Working Girl

I have worked since I was 12 years old.

I started earning money with odd jobs -- babysitting, watering flowers for neighbors, sweeping up fall leaves for family friends. In high school, I filed papers and ran errands for a doctor's office where my aunt was a nurse one summer. When my mother opened a clothing store called The Creative Edge when I was a sophomore, I worked there. I spent two summers as an usher working 6 days a week at the Cirque du Soleil in San Francisco. With the money I made, I bought my first car.

In college, I was on a work-study program and held down a job in addition to my classes. When I moved to New York, I took the first job I could get and never looked back.

I have not had more than two weeks off since 1994 -– until now. As of two days ago, I stopped working. I'm just home. On bed rest. All the time.

For me, not doing a job brings on a strange feeling of weightlessness like floating underwater. It's quiet and slow and my body moves with the currents of the day.

I feel like I should be accomplishing life's list of things to do –- everything from writing my memoirs to finishing our wedding album and sewing the button eyes securely onto Matt's childhood teddy bear that's on display in the floaties' room -– but somehow the hours go by and those things don't get done.

I worry that too much not working will make me feel unmoored, mentally and physically adrift, maybe even depressed. So far, though, I'm okay. It's been a whole day and half and I haven't gone completely mad. We'll see how long that lasts. Tick tock.