Disclaimer: superdyke actually edited and sent this after returning from said business trip, during which she got some bad news and did not get a chance to finish.
I’m on a ‘business trip’ right now, and even though I do this often (too often, some would argue) THIS particular trip is really highlighting for me how grown up I feel when I take these trips. The conference I’m presenting at is at a Disney Resort, a place that is fundamentally about children and childhood–especially about how we imagine children and idealize childhood. So I am really feeling it that I am not here AS a child or with my own children–I am not here to play, I am here to work.
I really enjoy that I am wearing a business suit while others are wearing bathing suits. I get a real charge from knowing that the charges for my meals are covered by the place that I work. This is of particular delight to this grown up because it seems to say in a small way ‘you are so smart we promise to feed you?’ and also, ‘damn, girl, you worked your ass off for years and now you are rewarded. With french fries that we paid for and a conference in the sun.’
Simultaneously, though, I feel like I’m only PRETENDING to be a grownup, I’m getting away with things. Like charging french fries, or even better, a chocolate bar, to the place I work (what? don’t look at me like that–it’s food!) There is part of me that goes, what, me? Sent to a conference? Much less a conference in a place organized around FUN! It’s not about feeling like a fraud, as a young woman who is also an authority figure of a sort I had to get over that years ago. It’s about acknowledging that in some sense, I have arrived at such a grown up place, such a secure place in that authority, that I can relax a little bit while I do my job.
