Career Suicide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Suicide

Believe or not, hatred disguised as competition runs rampantly through artistic communities, so if you are one (you art fag!), you already know all about it. Oh, on the surface they're touchy-feely and accepting about shit no one really cares about, like your gay nude crafts project (yawn, who cares?), but underneath, every single one of them is one bad painting away from a total diva meltdown. It's fun, once you get the hang of it. Slaying people who aren't cut out for the real game of it should be pressing on anyway. Think of it as a personal service.

I've taken out quite a few haters back in the day, because I've always been the target of bias and abuse, so bitchy psychological warfare is nothing new to me. Of course, I preferred the kind of weirdo hatred one finds among stacks of books, rather than the overtly bitchiness of a dance troupe, which is gayer than even I can stand, and I love me some drag modeling on the runways, trannies.

During college, they came out in droves, and not just the fun queers in assless chaps at artist balls. They were out before anyone else, working through their "issues" about looking at their naked boyfriends by drawing them for each and every figurative class. At one particularly small family publishing company, one junior staffer was so freed by the "gay card" at work that he openly mocked everyone walking by who might be on his "shit list" for the day, trapped as employers felt before we had federal protections in place for all types. He giggled viciously while he openly bragged at farting out loud every time a woman who worked in the office behind him dared to pass by his desk on the way to hers, something which she had no control over whatsoever.

He didn't speak to me unless he was practically on top of me, in case I had any illusions about how he felt towards "breeders" like me in the workplace, especially stinky female art directors who could get someone fired, if only she noticed your abuse, which I didn't. He was a pissant, what can I say? He did so little work, and had such a small impact upon our days as publishers, that he attracted very little of the attention he must have thought was his due in Chelsea in this century, which is a few centuries too late for the rest of the gays, I'm afraid.

In his desperation to get a rise out of me during yet another fake "war" over nothing that the crazies heated up whenever they felt "bored" (which was pretty much every single day of their miserable little lives), he called me over specifically to show me a close-up photo of a man's naked ass, with his hands spreading his cheeks apart to reveal a butt-hole, ostensibly to bitch to me about how lonely gay online dating was in the city. It didn't really phase me at the time (see the above: countless of hours of nude drawing classes from every angle) because he's so fucked up, that was considered a "good" day by our substantially lowered standards for the severely disordered, but it was the card I needed to get him fired in a sexual harassment suit that stretched back for years (you're welcome, Susan Norton).

But, he had no idea how far back really deranged scare tactics went with me. I went to the hardest school in the world, which meant that women in their thirties and forties thought it was acceptable to oust us by any means necessary, like those working class kids in their teens and early twenties without scholarships (hi, Cheryl!) from their highly coveted spots in the class. They took the only financial aid available to illustration students through phony trumped up "minority" scholarships (hi, Ellie!) and leads within the largest greeting card publisher (hi again, Cheryl!), supported as they both were by successful fathers who were professional illustrators, and that still wasn't enough to compete. Ohhh....hurts so bad, doesn't it?

The last card that was played out by one of the typical disgruntled 40-somethings living in my town was laid out for me before I left for my adventures out west, in what she perceived to be an unconscionable action of boldness for me to take after securing illustrator Cheryl (before she went back to school with us, she was professional graphic designer Cheryl supported by her computer programmer hubby Alan) her very first professional book illustration jobs while I worked at St. Martin's Press. Hey, you are most certainly welcome for that, too! Oh, wait. I didn't get that either. Huh. I think this might be some sort of pattern...anywho, I digress.

Cheryl had one last coffee with me in the Flatiron District (how chic, I know) during her not-so tearful goodbye to me. She was aghast that I would be leaving her for Colorado, as we walked back to the F train together. But, how could I be leaving? Didn't I know how hard she worked just to be here in New York?! Uh, right. In that cushy Central Park apartment you cadged off an old female friend with my work in your book as professional credits in the industry. Yeah, times are sure tough! I reminded her once again that she was in my home, and as such, I felt free to leave and return whenever I wanted to.

That incensed her even more. I could practically hear her teeth gnashing together in envy, the kind that destroys good careers, like the ones we created for her at school and in town. She seethed standing in her winter jacket, cold as the cross breeze is between avenues at that subway stop. She had to take her last shot at me quickly, because she was freezing in the strong wind, as she hopped around in her understated coat that was fit for her strict vegan religion. I could see her wheels grinding. Sure enough, inspirations struck this 40-something woman. Fear not, dear readers! She delivered her last real bit of conversation to me hurriedly, and then it struck me how much I had won.

"B-b-but, you're committing 'CAREER SUICIDE' if you move out west!" Awww. It was such a nice try that I had to laugh slightly. She was trying really hard. Yeah, I managed a shaky laugh. I'm worried about that, too! I honestly wasn't all that upset, because I knew I would be back someday. I said my goodbyes to New York over the next few days, taking in those tourist sites I normally avoided to light a candle at St. Patrick's and do a quick breeze-through Tiffany's, because in my heart I knew I'd be back. That's what being a New Yorker is all about. Just like my Catholic faith, you can always come home.

