The principal thing about Lisa is that she likes to experiment with luxury and boredom in equal amounts. For example, when she starts to feel disinterested at work, she simply stops working, embracing the empty hours until someone complains. Sometimes, it’s multiple days until her boss gets on her case. That example might not seem strange. Many people (everyone) gets bored at work. Except, most people distract themselves by bothering other people, eating snacks, and…one of the most common tactics people engage in to quell the doldrums is simply to complete the tasks handed to them, grasping at the downstream effects of administration in hopes of small dopamine releases tied to checked off checkboxes, both digital and hard copy. It’s surprising, in our digital age, how many times people copy digital to-dos onto real-life, fibrous paper. Maybe they want to check things off twice, see if that can produce meaning. And now about the luxury. Lisa the lover of luxury goods and experiences. She gets self-conscious about whether what she buys is actually luxury. In our digital age, there’s always unending access to yet another level of luxury you hadn’t heard of before. So for Lisa, luxury is defined as things she can’t really afford that are dope as hell and shit. It’s the stuff she goes into credit card debt for. Even though she lives in the city, not more than two miles away from the Four Seasons Hotel, she sometimes stays at the Four Seasons on random nights when she feels like it. No special occasion. No one special in town for the weekend. Just a woman and her love of luxury. Once, she bought a bottle of Dom Pérignon after receiving a 1.2% raise at her annual review. She was pissed at the percentage. One might call it a rage-spend. But she also justified it by reasoning that if the bullshit raise was good for anything it was good for something nice, a nice bottle of Champagne on an otherwise unluxurious evening. For balance, as stated above, Lisa likes to pursue luxury and boredom with equal vigor. On days she clings to boredom, there’s no Champagne-like pursuits. And when she’s heating up the credit card for some much-needed extravagance, you can’t find a hint of fatigue or detachment on her glowing face. Every other weekend. Three days on. Two days off. Back and forth. Sometimes she counts. Other times not. But in her spirit, she knows it all balances out. Lisa is cool as hell and shit.
