I used to travel a lot for business. My company treated us well when we traveled and I got to stay at some really nice hotels. I spent so much time at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Seoul Korea that I felt like it was a home away from home. While I was away, I'd be treated a bit like a princess... getting room service, having luxury cars drive me around, being taken out to fancy dinners and flying business class. Towards the end of my trips there, I starting finding all this VIP treatment really claustrophobic. I'd do things like stock my mini-fridge with normal food, or going running in the neighborhood and get lost. Anything to feel a independent.
I'd usually come home from these trips and have a little moment of culture shock, often while getting on a packed subway in the morning. 'Where's my god-damn limo!'
The funny thing is that being out of my normal routine for the past couple weeks has made me realize that my normal was pretty princess-y. If I think about how many people do things for me; doing my laundry, making my lunch, making my latte, waxing my eyebrows, delivering my groceries, walking my dog. All these services that we use when we're too busy to do them ourselves (and we can afford to pay someone else to do them for us). I feel like a rich bourgeois asshole complaining about something that many people can't afford, but I wonder if this service-oriented convenience culture we live in is not such a good thing? Is not making your own coffee sort of emasculating?
I've spent this week working on setting up a home-studio in our apartment. I've been to Ikea twice, and in that time become very familiar with the screw gun, masonry drill, ratchet and level. This is the sort of shit that I would normally whine at my boyfriend to help me with. Doing it myself has made me realize not just how much fun doing this stuff is, but also how disconnected I've been from that feeling of self-sufficiency.
No more being a princess.
No comments:
Post a Comment