Another day, not another dollar.

For those of you that follow this blog, probably few and far between, I have made a pretty big decision that I’ve been sitting on for a while that I decided to follow through on.

(The photo is me working for the man, unhappy, making next to nothing)

Yesterday, June 28^th, I quit my job at Esrock Partners, the advertising agency I’ve been working at as a copywriter for the last six months. My last day will be tomorrow, Wednesday the 30th.

I’ve done this for several reasons, and after a lot of internal conflict and debating, I feel like I made the right decision.

I’ve been toying with the idea of graduate school. And now my decision has come full-circle. I am going after my dream of studying English literature and earning a Master’s. I haven’t completely ruled out earning a Ph.D either. It just depends on where my career goals take me once I am studying.

I will be spending my time studying relentlessly for the GRE and working part-time to pay bills and for spending money.

I was unhappy for sometime at my job for a multitude of reasons. Mostly, I felt like a caged bird. I went to school for English, and I spent 8 hours a day, maybe more proofreading charts with 6-point font. It’s all business, and I’m too mystic and eccentric to be a businesswoman. I’d rather spent my day analyzing and contemplating life’s obscurities or learning more about composition and the structure of the English language.

Advertising, especially the kind I did was a complete botching of everything beautiful about language. We took it and manipulated for the sake of sales. “Creative” meant using terms like “increases your bottom line,” “produces higher yield” and “serves your everyday budget needs.” Somehow this was construed as creative. I felt the conflict from the beginning, fought the fight, learned the terms and excelled. But at the end of the day, I know it’s just more uptight businessmen, paying me below the poverty line so that sales would flourish for someone, somewhere who’d I’d never meet or care to meet.

I’m glad I made my decision. I will be going to Florida on Thursday to visit my friend Colleen and get my head on straight. I was originally going for a weekend, but on a whim, extended it to a week. I’ll be able to spend much-needed time with a best friend, relax, vacation, and spend some of my hard-earned money. Life will be good.

When I get back, I’ll sort things out and start following my dreams. My real dreams. Not fabricated contrived ones. And I couldn’t be happier. 

Apple Sells Three Million iPads in 80 days

Just stumbled across one of the most interesting press releases I've seen in a while. I'm sure they meant to elicit the response they got from me to gain attention, as most press releases fall through the cracks, harvesting little to no emotional response. But Apple, you've done it again. Being in the press business this all at once disgusted and intrigued me. I guess I’m just angry, having had written many press releases and knowing the sales language necessary to market a product, that Apple can get away with calling the iPad “magical” 3 times in one release. Magical? Really?

So I am posing an open letter to Apple, if only for my own state of mind.

Dear Apple,

First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for everything and all you do. Without your company I wouldn’t have my cute little pink iPod, which gets me through tiring days at the office and grueling workouts at the gym. You pump so much beautiful music through my tiny ears, 4GB at a time, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I do, however, have some gripes with the iTunes system, but you’ve crafted a genius system of non-file sharing and pro-Apple loyalty, which I can only consider a work of genius.

As for your other devices: The iMac. Intricate, complex, and in short, a great operating system. It really makes life at work easier when the Mac’s processing capacity can’t handle larger Photoshop and InDesign files at work. We love to stay late into the night, restarting the computer and recovering lost documents. Clients get angry, but hey, Apple, you get your paycheck.

The iPhone. Little piece of work you are. Apple, I’d like to thank you for inventing the iPhone. Not only do I get to lose my friends and family to their phones in social situations where engaging conversation is much preferred, but I also get to watch as they flick open their digital Zippo, and we are all endlessly fixated on the flame’s dance.

And the iPad. Oh iPad. Where would we be without you? Probably on our laptops. But you made sure we wouldn’t be with your “magical” device. Magical. A description more fit for Disneyworld than a cutting-edge piece of technology, the iPad is living up to its description one purchase at a time. Three million idiots, erm, people have bought into an expensive piece of crap that is sure to see five more versions. Well done, Apple. You have again duped people worldwide into believing that your devices are not only magical, but they are the second coming.

Oh and your press team disgusts me. Never use the same descriptor word three times in one release. Knock them upside the head with a thesaurus. Nobody questioned why your press team described a piece of scrap metal that can process crossword puzzles magical? Well, I am. My mom works 12-hour shifts 5 days a week just so she can listen to a shitty transistor radio on her day off in the backyard. Now that’s pretty fucking magical.  

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/06/22ipad.html

What are ya sayin'?

I watched Fargo last night. Great movie, by the way, but not the point of this post. Language is endlessly fascinating to me, and I noticed the Coen brothers did something great in this movie. They played with the North Dakotan/Minnesotan accent and exaggerated it to the point of hilarity. All the characters spoke with an accent, which was some sort of strange Chicago/Northern City and Canadian hybrid. But it was so over-pronounced, presumably to poke fun of the way people “up north” pronounce their vowels.

It got me thinking about different speaking patterns, and also made me reminisce about the time somebody told my mom she sounded like she belonged in the movie Fargo, along with reminding me of Sarah Palin’s annoying and all-to-common phrase on the campaign trail: “You betcha!”

Apparently those with an accent similar to the one portrayed in Fargo reside along the Great Lakes chain, starting in Buffalo, New York, stretching to Cincinnati, Chicago, and even as southwest as St. Louis. Nobody really knows why our accent has formed the way it has, but some linguists hypothesize that it may have come to be in the 18^th century, gaining widespread usage in the 1950s.

A really interesting interview to listen to if you have time can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090

A linguist from University of Pennsylvania describes the Northern vowel shift pattern and demonstrates it verbally. It’s really interesting to hear how different we pronounce our vowels (they call it “up” because instead of pronouncing short vowels like “a” in “cat” with a low tongue, we pronounce it with our tongue “up,” so it sounds almost like a long vowel) compared to places like New York City or Boston.

Give it a listen if you have time.

For some reason, the last few days, I’ve had this total antsy feeling of being excited about things. Instead of totally droning on everything, I’m super stoked about stuff. Good things are coming. I feel compelled to make a list of things that have been going well, awesome stuff I fill my days with:

Looking into big changes in the form of school, studying and possibly teaching.

Signing up to volunteer on the gulf coast. I’ve signed up for several organizations. If they need me, I’m so there, at least for a couple of weeks/months.

Travel opportunities.

Shows. Shows. Shows.

Music.

Writing the word.

Learning media, pushing to get Relationshipmates rolling along.

Super good movies, and now that I have Netflix, things have gotten much easier.

Just what I needed

Sometimes you just need a weekend of drunken debauchery, two consecutive 6 a.m. nights, huge hangovers, good friends (old and new) and great music/conversation to make going back to work Monday feel at least tolerable.