Do I have a card? Ummmm….does this count?

One of my (many) new year’s resolutions for this fine new decade is to get all serious, sophisticated and saavy about the part of this job that I hate….you know, the whole, business-y, self promotion, treating yourself like a product that you have to SELL SELL SELL! side. Bleh. I hate it. It makes me want to run into a corner and hide. It makes me want to vomit. Which is probably a sign that I should really just suck it up, buckle down, and do it. Like now. Or maybe later. Like tonight, after I watch Lost. Or tomorrow. Or in two weeks after I move apartments. Ok, no, NOW.

And so, I decided to blog about it – because I can’t be the only one struggling with this smarmier side of the business, and plus, if I write it down on the world wide interwebs for everyone and their brother to read, I’ll have no choice but to actually follow through instead of tossing that old resolution list into the recycling like I usually do by mid-March. (I’ll have you know though, that I am currently accomplishing resolution #4: Do things that scare you. Blogging = scary. So, hey! Let’s hear it for progress!)

So, maybe it was the universe’s thumbs up to my resolve to resolve, because when I went home to the ‘ole LI last week and received my annual Valentine’s Day gift baggy from my mother, there was a strange little business card sized box amidst the bundles of chocolate covered pretzels.

“Uuuuuuh, Mom? What are these?”

“Oh! You don’t remember those? They’re cards I had made up for you and your sisters when you were little, I just found them downstairs!”

“Oh. Right. Thanks?”

Don’t ask me why my mother thought a nine year old might need a stack of ornamented name cards handy. It probably has something to do with her continuous compulsion to buy me little figurines of bejeweled shoes or her relentless attempts to get me and my six siblings to wear matching pajamas on Christmas eve. I stopped asking why years ago. But technically…I do now have cards…cards that seem to suggest I work in floral arrangements or baby showers, but nonetheless, cards! Ok, no, I’m not really gonna start handing these out (though I would secretly like to just to see a casting director’s reaction) but I’ll take it as a sign that I’m moving in the right direction….and a sign that somehow, in her twisted, bubbles and sunshine sort of way, my Mom’s giving me the thumbs up too.