StairServant.

I recently joined World Gym, which I'm very excited about. Unlike my previous gym, it offers classes for me to not attend, as well as a steam room. For me, a steam room is an imperative part of the gym experience. How else am I going to work up a sweat?

As with many other gyms, World offers all new members a free "fitness evaluation" that is really meant to sell their personal training. A form asked me, "At what time of day are you interested in scheduling personal training sessions?" I checked the box that said "Not Interested."

Why do I sign up for the fitness evaluations? I like to know just how quickly my physical decline is progressing. Usually, I get a nice little fitness snapshot, they describe the training rates, I say thanks and resume the same serviceable but unchallenging routine I've done for 10 years.

The form I originally filled out saying that I wasn't interested in personal training sessions had somehow disappeared when I arrived for my evaluation, so I filled it out again with the same answer. The evaluation went like this: cardio test, flexibility test, abs/core test, weights.

For the core test, I nearly developed a spinal injury attempting to stabilize myself on a huge ball -- an activity that, when you think about it, really has no true-life application. For the weights part, I was asked to show what weight exercises I would "normally" do. This was fun because I don't normally do any weight exercises, but I showed the ones that I would do if I ever bothered.

We retired to the office and I got my results. "On cardio, you did pretty well. You exceeded your target heart rate, and your recovery rate was good," said the trainer. "Were you surprised at anything?"

"No," I said. "I pretty much knew that the abs stuff was going to be bad, and anything involving the ball is going to be a disaster."

She nodded. "Your core needs work. You had trouble balancing on the ball, and also could not raise yourself on the ball."

I nodded. I can take the bad news, I thought.

"Also, your abs are pretty weak. The crunches were difficult for you, and you had trouble with the reverse crunches even raising your tail off the floor by a few inches. You need to get much more height than you were getting."

Hokay, I thought. Thanks for the detailed refresher, but I can remember five minutes ago, friend.

The litany went on: my "normal" arm exercises were ineffective, my form was poor, my legs were surprisingly weak on weight machines given my good cardio performance.

"Do you believe in pinch tests?" she said.

What does this even mean? "I... I don't know."

After pinching my leg, she determined that my thighs had "some extra."

"You mean extra fat?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

Then her boss came into the room, and the takedown got serious. I had marked that I was an "advanced" gym user on my form (after 15 years of belonging to gyms, I wasn't sure what else to put), and they disabused me of this notion. The Boss sized me up. "She looks like she holds her breath," he guessed. "Did she hold her breath?" The trainer confirmed that I had, while doing weight reps.

He did some pinching of his own. "See, this is your problem right here," he said while grasping the back of my upper arm. "And this," he said, poking my back, "This is soft. You want some muscle tone."

I took this all with serious nods and a few laughs: Hey, they were telling it like it was. But a little part of me knew that later I would need a long steam to sweat out all of the mortification.

The good news was that I "didn't have far to go" to get in shape, they said, and would "only" need 10 training sessions, to the tune of around $600. I declined, fidgeting under their stares while I explained that I don't have the money right now (a half-truth). The Boss turned his back and began filing papers while the trainer ushered me out politely. Had I gotten the good-cop, bad-cop routine?

"They're just trying to do their jobs and make their money," I told myself, trying not to feel too ashamed as I took myself right back to the StairMaster routine that they had lobbied to shake me out of. The Boss passed me as I huffed away. I gave him a tight smile; he gave me an extra second of unsmiling eye contact before drifting past.

I now have two fantasies: In fantasy 1, I transform myself into Terminator 2-era Linda Hamilton, walk up to The Boss, flex and say, "Feel this? Hard as a rock. And I did it without any personal trainers, sporto," and walk away while he shakes his head in wonder.

In fantasy 2, I go totally anorexic out of spite and tell them it's their fault.

More Insane Job Ads.

Whenever I want to feel even more despondent than I normally do about my prospects for earning money as a writer, I take myself over to the Gigs/Writing section of Craigslist.

Since it's the gigs section, 90 percent of the entries seem somehow shady and/or undesirable. Since it's the writing section, the pay is nearly always abysmal, if it exists at all. Since it's San Francisco, a good number of the ads have been written by complete loons.

