Telecommuting

Rachel turned off the computer, got up and started stretching, trying to undo hours of knots accumulated in her neck and shoulders.

Things were so different now. Many of her clients make their requests over email and pay with PayPal. She can spend a week at a time in her bathrobe and slippers, eating delivery dinners and ordering bottled water by the case from Fresh Direct.

She thought back through the different stages of her career, how it had evolved along with technology. It used to be that she would have to dress up and go into the office to get her work done — letting a trick lick her stiletto heels, say, or paddling a naughty business tycoon.

For awhile, webcams had been all the rage. She would dress up for gigs, but work from home. It was convenient, certainly, but a bit lonely. At least appearing on camera had given her some incentive to look after herself.

These days, it was all this Digital Domination business — writing abusive YouTube comments, down-voting Reddit posts, and the like — which she couldn’t help but consider impersonal, shallow even. It’s cleaner and safer, but some days she misses the human touch, the performative aspect that justified all those years she spent getting a Masters from Tisch.

Still, in this economy, she can’t complain.

This entry is part of my journal, published January 26, 2011, in New York.