3
Okay. New day. Here we go.
The sun is out, the trees are starting to bud, and as Anne of Green Gables would say, every day is fresh, with no mistakes
in it.
(I think she actually said “with no mistakes in it yet ,” but I don’t like that as much. It makes it sound like the mistakes are inevitable.)
I make myself a coffee and some crunchy toast with peanut butter and then sit down at my kitchen table and open up Wordle.
Day three hundred and two, here we go.
I start with READY. Ready for a good day.
The R and E are yellow—the rest are gray. Hmm.
PRICE. As in, I can’t afford the price of this organic peanut butter. (Plus it doesn’t taste as good as the cheap stuff, and
the weird layer of oil on top kind of grosses me out.)
Shoot. The R and the E are still in the wrong place, and the rest of the letters are gray.
Okay. Changing strategy here. I need to eliminate some other letters.
TOUGH. As in, I need to toughen up and stop feeling so sorry for myself.
The O is in the right place, the rest of the letters are gray. Still, that’s a lot of options ruled out. And now I know three
letters: O, R, and E.
O, R, E.
R, E, O.
O, E, R.
LOVER, I type. As in, it’s been months since I’ve had one.
Aha! The L and V are gray, but the O, E, and R are green.
How about... MOVER. No, wait, I already know there’s no V. MOWER? Like a lawn mower?
I type it in.
Crap. Crap, crap, crap. It’s still wrong—and now I’ve only got one guess left.
_ O _ E R
Why are there so many words that could fit? POWER? POKER? No, those don’t work. There’s no P or W. COVER? HOVER? No, there’s
no V.
C’mon, brain. Think .
I close the app for a moment and try to let my brain wander. I check my email (nothing), my bank account (ha), the new dating
app I’m trying out.
Oh! There’s a message.
I open it with a bit of trepidation. The thing about PEI is, it’s really idyllic and beautiful but the population is only,
like, 150,000, and I’m pretty sure 80 percent of them are above sixty. So trying to use a dating app here is a bit risky.
The last few guys who messaged me were in their fifties, which, like... maybe they were really lovely, and I’m sure some
people don’t mind a bit of an age gap, but my rule is, if you’re closer to my parents’ age than to my age, I’m going to have
to politely pass.
But this guy, the one who sent the message, he looks quite young! I scroll through his profile. He’s named Arjun, he’s twenty -nine, he works as an engineer in Charlottetown... his favorite movie is Die Hard (that’s such a common answer I wonder if the app shouldn’t start making it the default for guys), favorite musician is Drake
(another answer that should be the default)... his profile picture is a little blurry, but he’s definitely cute, with short
dark hair and a really friendly smile.
Best of all, his message isn’t anything cringey or creepy, it’s just normal. Hey, how’s it going?
With a pleasant flutter of nerves, I message back. And by the time I get my second cup of coffee, he’s answered!
We message back and forth a bit—the usual stuff, nice to meet you, how’s your day going—and I make him laugh (or at least,
type “lol”) when I tell him how I think Die Hard should be the default movie choice for guys on the app. We banter back and forth about movies for a while (he tells me he
waffled between Die Hard and The Dark Knight for his favorite movie, and I make an argument for why A Knight’s Tale was actually Heath Ledger’s most iconic work) and within half an hour, we’ve set up a date for tomorrow night in Charlottetown.
I get dressed for work, singing cheerfully to myself and thinking I should do a Heath Ledger movie marathon sometime. I can
watch A Knight’s Tale, 10 Things I Hate About You, maybe even The Dark Knight, although I’m not really into superhero movies—
Hang on a second.
The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger.
JOKER .
I grab my phone, swipe open Wordle, type the letters in—and that’s it! JOKER! That’s the Wordle answer!
I do a little spinny dance in my bedroom. Three hundred and two days! Only sixty-three days until I hit a year!
I stop dancing abruptly. Actually, sixty-three still sounds like quite a lot of days. What if tomorrow is some really weird
word, like ERGOT or CRAIC? If I lose out after three hundred and two days...
Well. Nothing will happen, I suppose.
But I’ll be super disappointed.
I grab my bag and head out to my car. My neighbor, Mrs. Finnamore, is watering her garden plants in rubber boots and a pink
dressing gown.
“Morning, Mrs. Finnamore,” I call.
“Morning, dear,” she replies.
She’s so sweet, Mrs. Finnamore. She’s had me over for tea a few times since I moved here, and I try to keep an eye out for
her in return. I think she forgets that she’s eighty-eight sometimes, and I’ll catch her trying to lift fifty-pound bags of
gardening soil by herself or trying to clean out her gutters without anyone to hold the ladder steady.