Come browse with me.
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1. I don't want to spend too long contemplating what kind of marketing scheme this is attached to, but it may involve sex for money. Can you imagine receiving a handwritten letter that someone was paid a meager 60 cents to write you?

I am looking for someone who would like to take 2 to 3 hours out of their day to write 100 hand written letters. I am paying $60 = .60 cents per letter. I would prefer legible male handwriting. Reoccurring job based on performance and response.

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2. Please note the last paragraph of this ad. It is for the Jack Bauer of freelance writers.

What is needed: 6- 8 hours of personal interview/documentation in Santa Cruz, CA, (hours to be arranged), followed by completion of written assignment within 2 days thereafter. Interview must be scheduled before May 29th.

Who is needed: I am a seeking the services of an exceptionally talented and inspired individual with particular skill proficiency in the following areas:
in-depth personal interviewing
investigative reporting
exploration and discovery
extracting and summarizing critical information
expressing with sharp clarity
engaging and sustaining interest of reader
creating continuity in presenting
facts and experiences;
documenting, sequencing events,
circumstances, consequences;
expressing human feelings and emotions
with authenticity, transparency
(pain, futility, effects of trauma)
eliciting compassion of the reader.

Please inquire in response to this posting ONLY if you feel confident in your competence to meet these criteria, as a human life is hangs in the balance. Please attach writing samples or include link to page where samples may be viewed.
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3. I actually kind of like this ad. The headline on it was "speech writer with bullshit and passion (5 minute speech)"

Thursday I need to stand in front of ten serious board members and convince them to not fire me. I have a good story to tell, I just need help putting it together. I need help. I cant pay much, but I can pay some and trade stuff too.
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4. What I like about this ad is that the writer rails against "shyism" and yet her publication is named Ban Shyness.

My name is Liz and I am shy, I admit it. It has always been a problem for me, a weakness I have been working my whole life to overcome. In society there is definite shyism in the United States. Shyism is discrimination against people who aren't as confident in social situations.

This is what I'm attempting to combat with banShyness. My hope at through the creation of banShyness, there could be a place where cpeople can share their stories, their advice and provide support and young people and adults can find hope.

What I am asking from you now is to give me a little start. If anyone has any stories or anecdotes that they would be willing to share with me so I can start with some solid support.
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5. I don't even know what this means.

Conscious Dancer is a new magazine dedicated to dance and higher consciousness. We are preparing mock-ups of our first issues and want stories to fill out our design. Want this piece by June 1.

One thing I'm looking for is 800-1200 words on fire dancing, and the spiritual states it creates.

Byline in the mock ups and first issue. Exposure to sophisticated audience. Possibility for regular placement or payment down the road.

Happy Mother's Day.

So, the other night I had a dream that I was late-term pregnant, and realized that I had never gotten a sonogram or anything, and how could everyone have overlooked that and maybe the baby isn't OK, and then when I looked down at my belly it turned out I was never pregnant at all. I was just fat.

"Man, you really are crazy," was the response I got when relating this dream to the man in the house.

Imagine a world where every conversation, somehow or another, turns to the subject of reproduction. Will you do it, are you doing it, have you done it and how did it go, and most importantly, how do you feel about it? If you are an American female in your 30s, you don't have to imagine this world. You inhabit it.

There are so many babies bursting into the world around me that I can't keep track anymore. I will now say outright that if I have not met your child, I am not taking responsibility for remembering its name. I'd like to be a good friend here, but it's not a matter of will. It's a matter of feeble brain capacity. I 'm sure your Avery or Essex or Bianca is one of a kind, but "the little one" is something I can remember and spell correctly, so that's how he or she will be referred to by me.

"But why don't you want to have children?" my sister-in-law asked me, before she was even my sister-in-law. "I didn't say I don't want to have children," I answered. "I just said I'm not sure. And it's not necessarily up to me. What if I can't? I'm already 35." I made the age reference to to cow her into changing the subject, but she rebounded quickly. "Well," she said, "I was 35 when I had my baby."

I'm not going to run through the pros and cons of parenthood here because most of us, at one time or another, have considered them. Suffice it to say that I do love most children. I do not love all children. My experience with childcare is significant enough to know exactly what I'd be getting into.

