My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [31]
My fans tell me they love my books because they’re guilty pleasures. But I wonder if I’m able to overcome my crippling intellectual lethargy, my books might simply be pleasures, sans the guilt.
Maybe the problem is that I’m currently reaping everything I’ve been putting out into the universe. You know, garbage in, garbage out. If I spend my days watching Flavor Flav take baths with skanks, what possible good can I expect to come of this?
I bet if I spend less time with the television and more time pursuing activities that enhance my life and expand my knowledge, I won’t freeze up in business or social situations.
When I took on the project that resulted in Such a Pretty Fat, I was able to better my own world by putting forth physical effort. A lot of what I did was hard and kind of sucked, but the sweat was worth it. I failed at a whole bunch of stuff along the way, but I never let myself quit.
Maybe it’s time to do the same thing for my brain.
Maybe it’s time to leave my cerebral comfort zone.
To try new things.
To challenge myself.
To do what I’d always written off as boring or hard or scary.
To put myself in positions I’ve never been in.
To not allow myself to run away the second it doesn’t work out exactly like I want it to.
To fill the universe with something other than my constant commentary on this season’s new batch of The Apprentice contestants and scathing retorts.
My Shame Rattle has sounded for the last time.
I guess I could say the tribe has spoken.
Now I’ve just got to figure out what to say back.
To: fletch_at_work
From: jen_at_home
Subject: I’m like Batman, only fatter
Hey,
So I was sitting at my desk in back watching a nonhomelesslooking person walking down our alley. He appeared to be checking things out, and that bothered me. Think about it—there’s no reason to be in our alley because it’s not a shortcut to anywhere.
I watched as he strolled past our house, and when he noticed our back door was open, he stopped in his tracks and immediately made a beeline through the vacant backyard next door and headed right toward our house.
What he didn’t expect was for me to step out of the shadows with a pit bull and a huge shepherd-wolf mix, shouting, “NO FUCKING WAY.”
He left a vapor trail in his wake.
I kick ass.
XO,
Jen
P.S. This is why I need a gun.
To: jen_at_home
From: fletch_at_work
Subject: re: I’m like Batman, only fatter
This is exactly why you can’t have a gun.
CHAPTER SIX
Extreme Makeover: Dumb-Ass Edition
By Jove, I think I’ve got it!
I totally figured out how I’m going to ease my conversational impediment.
I’m going to go Eliza Doolittle all over my ass!
Here’s the thing—I’m not concerned with passing myself off as a lady of high society; I just don’t want to give strangers the impression that I’m a dumb ass anymore. Plus, I don’t want to make them feel all uncomfortable when I spout a bunch of thoughtless commentary because ultimately, if I say the wrong thing in the wrong place, I could offend the wrong person or even kill my career. Basically, I need to stop using my mouth as a weapon.
To do so, I’m going to have to get me some learnin’.
What I need is a cultural renaissance.
Scratch that. I need a cultural Jenaissance.
My handicap isn’t that I’m incapable of learning but that I’m rarely motivated to do it, so I’m going to battle my natural propensity for sloth by forcing myself to get off the couch and acquire a base of cultural knowledge. I need to broaden what I’m familiar with by reading and dining and patronizing the arts64 so when I’m in the middle of an important conversation, I won’t just panic and start blurting nonsense. For example, this past winter, if I’d maybe read a book on petroleum politics, I wouldn’t have immediately launched into a diatribe about how Clooney killed The Facts of Life.65
The thing is, I’m easily influenced and gorging myself on a steady diet of shitty reality television has clearly had an effect. Reality television