Today I am wearing a summer dress that drapes loosely down to my toes. It gently grazes my skin as I walk from my room to my preferred writing spot: the hammock.

This dress is an act of protest. It is protesting work. It is protesting constrictive clothing. It is protesting the pings. It is protesting what a person should/would wear while working from home. This dress is a vacation dress. It is long and mildly sophisticated and does not evoke the feeling of work or lounge. It is decidedly grown-up. It’s a dress that should be paired with giant sunglasses and a giant sun hat and a cigarette. A counter-balance to so many days that have led to today.

It is the first morning in a while that I have not woken up with a deep sense of dread. No pings. No fires to extinguish. Only a manageable amount of work to be done, and that added buffer of a morning coffee, book, and a hammock.

I happen to find myself reading about a Brazilian Artist, Beatriz Milhazes. In a way it makes me miss the time I spent in Brazil, the sunsets, mountains, the hammock in Itacaré. But most of all I feel proud of my trip there. It all goes into this pile of perspective- the concentrated work verses the concentrated moments of freedom and exploration. And fuck, I have worked.

There is no way to soften this- it has been the weekend from hell. I took a very short break on Saturday to try to see David Byrne. I saw him for 20 minutes and then had to leave to go to work. It was amazing and as I left he started playing Everybody’s Coming To My House. Pings were flooding my phone. All kinds of disappointments were pinging away as I walked away from one of my heroes. This was not the night to disappoint me.

And so the night did not all together disappoint me.

But the next morning…

Uff.

Today though, I have found a sweet spot between the work and freedom. I am wearing a long flowing dress in protest. It represents more. It represents the fact that I will be more than the work that I do today. I have made the ultimate sacrifice for work (David Byrne) and my patience is depleting. I am demanding more. More exploration, more stimulation. More fucking freedom.

Less god-damn idiots pinging away on my fucking phone.

30 Minute Playlist – And She Was

^David Byrne watches over us tonight