My two friends from high school, who are both moms and have always relished haranguing me about something, are now on a campaign to have me a) move back to D.C. and b) have a child. "Listen to me," one of my friends said in a moment of reflection. "I'm telling you where to live and how to live your life, and it's really none of my business."

"That's OK," I said. "At least you're an old friend. I know that if I end up choosing not to have kids, you're not going to judge me, and you'll still be my friend."

We both paused, and I anticipated the joke she was about to make. "Well, I'll still be your friend."

Cranky McCrankerson.

This was a paper-cut kind of week. Nothing went horribly wrong -- in fact, a few things went surprisingly right -- but somehow it still seemed naggingly crummy. I will be attempting to adjust my poor attitude over the weekend, but in the meantime here are some moments and thoughts I feel kind of bad about.

* There are still people working daily on computers who don't know which slash to use when typing a URL. I think that is ridiculous.

* I rolled my eyes behind the back of a fiftysomething woman singing aloud with "The Age of Aquarius" in the Haight-Ashbury Music Center.

* I don't care about your new phone.

* People need to stop having orgasms about Tartine.

* It's a real drag how humorless and needy cats can be.

* I let some edge into my voice with a little girl who called my cell phone twice by mistake.

* I almost turned into the person who writes angry kitchen notes at work after discovering that someone had drunk all my milk but left the carton in the refrigerator with a splash left. Although I composed notes in my head while eating dry shredded wheat, I kept enough of a grip on myself to let it go.

So, next week, yoga class and breathing exercises. Yeah.

Too Ditzy for Jet Lag.

When planning my activities this month, I craftily set myself up for an 8 a.m. weekend volunteering stint just after having gotten back from six days in Hawaii.

"I figured I'd be up early anyway," I reasoned. It had to be explained to me that since Hawaii runs three hours earlier than California, that what I had done actually made no sense. "It actually feels worse for you to be getting up early on the West Coast now," I was told. "It would feel like five in the morning to you." Gee, that explains the two-hour nap I took today, after flying in from O'ahu last night. I wondered why I was so tired!

I have a degree from a very respectable university and most of the time seem like a perfectly intelligent human being. But certain areas, such as time zones, turn me into a complete mouth-breather. The whole of geography and spatial relations is a realm of mystery.

One of our companions in Hawaii happened to be a former coworker of mine at a news Web site. At one point he lamented the stunning mistakes that some of his colleagues make these days.

"Remember that news quiz they used to give to job candidates?" he said to me. "I don't know what happened to that. These are people who couldn't pick out Kuala Lumpur on a map!" He said this with earnest incredulity.

I let that sit for a moment before coming clean. "They never gave me that quiz," I said. "I got hired before they instituted it." I was having a good day and happened to know that Kuala Lumpur was in Malaysia, but if you ask me where Malayasia is on a map, there's a chance I'd point to Tibet. Or maybe Mexico.

"I would have failed that test, and I was the world editor at one point," I confessed. Our friend politely ignored me and continued to critique his coworkers.

There must be something adaptive about the fact that my brain cannot process which way east is, but can still sing a Pop Tarts commercial from 1987. I'm not sure what that adaptive quality is, but I'm open to ideas.

Read on an Empty Stomach.

Just when I think I've dealt with every annoying skin problem you can have, I acquire things that I've never even heard of.

Several weeks ago, I noticed that there was a bump on my eyelid. "Weird," I thought. I figured it would go away.

But there it stubbornly sat, a miniature eye-igloo camping out on my lid, ready for all weather. It wasn't going anywhere. In fact, it was getting bigger.

The bump looked suspiciously like that of a work colleague who had been complaining about a thing on his eye that looked... exactly the same, come to think of it. I mentally ran through his comments as I inspected mine in the mirror: "I've had it for MONTHS," he had said. "My doctor isn't doing anything for it... I just want it to go away... Nothing works!"

Later that week I saw him for a post-work event. I had already decided that I would pull him aside at some point and ask him more about his eye, but that tonight would not be the proper context. I carefully put neutral eyeshadow over the eyelid boil. "There," I thought. "I didn't make it disappear, but at least it's not immediately noticeable."

