The Girl
Morning morning morning…..yet another day.
As the order of the day dictates____ coffee, a quick run on the streets for adrenaline, shower, another coffee, and then planning and scheduling my day as usual.
I had yet fired another assistant in less than three months, and my regular days were back to normal. I was not chasing any chaos or disasters as I would have been doing, had he been on the job.
Butthisis much better.
I was scrolling through the day’s task list on my tablet, my eyes skimming over the coded names that have become second nature to me.
First up: running a QA sweep onVelveta Glow 3.2, their latest serum for sensitive skin, to ensure it was adhering to theGoldShieldprotocol for hypoallergenic certification.
Mid-morning, I’d meet with the R&D team to evaluate theCrystaMistformulation, a hydrating mist still in its trial phase, notorious for its stability issues when exposed to high temperatures.
After lunch, I’ll have to finalize the packaging specs forLumeLift, the flagship anti-aging cream, which involved tweaking the fonts for box design—my team kept joking it looked like a sci-fi novel cover.
Finally, I’ll prepare for a call withStudioEcho, the branding agency overseeing the promotional rollout forBloomLogic, the eco-friendly makeup line launching next quarter. Somewhere between all of that,and trust me, I’ll stop after this….I’ll find time to sign off onProject Celeste, a hush-hush initiative developing a skincare-makeup hybrid product aimed at millennials.
I had about 32 messages in total, 2 personal, 27 work-related, and 3 were from my HR consultant I have hired for my transition, which I was planning in the next two years.
I am 29. I have a great job, a relatively stable life, a good shared place that I can afford to pay my share of, no family baggage or drama that I was dragging with myself, like I had been for 8 years before that. Mom passed away last year, and I wrapped up everything in Seattle, and just decided to nest in New York semi-permanently for a while. I have no childhood friends, or buddies of sorts. Natalie is my one close friend, and then Priscilla and Andy are two from work. Thats it.
Romantic history.Pretty much non-existent.Life doesnt like to play ping-pong with people with a sick mother, and southern values, who still have dreams the size of a baseball stadium, and no money to pay for school or mom’s bills. So, you cut corners, and give up or pass over on things thatnormalpeople do to survive. And when you finally get a break at 28, you are pretty-much set up and trained for the course you had to settle for in the first place.
Hence, I am settled,very happily, in a job and a career, and that should have been it. Theit.Theitwhere you can finally relax and do things out of ”what you are supposed to do”list.
Now the basics —---rent, job, family problems, and money problems are settled, I could finally breathe. But nope. Life had other plans. What a bit*h!
I still have ten minutes left before my car’s arrival, and that is the time of day that I had reserved for thepost-it harem. My most calming activity of the day is the time when I plan the chores for the next two days or for that very day, because I have a flatmate and we are not teenagers who live off on our parents’ money. We have an expensive place, which comes with its fair share of maintenance. Thepost-it haremis pin-board, with a nice oil-paint finish on the wooden frame. It is where I stick notes—--notes where I plan and assign chores that are responsible for maintaining peace in the share living space I have. One of the smaller boards with more immediate daily tasks was hanging right onto the other side of the expensive Bosch refrigerator that my flatmate recently purchased,without my consent. The other chore-board was in the laundry closet, which was the bigger one, with all the money-related details, post addresses, cleaners’ contacts, and other legal finance or administrative things regarding the place etc. And currently, I was just laying out a couple of chores I have done since morning. Once I assign the chores, the post-its are stuck to the oil-painted wooden frame. If you finish one, you get to use the thumb pins to pin the paper on to the carpeted soft hardened interior of the framed board. Its squeaky clean.
The reason why the post-it harem is a valuable artefact in my apartment is, because it is one way I can disconnect from all my work-related life, my laptop, my phone. Its so organic. And, it was the only way I was able to communicate with the doctor. Yes. My flatemate is some hotshot doctor guy who has completely different work hours than me, and I am hardly able to see…..ever.But who cares?
Emma: Vacuuming, dusting, and mopping floors.
Desk areas (Emma)Linen closet (Emma)Storage room (Emma)Dining area (Elias)Kitchen area (Elias)Room 1 (Emma)Room 2 (Elias)Living room (Elias)Office space (Emma)
Dish-Cleaning (Elias)Laundry for the Week (Emma)Trash to the Recycling Center (Elias)Some pasta in the fridge (FINISH PLEASE)Treadmill arriving around 7PM. Kindly have Marty bring it up. Install it in the balconySomeone from pest-control to arrive on Friday (REMINDER 3: Be here at 5PM, Elias!)
So there…The basictask-assignment is done, and I still have three more minutes.
One more post-it:
“Thanks for cleaning the oven and….the other dishes.I do angry-baking sometimes. Next time, I’ll leave you something real nice -Em”
My name is Emma Caddel. I know its a wild name with a unique southern twist to it, but I recently had it changed. My last name was Hart, after my mom. She passed away, and it was too painful at work, as last name or full names is how everyone in corporate settings called me. I work as Chief Manager of Product Quality and Innovation at La Zin; the global fashion conglomerate with its chains and produc lines in about 42 countries, and I work at the headquarters in New York. Its a lucrative ob, high-demanding, risky and rewarding. And I love my job....
Okay, I loved my job, now I love it a little less.
Things are changing…..
