Revealing Hidden Codes That Cause Suffering…

As a young bride in Manhattan, I spent my first couple of months shopping, cooking and wandering goggle-eyed around that fascinating city.

One day I happened to bump into my next door neighbor (we lived in a relatively small mid-town apartment building at the time). “It’s got to be you cooking all that Indian food,” he said with a friendly grin. “Spicy odors disturbing you?” I asked. “Oh no,” he said. “I LOVE Indian food…in fact my tummy growls every time I pass your apartment.” “Come get some if you’re hungry,” I said. “Plenty of leftovers.” And he did.

My new buddy turned out to be a writer who made his rent and food money working as a freelancer/temp on Wall Street and in the city’s many law firms. Under his guidance, I soon signed up with an agency that taught me the basics of WordPerfect—the software currently in use in corporate Manhattan. I had never used a computer before. In fact, the first time I hit the print button and saw a piece of paper rolling out of a laser printer with what I’d typed during my training at the agency, I shrieked with excitement—to me, a true lover of the power of words, this was pure magic!

Gone Fishin’ & The Art of Taking Personal Responsibility…

At one point in my erratic freelance career in Manhattan, I landed in a small branch of an environmental law firm with its head office in California. It was headed by a cold and beautiful woman with grave emotional problems that she made no bones about publicly sharing.

Her personal assistant was a petite red-head possessed of a voice as squeaky as a Pomeranian. I shall call her Candy. Now Candy sucked up madly to our boss—the benefit being that as long as she flattered the woman to bits, she was allowed to run the office as she damn well pleased. Candy was cute and funny and made us laugh with her endless fund of jokes—but she was also one of the most unethical office managers I ever came across in my history of freelancing. In fact, as soon as our boss flew west on business, Candy would hang a ‘Gone Fishin’’ sign on her office door, indicating she was not to be disturbed; it was common knowledge that she needed time to study for her evening college classes, and office work be damned.