"YOU HAVE ONE TOO!" was the first thing he said when he got a good look at me. "Oh my God. I feel responsible. Did you get this from me?" I reassured him that I didn't think so. "We can start a band and call ourselves the Eyesores," I said with an effort at blitheness, as two other attendees of the event edged away from us and began their own conversation.

After forever, it was time to go to the doctor.

My advice to everyone with eyes would be, if someone offers you a chalazion, say no thank you. Do not get one. They are heinous-looking, uncomfortable and stubborn.

A chalazion, in case you aren't familiar, is a fancy word for what two health care professionals separately described to me as "an eye zit."

Hearing a chalazion likened to a zit made everything come together for me. My face has spent its entire lifespan in the service of whiteheads, blackheads, enlarged pores and mysterious rashes. Managing to get a disfiguring zit on my eye was a new milestone of acne achievement. I thought coldly of the days in my teens when I looked forward to being an adult, imagining then that emergence from puberty would mean freedom from skin problems. Oh how wrong I was.

"You have two choices," the doctor told me. "Usually these go away within a few months, so you can wait. Or, you can come back and have it lanced."

A few months? "Lance it," I said, trying not to think of knights' weapons and the dragon perched on my eyelid.

I don't know why I thought that the lancing would be an easy-peasy experience. It involves a blade and one's EYE. But I thought hey, they're just popping an eye zit. How bad can it be?

Bad enough that I got nauseous in the chair. Bad enough that I ended up in the lobby unable to do anything but cry on the phone to my mommy until I was in good enough shape to drive myself home. Bad enough that it didn't heal fully for another 10 days.

Now I am chalazion-free and my eyelid is enjoying a freedom that it never knew to appreciate before. Before the chalazion, I never thought to look in the mirror and say, "Boy, I sure am glad I don't have a boil on my eye." Now, I know better.

I don't know that I'd call this a cautionary tale, or a sob story, or really anything other than an opportunity to give anyone who reads this a laugh at my expense in a week that is drenched in inexplicable violence and sadness.

Baby Growing Up.

On a recent Sunday, I was wandering with two friends in the Penn bookstore after a weekend reunion of my college a cappella group. "Who do you think is the most improved?" I asked. "You mean as a singer, or as a person?" one of them said. "As a person," I said.

Unlike many of the times I ask a question like that, this time I had no particular answer in mind. Neither, as it turned out, did my friends.

"I don't know. They all seem, fuckin', the same," said G., who is now a musician in L.A. and still has crazy dyed hair despite being a married dad. "Yeah," said the other G., who is still irrepressible, smart, good-looking and an incurable yet harmless letch, despite also being a married dad.

There was silence. "[Name redacted] is better," someone offered. "THAT is true," I agreed. "Was he really that bad?" one G. said. We debated that for awhile.

Here's the point: No one had really changed, as far as anyone could tell. Which can't be true, because that means I haven't changed either, which is unacceptable. Aren't I more polished, sage and at ease with myself than 10-plus years ago, when our reunions did not involve hotel meeting rooms with placards out front and kids running among the tables?

Come to think of it, no.

I was telling my sister about the fact that no one from college had changed. "Did you expect that they would?" she asked. I guess I had. I guess somewhere in my subconscious, I assumed that getting married and building careers and having children and facing 40 turned you into a different person along the way. Maybe it does, in some respects, but why did I expect the change to be immediately detectable, like a hand-stamp or a third eye?

The weekend had me ruminating a lot on the strangeness of getting older. But, turning my youth-challenged frown upside down, I decided to list some positives:

You don't know, or don't care (as much), when people are talking trash about you.

You and most of your friends have outgrown the need to nitpick restaurant choices or bill-splitting techniques.

You can pick the people you live with, and where.

You can have whatever you want for whatever meal, whatever time.

No futons. No fake IDs. No internships.

That's all I can think of so far. If you have others, please post them.

Viewers, Repent.

It's 11:30 p.m. Do you know where your soul is?

