Yesterday I was searching my email archive for something from a while back when I stumbled across an email Leslie sent to Haddock last year in response to the open query “What do you really want to do which is completely removed from your job?” I thought it was a great example of her imagination, humour and ambition — she always wanted to have a healthy creating:consuming ratio — and was worth sharing with more people:
Start a media empowerment non profit for lower middle class girls. (As they are a deeply under served population, at that income level, boys have sports and girls are expected to either be hairdressers or marry a blue collar guy and baby it out. Rich kids have resources and lower class kids have other — often poor but other community based programs to serve them.)
Lobsters in Top Hats! A coffee table book featuring photographs of animals advertising themselves to be eaten. Lobsters in top hats, chickens in superhero suits etc. a la this. Title taken from a bunch of places in Newport that feature lobsters in tuxedos and top hats on their signage.
Adulthood: A manual — Already working on this one. Basic reference book on how to run your life as a grown up — things your parents should have taught you, but didn’t because unlike their parents, they both had jobs and precious little free time. Running your house, managing your groceries and menus, home repair, car stuff, baking stuff, shoe polishing, curtains,insurance, credit, cleaning, furniture care, laundry, budgets, time use, picking a Dr and dentist etc. Getting all your life maintenance stuff on track.
American Pie — Buy a house with a pool in the French countryside and open a pie shop in my village called American Pie where I make and sell — you guessed it — American style pies, crostinas, cookies, have 4-6 tables, serve coffee and lemonade and fruit salad and maybe something savory and simple like sandwiches or whatever and be the nice old lady who retired in France and ran her shop every day until she unfortunately passed away peacefully, in her sleep and a nice neighbor will kindly adopt my dog and cat after I pass.
The novel, the novel, always that goddamned novel.
Wigs for babies.
Go back to painting. (This is a pipe dream, alas.)
Learn to operate a letterpress, start a self-designed line of stationery.
Big in Japan — a book or long form magazine article project that takes my absolute worst crippling fear — I haven’t ever gone to Japan despite deeply wanting to, because I fear I am too huge for everything there. This fear is more complicated and embarassing than it sounds. So I go for 30-90 days, document it meticulously and learn a little something about myself and everyone in the world in the process.
You know, not much.
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