Canada

In freelancing, as in hair metal, what goes around comes around (sometimes)

aprilswopegreene 1 Comment

In the thrill-a-minute world of freelance writing (I am only half joking there), clients can come and go as unexpectedly as the Red Bull van that pulls up beside the park and starts handing out free energy drinks. (Or am I the only one who’s witnessed that?)

Red Bull energy drink giveaway

Have you seen me?

This unpredictable ebb and flow can of course be a source of consternation for freelancers, but on balance over the past two-plus years, I’ve found it to be mostly energizing—as well as a good way to practice living in the moment: it’s unwise to become attached to even one’s most cherished clients, as you never know when they might, I don’t know, move to Canada and change their whole business model, or decide that you’ve been so helpful that they now want to hire a full-time person to do what you’ve been doing for them freelance. (Both of those things did indeed happen to me this year.)

While I’ve learned to feel less disappointment when great clients depart, I still feel untempered enthusiasm when they arrive—or, in the cases below, when they re-arrive! (Shoutout to my James Joyce people: both of these clients rearrive[d] from North Armorica. If that means what I think it does, which is debatable.)

Here’s a hearty “hello again!” to:

Sarah Lawrence College

College student in a community garden

SLC student Tenn Joe Lim: “These gardens have taught me about the agency we all have within communal spaces.”

I’ve been working in different capacities with the terrific people at this singular institution since fall 2014 (and boy is my brain getting a workout). Last month, they brought me on as Assistant Editor of their terrific magazine, Sarah Lawrence. I’m super-psyched to keep writing stories for them (like this profile of a student who’s teaching kids in a local community garden), as well as learn more about the inner workings of such a venerable publication.

PLASTARC

Architects

Some of our best and brightest at the Center for Architecture in NYC

It’s plastic (in this case, denoting malleability)! It’s architecture! It’s BOTH!

I met this workplace design consultancy’s ingenious founder Melissa Marsh at the Wood at Work conference last year, and helped her with some one-off writing projects this year. Recently, she’s decided to step up her company’s editorial game and has been showing me the PLASTARC ropes: their monthly newsletter, thoughtful event summaries, and the many guest contributions they make to industry publications. One of my fun gigs this fall was reporting on a public program called, “I Love This Place! Social Research-Driven Design.”

I’m very happy to be embarking on a new year with these two terrific new-ish clients. While I might find the lyrics to some Ratt songs as obscure as lines from Ulysses, I think I know what they mean when they sing:

Round and round
With love we’ll find a way just give it time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I’ll tell you why
Dig

Yeah?

How my wedding was like The Rocky Horror Picture Show

aprilswopegreene 4 Comments

No, not the outfits!

Well, maybe.

Happy wedding couple with smiling officiant

We got all the colors?! Yay!

Initially, I was thinking about the Time Warp factor.

For many months, I’d known I was going to take two solid weeks off in mid-October to host family and friends from out of town, do the nuptial deed itself, and spend a handful of days chilling out in Canada on our honeymoon. All of which I did and enjoyed! However, I did not expect that also:

  • My fiance would get his right pinky finger shattered by a blindly-opened car door while riding his bike a week before the wedding; that we’d spend half that day in the emergency room and another whole day at a surgery center on the other side of NYC; or that we’d have to employ two friends with sewing skills to modify his dress shirt and suit jacket so he could fit into them on our wedding day.
  • My Gay of Honor—who was slated to do my hair and help us with about 1,000 other things—would burn the crap out of his left hand (and of course he’s a lefty) while making dinner the night before flying into NYC to stay with us.
  • The kind soul who offered to ferry our wedding clothes to the venue would unknowingly drop Arthur’s suit pants off their hanger, and no one would notice until approximately an hour before photos were to start being taken, and Arthur would wind up getting married in a pair of Uniqlo jeans.

So I guess all of that accounts for some of the time-suck. But how did I not write a blog post for a whole month? How have my first few days back to work flown much faster than usual, even though I’m still ramping back up to full work capacity? How is it that one day, I’m eating delicious maple cookie ice cream in sunny Montreal, and the next, I’m warming up leftover green beans in my kitchen in rainy Brooklyn??

Clearly, we’ve been busy. But I do think there’s also a psychic time-warp element to this experience… Perhaps not unlike the one portrayed in The Rocky Horror Picture Show??

Rocky Horror Picture Show time warp

With a bit of a mind flip / You’re into a time slip / And nothing can ever be the same!

Indeed, as the song goes, I have felt “spaced out on sensation” for much of the past four weeks—which I suppose is kind of the point. While it’s been a little disorienting coming back to normal life and work, it was a very worthwhile and gratifying experience to plan, execute, and now come down from such a ginormous, once-in-a-lifetime affair. I know I’ll be drawing on it in a myriad of ways for many moons to come. Especially after reality sets in and I’m fully able to believe it wasn’t all a dream.

***

p.s. I owe a hat tip to the aforementioned Gay of Honor, who brought Rocky Horror to my attention back in high school, and who recently attended a live screening in our native Colorado looking like about a trillion dollars in this homemade Madonna getup:

noah-as-madonna

Go, babe!!