About every six weeks or so, mine gets caught and sucked away by a man named Joey Greco. Greco is the host of Cheaters, a show that makes Cops look like Frontline. As televised nutrition, it's like a Twinkie, a shot of Wild Turkey and a Marlboro Light all rolled into one speedball of human failing. Therefore, it is both repugnant and irresistible.

Fate rarely finds me simultaneously a) in front of the TV past 11 p.m. b) in possession of the remote control and c) sufficiently passive to continue flipping around between the recesses of the local evening newscasts like a sheep in a wolf's den. But when these three conditions do coincide, and I encounter that tell-tale grainy video with the tinny, maudlin piano music playing over it, I know I'm destined to spend the next 20-30 minutes wallowing in the emotional gutter of American humanity.

For those who have never seen the show, the general arc goes like this: sad person describes his or her relationship and suspicions in one-on-one interview; we follow Joey's team on an "investigation," where they surveil the "suspect"; Joey returns to the cuckolded person and gently but plainly reveals the damning video evidence, usually captured on dates or outside houses; Joey takes the betrayed to confront the cheater and third party in a denouement usually replete with blurred mouths, shoving and tears. Sometimes, Joey goes back after the confrontation to get the cheater's side, or run a post-mortem with the accuser.

The person who introduced me to Cheaters claims that there are episodes with happy endings, where suspicions of infidelity are proved wrong. I have never seen these mythical episodes. On my Cheaters, where there's suspicion, there's inevitably a cheap grope alongside an SUV in the suburbs.

The show has a slogan that could have been penned by Samuel Richardson: "Cheaters® reality tv is both dedicated to the faithful and presented to the falsehearted to encourage their renewal of temperance and virtue." The producers, natch, are adept at marketing products meant to further this pursuit of temperance and virtue, such as a dating service, live counseling, uncensored DVDs and Cheaters thongs.

Let me say here that Joey Greco is some kind of genius. I don't know how a person in his position has managed to stay watchable, much less alive, for this long (though he has been stabbed at least once). He's at his best in the third act of the show, when he and his crew present evidence of the cheating and then spring into action, swarming the cheaters' crime scene like a SWAT team. You know he's got to be all tingly and happy inside, but on the outside he appears unfailingly calm, firm and sympathetic.

Joey never smirks, rarely yells, and always wears black. The only other places Joey could possibly work are a funeral home or an abattoir.

I used to get my dose of human misery from the show Celebrity Fit Club. Foolishly, I thought that avoiding a cable subscription would prevent me from finding something else to hate myself for viewing. But I should have remembered that trading cable for affiliates just means lower-quality trash TV.

Every time the show's blues-guitar theme cues up and the credits roll on Cheaters, I rarely feel anything other than depressed: Depressed because people are betraying those who love them on a daily basis; depressed because people who have been betrayed then do further injury to themselves by exposing it all in a public forum; and depressed because, well, I don't even know if anything on Cheaters is even real. I mean, I want to believe that Joey and his guests aren't orchestrating anything, but... Joey, is there anything you want to tell me?

An Error Has Occurred.

I am in the school that says regret is to be avoided, that regret ages you. What qualifies as a regret? For me, it's something you think of, several times a year, for several years. It’s something that you will never really, truly feel OK about.

Overall, I’ve managed to avoid getting too worked up over things I have or haven’t done. I mean sure, if I had waited to secure another job before quitting the one that was making me absolutely miserable in the spring of 2002, I probably would have largely avoided the cycle of low-level debt that I only just emerged from this year. There are, in retrospect, many many life situations that I could have handled better. I’m alright with it all.

But a couple of things, despite my trying to move past them, have become bona fide regrets. One of them is never having learned a musical instrument until now. The other occurs to me even more frequently.

In the year 2000, I met with the assistant managing editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine. At the time, I was the “entertainment editor” of “FoxNews.com.”

I had been the one to push for and launch a new entertainment section at Fox two years before, and in retrospect, it’s hilarious what I got away with. Since we were so low on the media totem pole, and since my bosses were just happy to have an enthusiastic person going out and reporting stories for our new section, that meant a raft of interviews with Erykah Badu, Brian McKnight, Ben Folds, the guy who played Ben on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and a whole bunch of other stuff that I’m pretty sure our readership couldn’t have given two craps about.

