Let Them Eat Cake
A funny thing happened on the way to writing this essay.
Six years. Six years happened.
I never intended to quit writing. My last post was not supposed to be the LAST post, but life has a way of kicking you in the nuts. Or the lady nuts, as the case may be.
Boy, are my lady nuts sore.
Angel Who Swears, this place I created as a possible out from corporate life, as a Shangri-La of weirdness and foul language, as a haven in which to hang up my ridiculous observations of everyday life, sat rotting like the mystery Tupperware in the back of my refrigerator. The only readers remaining were the 2,364 bots that left comments on my posts telling me they enjoyed my informative article about cat pants and leaving phishing links behind.
What a sad state of affairs.
Worse, I ghosted all of you. Well, not all of you. A lot of you know me in real life and tune into Facebook to find my sarcasm and profanity on display. But my other readers, I ghosted.
All five of you.
For that, I’m truly sorry.
I’ll get you something the next time I run to QuikTrip.
Over the years, the neurodivergents in my household (all three of us) have become experts at creating doom piles. You know, those stacks of papers, craft supplies, miscellaneous clutter, and the random important legal paperwork that stack up on surfaces around the house because our brains can’t quite figure out where they go or we need them out in the open so we don’t forget they exist.
My writing in general, and Angel Who Swears specifically, has suffered a lifetime of me shoving it under a doom pile and forgetting it exists. Probably because, just like the craft supplies and mail, I didn’t know where it belonged or how high it ranked in the priorities of my life.
I don’t think I have that problem anymore.
I created Angel Who Swears when it was announced that my employer of seventeen years was closing their local office and leaving us all behind.
That was the first big kick in the lady nuts. Life did not get kinder.
I found myself unemployed in November of 2025, for the second time in two and a half years, which makes a total of THREE forced job changes since I started this whole thing back in 2017.
Finding yourself unemployed at age 54, when you’re not financially able to retire yet, is equal parts terrifying and liberating. I found myself in a position of being “too qualified” or “we went a different direction”.
The hits kept coming.
I started exploring other opportunities. Jobs I had never considered before. I explored ways I could use my creativity to create a stream of income. None of those roads took me back to writing until the indignity of the job assessment.
“We would like you to take this assessment as part of your pre-employment process.”
I figured it was another personality test to see if I fit into the team culture. Boy, was I wrong. Let me count the ways.
“You have just started as the assistant to the head of the department. Chuck, a member of the team, just emailed you regarding a coworker’s birthday.”
Isn’t it enough that I have to organize all the birthdays in my household? Now Fake Chuck is expecting balloon animals and funfetti at Fake Work?
Incidentally, the job I was applying to was NOT an Assistant position.
Fake Email:
“Hi! 🙂 how’s it going? hope ur liking the new job.
I wanted to see if we are ordering lunch for Brian’s birthday and how much we need to give. i hear the pizza place next door is good and we only had to pay $3 each for that. Also where are we doing this? Lemme know.”
I have a Bachelor’s Degree with a minor in English. Since 1994 I have held professional positions that have required articulate correspondence, often with legal ramifications if not worded properly. This is all reflected in my resume.
WHY WHY WHY MUST I PROVE IT IN AN ARTIFICIAL EMAIL?
Am I supposed to believe that Fake Chuck with his shitty grammar and punctuation and unprofessional emoji got hired here but I have to pass a test????
After the assessment I kept my laptop open, opened a Word document, and…
I wrote.
I wrote for two hours with such ferocity that Luna woke up from his nap in the sunny windowsill and looked around. I’m sure he was wondering if he should run to his hidey hole to avoid the sound of the hailstorm that was actually my fingers clacking on the keyboard.
It was glorious. It was cathartic. It was the rocket’s red glare, the F bombs bursting in air, giving proof through the night that my snark and sarcasm were still there.
I remembered that writing brings me joy. For the first time in months, maybe years, I remembered that insurance is what I DO. It’s not what I AM.
I’m a writer. I write, whether I have 2 readers or 2,000.
I’m a writer.
Those two hours of furious writing made the previous few months disappear. I wasn’t worried about making a mortgage payment. I wasn’t worried about out of pocket medical expenses. I wasn’t worried about deadlines or answering phones or managing other people. It was just me, my sarcasm, and a very startled little house panther.
As it turns out, I ended up getting a job four months after getting laid off. Yes, in insurance, but it’s different from what I did before. I’m learning from the ground up again, and I really like the company, the job, and the people, but it took up all my attention while I was training. Again, no time for anything creative at that point.
I settled into a routine, the tasks on the job became more predictable. My “bandwidth” started increasing for other interests. I started looking around at some of the creative little hobbies I enjoy doing.
Then, I woke up one morning recently and asked myself, “What the fuck are you doing? This job doesn’t require all of your focus and energy anymore. All those other hobbies and creative pursuits you’ve been dabbling in? Those are fun, but they are not what you have dreamed about doing since you were fourteen years old.”
YOU HAVE TO WRITE.
The fantastic part is, I already had a home for that, too. It was sitting there, neglected and sad.
I rescued Angel Who Swears out of a doom pile of misplaced priorities. I’ve been working hard to fix it up and repair and update all the neglected areas. I polished some of my previous work, giving it fresh life. The rest is tucked away until we can dust it off later.
The best part of all: I’m writing new stuff.
I really don’t know where this is going and I really don’t know if anyone will care to read it. I just know I’m having the time of my life doing it and if others like it, all the better. For now, I have found that elusive work/life balance the corporate talking heads love to gush about that in reality, often doesn’t exist and isn’t realistically expected. I’m doing this thing and it makes me happy.
Anyway, in case you were wondering, Fake Brian’s birthday party is Thursday at 1:00 in the conference room. He is allergic to tomatoes and prefers white cake with buttercream frosting.
We are collecting $5 from everyone for sandwiches from the deli.
