I'm standing on Lincoln Boulevard at 7 in the morning holding my yoga mat. I'm waiting for my friend Lora to pick me up at California Rent-a-Car where I'm dropping my rental. I will take her to the airport and borrow her car while she's in New York so I can save some money. It's freezing. I see her silver Mercedes approaching, wait, she drives right by, and I'm flagging her down with my mat, yelling her name as she speeds down Lincoln. Pathetic.
I'm doing a lot of things differently in my new economy.
I'm cleaning my own house, choosing meters over valet, rebuilding my own blow dry muscles, skipping doctors' appointments, living without HBO, avoiding Whole Foods. I search my garbage for a CVS receipt so I can return soap I've bought mistakenly. Clothing? I'm not shopping at all. Well, actually, I've discovered Ross, where I bought a $20 pair of T-strap Aerosoles. I show them off to my friends at lunch at The Ivy; they're not impressed.
Actually I grew up this way, saving plastic bags and watching my parents drive their Buicks till they died. I'm from New England originally. We're all Pilgrims there, smart and frugal; we don't live on credit. As one Boston friend said recently, "We start storing food in February for next winter. Potato Up!" It was only in my life as a New York magazine editor that I was exposed to Fedexing suitcases and limitless free mascara.
When Lora reclaims her Mercedes a week later, I decide to give up a car altogether. I happily ride my bike around Venice, to the post office at Windward Circle, to yoga on Main Street, to the movies on the 3rd Street Promenade. My bike's limitations help curtail my spending; I only go out at night if I can walk or my date drives. No buying meat, or any heavy food. I purchase two bowls on sale at Pottery Barn but the heavy basket topples my wheels. Despite my decade-long spinning regimen, I'm a dork on a bike.
I take an informal poll, asking friends what they've given up during the recession. The answers are heartfelt and absurd at the same time: shopping for clothes, professional makeup applications (she now stops by the Laura Mercier counter before events), tennis in Manhattan, monthly hair color, weekly manicures, daily housekeepers, Starbucks and vacations all around. One friend did downsize by selling her San Marino house and renting in Pasadena, another planted a vegetable garden.
If this sounds ridiculous, and that of course these concessions are a necessary adjustment, sure, I get it, and so do they. But everything is relative. If you start to seethe that I'm bragging about cutting down but somehow still managing to drive a Mercedes and lunch at The Ivy (next to Sofia Coppola on one side and some guy named Chick on the other) know that all the "stuff" is borrowed and an illusion in one way or another.
Sure, I miss my old life as an executive and what came with it, but it's all temporary, especially when it's from an expense account at a well paying job. I watched "The Devil Wears Prada" the other night, filmed right outside my old office building. I've been there, literally. (Though at this stage of reinvention, I relate to Andy, not Miranda.) Some days I want to hold onto every last bit of my former life when I didn't have to think about saving quarters for the laundry. There, I said it. I recently lost my Jimmy Choo sunglasses, my last vestige of a designer lifestyle. Granted I got them for free, but I really do miss them.
I've been redeeming miles, flying coach, taking the AirTrain (if you don't know what I'm talking about you are still in the old economy). But last trip, in a weak moment, I upgraded to business class, using miles of course. The whole experience suddenly seemed so luxurious. A pillow and blanket! Movies! A free meal! A friend in the next row! Clinging to that pillow I saw how far back my former lifestyle has receded. Still, despite the warm cookie, I was happy to land in my new reality, get back into my bungalow and my new life, even though I had to take a taxi to get there.