Healthy Freelancer
Yesterday, reviewing my bank account, I felt a bit suicidal. I'm broke, despite having successfully badgered all the deadbeat editors who owed me money to pay it forward. It still didn't add up to much. I was spending money in London as if I worked for a bank, not out of my apartment, spending countless hours on research for which I will, months and months from now, be remunerated with roughly the cost of Tube fare. Feverishly, I began to pour over ads for live-out au pairs, a popular work category on London's Gumtree, as well as under the table restaurant jobs and jewelry modeling. I wrote a dozen cover letters saying how much I love changing babies' naps and breaking the law for a minimum wage and the loveliness of my wrist and ring finger.
At 4:30, I abandoned this self-degrading search because it was time for my trial visit at the Canary Riverside Club, a jewel of a gym nicer than most spas with a swimming pool facing the River Thames. Out of reach, of course, but I was happy enough to exploit their free pass. I'm fairly expert at this. As a very underpaid freelancer with a penchant for exercise, I have conceivably visited hundreds of gyms, taking advantage of free day or week passes in cities on at least three continents. Usually I find it's easy to walk away. After three days, I've had my fill of sweaty exercise bikes, Bon Jovi and strangers hair in the shower drains, and am ready to resume my routine of outdoor, solo runs. Not this time. The club, with its granite floors and piles of fluffy towels, was immaculately clean. The pool was warm and I could see the sun setting over the river, turning the sky pink, and the Shard and South Bank at every exhale as I swam 40-meter laps. I followed the swim with "hydrotherapy," as its new-agy practitioners have termed it. At least six pools of varying temperature, some with jet-producing bubbles and others laid with colorful stones, evoking the stillness of a pond. As I sucked down a mango protein shake after my workout, I tried to talk myself out it. But I knew what I was doing -- I handed over my credit card.
Because freelancers deserve good health, too. Over these three years of freelancing (and before that, grad school), I have become accustomed to skimping on healthcare where possible. I've taken half the dose and used my daily contacts for three increasingly blurry days in a row. I've slept certain hours so that I'd only require two meals a day (one of which could be coffee) and I visited a free mental health center in uptown Chicago, nearly an hour ride on the El from the Loop. I've bought medicine over the counter in Latin America and Africa, where it's a fraction of the price but may not work. I've chosen to be a runner, as much as any other reason, because it's a cheap way to stay fit.
But walking around this fancy gym, I felt well. I felt rich. It may be enough, just to feel that way from time to time.
At 4:30, I abandoned this self-degrading search because it was time for my trial visit at the Canary Riverside Club, a jewel of a gym nicer than most spas with a swimming pool facing the River Thames. Out of reach, of course, but I was happy enough to exploit their free pass. I'm fairly expert at this. As a very underpaid freelancer with a penchant for exercise, I have conceivably visited hundreds of gyms, taking advantage of free day or week passes in cities on at least three continents. Usually I find it's easy to walk away. After three days, I've had my fill of sweaty exercise bikes, Bon Jovi and strangers hair in the shower drains, and am ready to resume my routine of outdoor, solo runs. Not this time. The club, with its granite floors and piles of fluffy towels, was immaculately clean. The pool was warm and I could see the sun setting over the river, turning the sky pink, and the Shard and South Bank at every exhale as I swam 40-meter laps. I followed the swim with "hydrotherapy," as its new-agy practitioners have termed it. At least six pools of varying temperature, some with jet-producing bubbles and others laid with colorful stones, evoking the stillness of a pond. As I sucked down a mango protein shake after my workout, I tried to talk myself out it. But I knew what I was doing -- I handed over my credit card.
Because freelancers deserve good health, too. Over these three years of freelancing (and before that, grad school), I have become accustomed to skimping on healthcare where possible. I've taken half the dose and used my daily contacts for three increasingly blurry days in a row. I've slept certain hours so that I'd only require two meals a day (one of which could be coffee) and I visited a free mental health center in uptown Chicago, nearly an hour ride on the El from the Loop. I've bought medicine over the counter in Latin America and Africa, where it's a fraction of the price but may not work. I've chosen to be a runner, as much as any other reason, because it's a cheap way to stay fit.
But walking around this fancy gym, I felt well. I felt rich. It may be enough, just to feel that way from time to time.
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