Rancho Tarzanadu: "Home-Based Business"

     Miss Linda was falling more and more in love with the “Safer-at-Home” order by the day! She felt horribly bad for the people who were getting sick and dying, but she was realizing more and more that this whole working-for-someone-else thing was for the birds! She was trying to come up with creative ways to make a steady and solid living working from Rancho Tarzanadu. Having a few tenants helped, obviously, but she was thinking of ways to make life more luxurious without having to “slave it” (as one of her ex-bosses liked to call it; this particular ex-boss once tormented her with a dead snake in a parking lot to get his kicks from her reaction, but that’s a whole other story) for a robust living.

     Being a Self-Help Coach was definitely out, as Miss Linda could care less for the most part what other people did. And she certainly didn’t want the responsibility of telling them what to do. She’d rather watch paint dry.

     She wished she could make some cold, hard cash by selling the songs she’d written, but was afraid those days no longer existed for the recording artist.

     Her broken doll jewelry was looking like her best bet, although that seemed like a very “niche” market. Everyone was talking about “niche” markets these days, and how to strategize and attract your ultimate customer base (apparently the email list was King). Naturally everyone wanted you to buy something from them. Miss Linda herself had fallen for a Witches’ online group called “WEALTH” (which she had to admit was highly worth the investment thus far, as she watched the unemployment checks, stimulus checks, and Cal-Fresh checks electronically roll in), the Astro Twins Astrology “Portal” membership, Marie Forleo’s “B-School” for building your own business, Elephant Journal’s “How to Sell the Hell Out of Your Book” program, Biddy Tarot’s “Master the Tarot Card Meanings”, the Hippie-style “Commune” spirituality community, and “Digital Music Masters” record-your-own-album-from-your-home-studio Logic recording class. She barely had time to work, considering, and had to talk herself out of investing in additional intriguing programs.

     Now was the time to start implementing them.

     She pondered working for someone else. Again. Going back. For someone else’s dream. For someone else’s vision. The mindless soul-numbing repetition of it all. A cog in someone else’s wheel.

     She recalled various “Bosses” from her past. There was the one who told her she looked better with make-up on. There was the one who offered to pay her rent if she would sleep with him (when she declined, he called her “worthless”). There was the one who used to have sex with prostitutes and drug addicts upstairs above his home-office during the day while his fiancé was at work, and used to come back downstairs sweaty, immediately post-coitus as said prostitute/drug addict hopped in her sports car and sped away while counting the wad of cash he’d just given her. There was the one previously mentioned, who tormented her once with a dead snake and made comments about the size of her breasts regularly. There was the one who told her what time she would be eating lunch (before she was actually hungry), and required her to eat with him every single day, and when she refused, he fired her. They all nickel-and-dimed her as an added bonus for her time and energy. She had definitely paid her dues. A gal’s got to earn a living.

     This present pause, this reset, this plague could be a life-saving game changer, if only Miss Linda played her Tarot cards right.