dear whoever you are

well.

I said I would let you know how my unemployment adventure progressed.

I have this sweet little routine worked out for most of my week days. I have a new job of applying for jobs, which I wish could be my actual job. I really enjoy just wandering around the city, making multiple train connections (today: J, F, 2, 3, 4, 5, L, G), and listening to all the batty private conversations people have in public.

I like the man with the big stick of cotton candy balloons in baby shades of every color, the kids struggling to walk city blocks in clothes they have yet to grow in to, the teenagers with baggy jeans they've convinced themselves they've grown in to.

I like women in chinatown with crazy mismatched patterns of paisley, houndstooth, and polka-dots, seeing owners that looks like their dogs, and trying to decipher secret dynamics between couples walking down delancey street, self-conscious cool kids on bedford avenue, and total strangers forced to sit too close to each other on the rush hour J train. It still never fails to interest me how so many people live here, with their own lives, moving together as total strangers, sharing their lives with one another if even for five minutes on a train platform before the F comes.

I wake up at 11 like I should always be allowed to do, and apply for two jobs and two rooms on the internet.
I eat the bullshit mash survival gruel I cook once a week in military-cook proportions to prepare for the day.

This week it's:
chicken stock (watered waaaaay down), miso paste (to balance the watering down), soy sauce, white potatoes, shallots, leeks, carrots, chickpeas, green peas, chicken sausage, black pepper, some vinegar, too much jasmine rice that sucked up all the liquid and cooked down to congee-consistency.

(It started to get more earth tone in color as the week progressed and it began to melt in to itself.)

Then, I leave the house, apply to two more jobs in person, and try and make an impression.
I'm not very good with first impressions, so I just focus on making an impression, positive or not. For as much as I need a job, my past experience has taught me, there will always be jobs to have, and if they're assholes from the start before you get a chance to fuck up or even work for them, they're probably not worth impressing.

Afterwards I treat myself to a celebratory drink at the top of happy hour, photocopy my cat comic (yesterday), wander around prospect park in the rain (today), read a book/paper in the least douchey (low laptop and dreadlock quotient) coffee shop I can find (monday), and go home to draw (today).