“I’m going to the grocery store later,” I tell her. “Need me to pick anything up for you?”
“No, thank you.”
I wave again and climb into my car, humming to myself. I’m determined to be cheerful today. This is already a better day than
yesterday, right? I’ve done Wordle, and I’ve got a date tomorrow! That’s exciting.
Mostly exciting.
Okay, I’d say I’m feeling, like, 95 percent excitement, 5 percent dread. And I know dread probably sounds like a strong word, but trying to meet people using dating apps is kind of weird. It’s like you’re locking yourself into this weird social ritual called “The First Date.” You arrive, you exchange pleasantries, you chat about this and that, you eat some food, maybe you laugh a little, but the whole time it’s kind of like you’re on a job interview. A strange, nighttime interview for a position where you’ll do some of your work naked.
And, like, you and your date both know why you’re there, but you don’t talk about it directly, and at the end there’s always this awkward moment when I want to
blurt out, “All right, well, thanks for coming in. We’ll check your references and be in touch.”
And that’s assuming the guy is nice, and not just trying to get you to come back to his place for sex. Which, can we talk
about for a second? Because not only is it super annoying having to come up with excuses to get away from pushy guys (because
if you try to tell them the truth, that you’re just not interested, they either get sullen and defensive or straight-up nasty),
but sometimes the idea of having a one-night stand actually does appeal to me. I’ll see a guy on the app who’s super hot but
also clearly not long-term-commitment material, and I’ll think, hey, maybe I should just go on a date, have a fun night, and
be done. But that’s the catch-22 about men. You don’t want to have casual sex with the ones who are only on the app to get
casual sex, but the nice ones will never push you for casual sex, which means it’s up to you to suggest it, and I’ve just
never been confident enough to do something like that.
I tried asking my friends for advice once, but none of them had ever used a dating app, so they couldn’t really understand what I was talking about. Fallon met her husband, Ethan, doing her MBA (they were the two top students in the class; very Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe) and they got married straight after graduation. Divya’s parents set her up with her husband, Ishaan, but they’d already known each other for a few years through their families, and they were going to the same law school. And Martha met her husband, Jason, when we were in university and was married and pregnant with her first child by the time we all graduated.
When I tried to talk to them about how tricky dating apps were, their replies were:
Divya: omg, that sounds brutal
True, but not particularly helpful.
Fallon: You don’t need a guy!! Plus don’t you want to get your career settled first?
Also true, also not helpful. I know I don’t need a guy, but I would like one, and at this rate, if I wait until my career is “settled,” I’ll be about seventy-five.
Martha: Is there a filter to show if they want kids?
Which is a valid question, I suppose, but probably the least helpful response of the three. I told Martha once that I don’t
think I want kids, but she shook her head and said, “Just wait,” and then told me for the fiftieth time about how she thought
she didn’t want kids until she met Jason, and then the second he asked her to marry him she suddenly knew in the depths of her soul that she was ready to be a mother.
I’m not saying that it might not happen to me someday, but I always get a little annoyed when she says it. Just like Fallon’s convinced that life is meaningless without a career, Martha is convinced that life is meaningless without kids.
I suppose my life is double-meaningless, since I have neither. It’s meaningless-meaningless. Meaningless squared.
No, stop that, Emily.
I shake my head firmly, as though I can shake the negative thoughts away. I’m not going to let myself sink into a dark mood
again. This is going to be a better day.
Dave’s daughter Analyn is pulling out of the parking lot as I get to work. I wave at her eagerly and roll my car window down
to talk to her. I’ve got a bit of a crush on Analyn. She’s a little older than me, in her early thirties, I think, and from
creeping Facebook I’ve learned that she then went to culinary school in France and now owns the highest-rated restaurant in
Summerside. I have this secret daydream that she’ll pop into the shop one day, and we’ll get to chatting and become close
friends. Which is extraordinarily unlikely, since she works about a million hours a week and probably already has hundreds
of friends.
“Morning, Analyn!” I call brightly.
“Morning,” she calls back, waving.
Then she pulls out onto the road and drives off. Which is totally fine. I need to get inside and get to work anyway.
I answer a few phone messages and clean off the layer of grime on the window that seems to have regrown overnight, then wipe
down the bathroom taps, which are covered in Dave’s and John’s trademark black fingerprints. I don’t know how they can stand
it. I don’t even work in the garage yet I still somehow go home with little smears of oil and grease on my clothes.
