FYI: This is an archive of my Tonight's Negroni email newsletter.
Given all my pondering of hobbies and why we do them and how they relate to our vocations, my Special Lady Friend brought up something interesting to talk about. She has this notion of a "fantasy job", which is the job you occasionally joke or fantasize about leaving everything behind and picking up. It's not related to your actual job and it's probably not even related to your hobbies. It's not a passion you are pining to follow.
It's really a metaphor.
SLF's "fantasy" job is botany. This is hilarious, as she has next to zero aptitude or even interest in plants in general. Occasionally, however, when doing crisis psychiatric evaluations of people in a metropolitan hospital emergency department gets to be a bit much, she will release the pressure a bit by thinking "Maybe I'll just quit and become a botanist!"
Which is why I've started calling it the "fuck you job".
My version is welder.
It's laughable, I know! Did I really want to learn a new (and not easy) skill and trade my bourgeois web developer lifestyle for something more blue collar? Of course not! But whenever I entertained the idea, it was because something about my day-to-day at the time was just pissing me off.
There's a false perception of simplicity in the other. We assume that while sure, that's a hard job to have, it's probably not as hard or at least not as aggravating as the job that is currently making me crazy. "It's botany! You hang out with plants!" or "You're a welder. You make a thing stick to another thing and then you make the next thing stick to another thing. It makes sense!"
At the very least is was a way of expressing exasperation by saying aloud, "Man, fuck this, I'm going to go learn how to weld."
I'm curious to know if any of you have this fictitious career that you hang onto. Surely it's not just us?
Whatevs, I'll always have my Art.
BONUS: A kind reader sent me this video after the the previous installment about "Lost Interest" and coincidentally it dovetails nicely with the botany. If you haven't seen Adaptation, I highly recommend it.
Blanquita
This is a Sutton Original™, and that's the best name I could come up with on short notice for a drink that has a favor profile that surprisingly sits somewhere a more typical White Negroni and a Margarita. Based on some lackadaisical (spelled correctly on the first try, thankyouverymuch!) internet searching it is slang for both young, attractive white women and cocaine, so I've got that going for me. Also check out this awesome Cuban actress called Blanquita Amaro. I mean, amaro for cryin' out loud!
- 1oz Mezcal (I used Sombra.)
- 1oz Lillet
- 3/4oz Suze
- 1/4oz Orange liqueur (Leopold's for me, but go ahead with Cointreau or even Tripple Sec)
- Fill a rocks glass with ice
- Add ingredients and stir
- Garnish with an orange twist (a wedge of lime or even lemon might also work)
Suze is still kind of a premium ingredient, but given the price of limes these days, maybe some bartenders should consider this sort of variation...