A Fox contributor put me in touch with the EW person when I mentioned I was looking around for a place where maybe more than 500 people would read the stories I was doing.

To me, meeting this editor was a big deal. I had started reading Entertainment Weekly in my early 20s, and I knew the magazine like the back of my hand. When I decided at age 23 to move to New York, I wrote to their movie critic at the time, Ty Burr, told him that he was my favorite reviewer at the magazine and asked him if he would have an informational interview with me. I wasn’t just arse-kissing, either – I was that big of a geek. I thought Ty Burr was one of the cleverest, most intelligent entertainment magazine writers I’d read. And Ty turned out to be nice, too – not only did he answer my letter, he took me out to lunch and got me a meeting with the assistant managing editor.

So here I was, meeting with a new assistant managing editor some six years later, only this time I’d written stuff. I actually had some experience, and some confidence. I was psyched. After weeks of meetings and phone tag and a very rigorous writing test, the editor called me up one day. “Here is what I would do with you,” she said. “You gave us a very strong writing test, and I think you have potential. But you still need to develop your voice. If you were interested, I would offer you a very junior position here, probably assistant editor. And I would pay you about $45,000.”

The minute she hit that salary figure, my face fell. $45K? That was significantly less than I was making at Fox. I mean sure, I could live on that little, if I stopped drinking $10 martinis and going to my chi chi gym and generally living my modestly comfortable life. But why should I? Why not just stay at Fox, where I had tons of autonomy and a better salary, “develop my voice” there, and go back to EW when I had more bargaining power? With a pit in my stomach, I said no thanks. I was freelancing for this fabulous new magazine and Web site, Inside, and other places. If I stayed the course, a better opportunity was bound to emerge, right?

Wrong, oh, wrong, oh, wrong.

I got laid off from Fox the next year, and Inside collapsed the year after that. I interviewed again at EW, only this time at the Web site. My former contact there was gone. I made it through two rounds of cuts and then failed to get an offer.

It’s possible that if I’d said yes to that woman back in 2000, I’d now be wrinkling my nose at the prospect of writing yet another fricking summer movie preview or power 100 listing or CD capsule review. It’s possible I’d be fantasizing about writing about “meaningful” stuff, or just plain getting out of New York.
Still, I can’t help but think that my answer to that phone call was a big, big mistake. It’s done, and I accept it. But I earnestly, painfully regret it.

Nice to Meet Who?

Hi. Nice to meet you, too. Except that we've met before. Remember?

They never do.

There's something about me. I have a special quality, a certain je ne sais quois, that makes people say je ne sais who the hell you are, even after having extended conversations with me. Today, two people from my D.C.-based employer visited our office for a meeting, and were introduced to me on their way in.

These two people politely shook my hand and said, "Nice to meet you." They smiled the fresh smiles of people who were encountering someone new. Except that I had met them. Not only had I met them, I had been with them in meetings, several times a week, for several months. I had even spoken at these meetings, in front of them, and spoken with each person directly, once or twice.

I long ago figured out that the sight of my face obviously triggers some sort of memory-erase in people I meet once or twice. It's sort of like living in a version of the movie 50 First Dates, where I am the Adam Sandler character and Drew Barrymore's character is played by almost everyone else. Maybe that's why I get so excited when I can finally get acknowledgment from any business where I am a regular patron.

This severe instance of recognition failure was a new demonstration of my powers. "Nice to see you," I said. "We've been in meetings together. I used to work in D.C." I waited for some sign of recognition, but none materialized. "Oh!" they nodded vacantly, still clearly not having any idea that they had laid eyes on me before.

The group began to pull chairs around a central table. Making the moment perfect, another coworker, someone I see every day, said, "Christine, do you mind if we use this chair?"

Looking at the upside of my invisibility, it represents a chance to reinvent myself on a regular basis. Next time I walk into work, or another situation involving familiar faces, I could just pretend to be someone else. As long as I remain my impression-free self at the core, the possibilities are endless.

Hello, my name is Cornelia, and I work in fashion. I'm Melissa, and I work at San Francisco's Circus Center. Hi, it's Sharon, I'm a Cylon -- or Shira will work, just signal in my direction. Hope to see you again soon.