[DON'T READ THIS POST IN GOOGLE READER]
Reader, I don’t know if you have come across Jet Blue’s newest promotion, but it’s a swift kick in the nuts to anyone with a stupid useful job. Unlimited flying for a month for $599.00! Let’s count the ways that’s awesome. 1,000,000 – list them on your own time.
When I first heard about this I was thinking, yeah, fuck yeah, hell yeah, Jet Blue, I’m going to give you a run for your money. I’m going to New York, hop up to San Fran, go do something stupid in Florida, visit family in Denver, and see what the fuck Rutland, Vermont is.
I was soaring at 30,000 feet, reader, pulling out my credit card, thinking this is the greatest thing since a popsicle for a sore throat. But then the cabin lost pressure, the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and oh fuck, why was I so flippant during the safety speech, refusing to lift my nose out of my book? As the other passengers and I are flung about the cabin like squirrel with an M-80 strapped to its back in a squash court, I think, now I’ll never see Rutland.
So instead, I put my credit card away, and looked forward into my workaday future. Before we go on, reader, let me make this perfectly clear, that I do love my job, and am grateful to be employed at all, let alone doing something that I actually like. OK, now that I’ve karmically cleared myself, let’s get on with the bitching.
Please read the rest of this post while this clip is playing.
You can’t jet around, taking days off every week when you work. I mean you can but it looks… well, like I feel. I’d rather be visiting friends and bumming around than working. Well who wouldn’t? But frankly, I need this job, I’d like to keep this job, and possibly even be promoted or excel in someway at this job.
What am I sacrificing? Who have I become? When I look back on what used to be important, are those things still important to me now? Is that even important? For six hundred bucks I could cram seeing all my friends into one month. Just bounce around from place to place, enriching our memories of one another with more memories. We’d laugh. Oh the laughter, reader.
But that shit’s just not possible reader. Summer is a social construct. In the working world, long stretches of vacation are reserved for the Judeo-Christian imperialist new year festivities and that’s a hard time to nail everyone down in one place. Stupid families and their love and priority.
The only real solution I can think of, reader, is to bend time to our wills. We have to shrink years. Stretch days. I wish you the best of luck. It’s relativity, bitch.
- Jamie
First, I’m happy that the petite wee mini drought
of suckmyguac entries has broken. I’ve become
a bit addicted. Second, I was born in the late 1940′s which should give you a huge hint about my age. Maybe I should have said I was born in the early 1950′s but having brought up age, I might as well be at least obliquely honest. The reason I mention age is that I STILL have this notion that summer is an endless golden period of unfetteredness. That has not been the case since I was, probably, 15. Childhood is so formative. As they say. Third,
full disclaimer, I’m related to Kate. And I read both of your posts with pleasure.
are all of your posts going to be inspired by my status messages from now on?
Jamie – Or you could become a teacher, where summer vacation is not only a possibility, but a reality that I get to enjoy every year. For the rest of my working life. Perhaps next summer I will take advantage of the Jet Blue offer
I was just in Rutland Vt this past weekend. Your absence was noted.