Your mother wears combat boots (and why I won’t sell mine to Amanda Palmer)

Not the real Amanda Palmer mind you, but the Amanda Palmer I dreamt about last night. I’ve been reading, devouring really, Amanda’s book The Art of Asking the past week and she is quickly becoming my art idol. Plus she’s married to Neil Gaiman so there’s that.

I have these pink Gripfast steel toed most awesome boots in the world I recently bought from a friend. In my dream Amanda came up to me and offered to buy them from me for $100. When I told her no, she upped the offer to $1,000. I still told her no. She looked at me and said, but your daughter needs braces and your plumbing needs to be fixed, why would you turn down that kind of money?

Dream me, looks at her and says you don’t understand. These boots represent so much more than $1,000 could buy. You see every day I go to a day job I abso-fucking-lutley cannot stand because I have bills to pay (like aforementioned braces and plumbing and student loans I swear seem like will never be paid off!) and yet, in the back of my mind, when I’m in my work clothes to go to my boring accounting job, I think, ah but I have the most awesome pink boots in the world at home, the real me, the me who doesn’t have to put on a mask and pretend to be someone I’m not to make a paycheck.

The artist me who will one day have a large enough tribe to quit my day job. Those boots represent my hope and the sliver of the real me I have to hold onto every day. Even though I’m not wearing them at work, I can remember when I’m walking down the beige halls, looking at the people in the gray and tan work wear, and think to myself la la la, I may be conforming on the outside but on the inside I’m wearing pink motherfucking combat boots and I am awesome.