(Actually, who am I kidding? They probably don’t even notice.)
John comes in a few minutes after nine from whatever nondescript “thing” he mentioned he had this morning and goes straight
to the open garage without stopping at the front desk. The morning passes by unusually quickly, with plenty of phone calls
and customers flitting in and out. None of them stay to chat, but there’s a distinct sense of cheeriness in the air. It’s
the nicest day so far this spring. The sky is a really bright shade of blue and I can hear birds chirping outside the windows.
It’s like the whole world is conspiring to lift my spirits.
(And yes, obviously I realize the weather is not actually related to my life, but just—let me have this one, okay?)
At lunch, I sit down in the break room and pull out my handwritten “Dream Job List.” It’s a list I started a little while
ago of all the things I want my dream job to have. So far, it’s this:
Located in a big city (i.e., New York, Paris, London)
This one’s a biggie. Don’t get me wrong, I think small towns are lovely, but I want to be somewhere vibrant . Somewhere I can meet incredible people and go to art galleries and theater shows. Somewhere I can be a part of something
important, somewhere I can really make something of myself.
In a creative field
This one is also a biggie. I’m not sure why I decided to major in science, except that it felt like what I was supposed to do. All of my high school teachers always said the same things: I was such a smart girl; I had such a bright future. Smart girls with bright futures didn’t waste their potential on something as fickle and self-indulgent as the arts.
I don’t know exactly which creative field I want to work in yet, but I’m casting a wide net, keeping an eye out for internships
in film, photography, art history... anything rooted in creativity. If I keep an open mind, I just know the perfect job
will present itself someday.
In person
I added this one after the COVID pandemic. I was doing a few temp jobs in Halifax at the time, and all of them got switched
to virtual only. I was obviously really lucky that switching to virtual was an option, rather than just getting fired, but
the experience taught me I am just not cut out to work from home every day. It’s nice once in a while, for sure, but I like
seeing people every day. And I like having an excuse to get dressed up nicely (and not just from the waist up).
Those three are all I have so far, the only absolute musts , but today I take out my pen and add a fourth.
Six-figure salary
I know it sounds shallow, but it’s something that’s been pricking at me ever since I looked up those flights to Toronto. I want to be able to enjoy little luxuries—girls’ trips or spa days—every now and then without completely stressing over every dollar. And when I say six figures, I’m not saying I want to earn $999,999 or anything. I would be perfectly content with $100,000. (Perfectly content? Who am I kidding, I would be thrilled .) And I don’t expect to earn that right away. But if I’m going to go back and do another degree, I want to be working toward
a career that will give me more financial security in the long run.
I nod at my list, pleased, just as John steps into the lunch room. In a rare moment of interest, he leans over the table.
“What’s that?” He squints and reads the title aloud. “Dream job list.”
I scowl. It sounds stupid when he says it with that tone.
“Yes,” I say with dignity, while simultaneously shifting my hand to hide the “six-figure salary” bit.
“This isn’t your dream job?” he asks, pulling open the fridge.
He doesn’t say it sarcastically, which somehow makes it more insulting. “You think it’s my dream job to be a receptionist
in an auto shop?”
He unwraps a sandwich and shrugs. “I dunno. It’s a good job, isn’t it? Pays benefits and stuff?”
Well, now I feel like an elitist jerk. “Yes, it is a good job,” I say tersely. “But that’s not the same as a dream job.”
He takes a bite of his sandwich and says, through a mouthful, “What d’you mean, a dream job?”
I’m flabbergasted. Partially because this is the longest conversation John and I have ever had, by about a hundred words,
and partially because how can he not know what a dream job is?
“It’s something you’re meant to do,” I say. “Your passion. Your purpose in life. Something you love so much it doesn’t even feel like a job!”
John snorts. “I don’t think that’s a real thing. All jobs feel like jobs.”
I roll my eyes. “No, they don’t. You think—” I grasp for a good example, an example he’ll actually understand. “You think
professional race car drivers see their work as a job ?”
John stares at me blankly. “Yes. Even if you like what you’re doing, it’s still going to feel like a job sometimes.”
“Is this your dream job, then?” I demand. “Or just something you settled for?”
He shrugs. “I like working here. And being happy with your day-to-day life isn’t settling.”
“Well—good for you,” I say stiffly. “Some of us are still looking, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to my list
now.”
He takes another bite of his sandwich and wanders off. I scowl at his back and then add another item to my list.
No irritating, one-dimensional coworkers who don’t understand anything about dreams