So, what happened to yet another bland but somewhat talented housewife artist? Well, her toddler cried until she packed up her drawing board for good (her pictures weren't worth the money she spent in daycare: nice work, Lachlan!), before leaving the city not long after I did for that place in space were all bad hippies go: a cool farmhouse just outside of rich Woodstock, a place where she can be free to espouse her harsh religion of no makeup ever, no meat ever for any type of reason, plus a rigidly enforced homeschooling process that would fully indoctrinate her one child into their fucked up faith of succeeding at all costs, friendships be damned. None of our classmates kept up with her but me, sadly, because I don't do gay "frenemy" shit.

No, this here Acadian mama takes care of her own, even Midwestern foundlings estranged from their own families through alcoholism and a solid case of the crazies that's taken serious hold. I always had the upper hand, dear, and this New Yorker is sorry about that for you, because no drawing can change the hate that goes on in your head, girl. I am sorry for you, truly. I hope it gets better for you soon. I'm still here working for you for free, ain't I? We're working as fast as we can, just like always. No hard feelings. We just don't have the time for it. Sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention

Intermittent Fasting

Fasting has deep roots in human culture, one that predates the selling of trendy "diet" books like we have today by many years. How do I know? Surely, you jest. As a publishing executive, it's part of my job, though not always to my liking, like when I worked in the past for other people's houses* and not mine. You don't have to be as gifted as me to succeed in business without even trying. Sometimes, you just need a rich white daddy who wants a tax shelter and a continued stake in the game, know what I'm sayin'? Sure, you do. We've all worked for people who are much less than talented than us because they had access to money that large sections of the populace do not, historically being women and minorities, and I am indeed both of those.

Which takes me back a few years to a gig at some broke unknown indie house, manned by the spoiled rich kid put in place by his daddy, with not much particular interest in the business itself, leaving about ten doors wide open for me to just stride on through, because I've always had to know my business better than anybody around, lest I feel the wrath for their continued incompetency, and I know you women out there can all feel me on this one. We do not have the luxury to not tend to our flock, not unless we want to dig holes to bury our children in, and I wouldn't recommend that for your continued peace of mind.

It was in this benign spirit of living that a complete piece of crap crossed my desk inaptly titled "The Starvation Diet", or some such crap that seems to exist only in New York City, Colorado, and SoCal (notoriously anorexic, ahem, "skinny" cities all of them). First, I took a good calm look at the rather bland and unusually thick (for the tri-state area) young girl who made the mistake of handing me that particularly unsavory turd. Oh, dear...you don't belong in New York City if you think this is what it takes to survive. Because I can make grown men cry (yes, even delusional rich white ones) I considered the best option, and that was to school this kid out loud and clearly in front of the whole office about the complete and utter condescension behind the titling of this piece of crap, especially since I was toggling homelessness in addition to hunger during the time of my employ.

I got the book back with (oh, my!) a much better title, because of my continued excellent use of office acoustics in open spaces (because they can't afford a really good and really expensive traditional office layout), instead choosing to cram cheap assistants into one big room (which was billed to me by the head sales guy as "fresh", that brilliant keyword for the inexperienced and stupid English Lit grads who flood NYC into a false sense of gentrification with their out-of-state trust funds), installed with a crazy series of bookshelves that make no sense in demarcating space, because unlike the fly fishing father who worked a respectable press many years ago, this bullshit son of his had first published his own harrowing tales of illness and insanity by purposefully choosing to breed even more crazy into his family line through another generation of ADHD/BPD-afflicted children (I caught one of his little blond girls staring blankly at a dead computer screen in the cubit next to mine; when I asked her where her shoes were, she gave me a blank stare and ran away), and that's hard, yo.

Starvation is most certainly not the same as the concept I introduce to you here today called "Intermittent Fasting" (yenta in fashion, I mean you), which does a lot of good things for the human body, that's why the most successful religious acolytes have it built into their disciplines: because it works. I've done it with great success. I do not eat breakfast every day, unlike that old motto, because I may not be hungry, or I'm busy, or coffee with milk will do until my next full meal. 
I've restricted calories for training purposes and cosmetic ones, and so there is absolutely no mystery whatsoever to me about either. Less food=less calories. But that is not an avocation to starve, like someone with a serious mental disorder effecting tremendous hurt on the body.

I know, because at the last "house" I worked for (they let me go right before the six month mark that would have granted me full health insurance benefits that they can't actually afford to pay), I was clustered next to a cadre of skinny and really nervous out-of-towners that included two generic white girls and one very gay white boy, all of whom spoke to one another in whispers about their secretive (and vomitous) bulimia that had to be done on the sly amongst them, because we only had one or two bathrooms to go around, and the sharp tang of puke wafts through a common-area office the same way gossip does: I could sense it right through the thin partition walls that barely separated us. Stranger still, they all worked compulsively repetitive jobs in production, like copy-editing and trafficking, low-end jobs that are more-or-less the same, day after soul-crushing day. Coincidence, right?

Right. And so, today's snap back to reality for all of you office workers out there in Readerland after yesterday's gluttony is not a call to starve oneself, but a "Call to Action", and that is this: why not be mindful about food all year long? What exactly do you have to lose? Heart disease? A mental illness or two? What exactly are you waiting for? Oh...I see. You want me to do it for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

http://www.mercola.com/infographics/intermittent-fasting.htm

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing