08.17.24 [on the F train]

chocolate-chip raindrops this morning, the kind that might or might not add up to one wet cookie when i get off the train in queens. i should really start carrying a little fold-up tarp or industrial garbage bag for my tote, which would compact and travel much more imperceptibly than a full-fledged umbrella and protect the only stuff that really can't get wet. i'm semi-paused on almost all work right now, as the new third-party payment-processing contractor that handles compensating contractors like me for my biggest client has now taken almost a week to renew my apparently-expired approval, a slot canyon that seems to have affected me first among the client's freelancers and which seems unbelievable even by generic-corporate-fuckery standards (i am denied access to all of the client's assets and tools, so i can't research or build a damn thing). it's been fewer than 90 days since they approved my initial contract, a process more invasive than the blood and urine draws i underwent for my yearly physical yesterday (a background check, seriously? for a writing-jokes-about-couches gig?). this has meant that i've had luxurious stretches of time in which to run errands (with the understanding that i had to be able to sprint home at any moment) and that my schedule for the next month and counting is absolute hash, as all kinds of stuff has accordioned down the line. i generally don't care all that much about when things happen, despite my procrastinator's fundamental fear-based obsession with deadlines, but i am almost incandescent with rage about this shit; this processing contractor has already demanded invoices from my other clients to make sure my work is diversified to a degree that satisfies them—so infantilizing i don't know what to tell you—and if, say, the most pressing piece i've got pending isn't sorted before tuesday night, its editor is going to have to reassign it and i lose $600 for work that's already taken me more than two hours. i don't have any colleagues in this scenario, not really—everyone's either someone who offers me work or someone whose incompetence prevents me from doing work—so i can but holler here, since anything else would make me a real bummer to hire again. freelancers are supposed to be cool girls.

a friend of ours has taken a full-time gig with the harris-walz campaign and is either moving or has moved to delaware for the next few months. i have a theory that going up there with jigsaw puzzles and snacks would technically be infrastructural, which seems to underwhelm joe. i think we've scrubbed most of our travel plans for the fall—we've both booked solo trips out west to visit family, but he doesn't have the vacation days to really unfurl the way we like to until the end of the year, and we're already committed to a thing with my folks in the spring—so, like: delaware! it would be so cheap, i bet, and i could pretend it's comparable with door-knocking! i know that's not so, at least the door-knocking part, but i'm working my way up to more full-contact election suport.

i took the ferry out to the rockaways for the first time in several years a couple of weeks ago, at the invitation of a friend who rented a place out there for part of this summer. the stretch of beach she favors is vastly superior to the crazy-crowded portion i used to visit, and her car-based setup camps rings around the towel-and-tote situation that was all i was used to bringing out with me. i told her quite a bit about what i called 'the beach companion i lost to her office-based job,' though i didn't really get at all the reasons that relationship fell apart, at least partially because i myself don't know. could she smell the loss on me? i felt like i reeked.

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