Freezing to Death

On 30 Rock, Liz Lemon repeatedly settles into dating her beeper salesman ex, Dennis Duffy, a less-than-stellar boyfriend candidate. Her coworker, Jenna, asks here why she keeps going back to him. Liz says, "If you give into it then you just start to feel kind of numb and warm and then you just get sleepy." She barely has to work at the relationship, doesn't have to keep up appearances, and can continue to munch on her favorite Sabor de Soledad chips. "That's exactly what they say it's like to freeze to death," Jenna counters maternally. Cut to a montage of Liz falling asleep in the snow a la the poor little match girl with her one remaining candle blown out.

I myself thought I was nearing the Great Beyond the past week with the subzero wind chill my long down coat could barely stifle. My joints began to stiffen, and I grew concerned when I realized I couldn't bend my pinky, only to remember the zebra-print bandage tightened around the slice on my knuckle sustained from an unwieldy letter opener. Frostbite averted, I do consider myself like Liz Lemon (oh! count the reasons!) but in so much as our fear of settling. I adore my job, work with fantastic people, and am privileged enough to be paid to work for a successful publication, even if it doesn't involve me writing. But I'm in this industry to write, and to write well, better than I would if left to my own devices (and blogging), and although this is temporal, I know, it's so easy for me to become complacent and forget what I'm in this for. I keep saying I'm going to "freelance" just like I'm going to "take up running" or "give up sugar" or "stop biting my nails," but my career goals aren't flash-in-the-pan whims of self-improvement. So instead of my own aspirations being snuffed out, it's high time a candle got lit under my long-underweared bottom. It's likely that might take some more time, what with the ever-present snow and well, what my sunlight-loving friends and I like to refer to as SAD. Nothing some Mexican cheese puffs and 30 Rock reruns can't fix.