’t. To be clear, this IKEA is open for business.

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  5. Sulagna Misra is a writer, editor and frequent Toast contributor who writes a popular pitching newsletter, Pitching Shark. Here she shares some advice for aspiring freelancers. I’ve always had a tendency to go on at length about things I can’t stop thinking about, eager to talk about things I’ve just realized or weird jokes I’ve cooked up that no one in my vicinity really gets. It was only when I started pitching and…

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  6. I've loved Alexander Chee's writing for some time, from the powerful essays that served as my introduction to his work to his debut novel, Edinburgh. Chee won a Whiting Award for Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA fellowship in fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and on NPR. The Toast asked Alexander to talk with us about writing, teaching, changes…

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  7. Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at advice@the-toast.net at any time. Previous installments can be found here. Hi Aunt Acid, I have quite a lot of creative and artistic friends, working in various bits of fashion and art and culture and design. I don't have such a job -- I work in a mildly interesting, stable office job in a sector that is interesting and fun…

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  8. Email us questions at advice@the-toast.net, subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here. Dear Businesslady, Should I stay with a stable, rewarding part-time job in the field I hope to get into or leave it to pursue greener (and more fun) pastures? Some context: I am 21 and will be graduating with my bachelor's degree this June. I am currently working at a part-time job in my college town I…

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  9. If Shakespeare’s Richard III were your coworker, he would use smiley emojis in all his emails, and although you—being Minnesotan and well-versed in the nuances of passive-aggressive behavior—wouldn’t buy it, your boss and all the VPs would find it charming. If Shakespeare’s Richard III were your coworker, he’d have long conversations with himself in his cubicle, which would be right next to yours -- alarming conversations you would think you were meant to overhear -- but because your…

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  10. Previously: Please consider my application to become a feudal vassal. 1. I am convinced that I have spent most of my life waiting to subsume my will to someone more beautiful and powerful than myself. I am crammed with ambition on the behalf of others. 2. I would happily sidle over to up-and-comers at court during a masque, deliver a short, cutting remark about their social-climbing, then whirl smilingly away into the crowd.

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  11. Email us questions at advice@the-toast.net, subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here.

    Dear Businesslady,

    I am set to graduate on the Annual Dean’s List in June. I will have a B.A. my major being Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences: Politics, Philosophy, & Economics, with a double major in IAS: Law & Policy. These are rather open ended, more general-skills degrees. I can research and write well, and I

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  12. Advertising and feminism can seem like enemies. The phrase “Often a bridesmaid but never a bride” was first popularized in 1923 by a Listerine ad: The campaign heroine, Edna, sobs over a bouquet because she apparently isn't “wife material.” (Little did she know it was just her halitosis.) But there is one real-life Peggy Olson who peddled consumer products and genuine body positivity in ads throughout the 1980s and '90s, several leagues above today’s Dove ads…

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  13. Joanne last wrote for The Toast about Dr. Henry Morgentaler and the experience of obtaining legal permission for a Canadian abortion in the 1970s.

    I was talking to my niece (THAT'S ME - Ed.) about women’s shelters in the 1980s and 1990s and I thought I’d record some of my memories, which, in turn, bring up some of the issues we had to address. During that time, I was the administrator of two

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  14. The Haircut

    Stephen Kearse's previous work for The Toast can be found here. I sat quietly as my shorn hair fell, sprinkling my bare shoulders. I’d received haircuts in barbershops, shopping malls, salons, basements, garages and college dorms, but this was the first time I’d had my hair cut in a bedroom. I was thankful there were no mirrors in sight that would allow…

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  15. “Most girls aren't into this kind of stuff.” No way, do you have the list? The list of things most girls are into? I've been trying to find that thing forever, can you forward it to me? You have my email. Thanks, man, you're the best.

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