Well America, it's been a hard few days.

I left last Saturday from the apartment.

I'd been out all night the night before. I only had about two hours sleep. I'd gone to an interview at a consulting firm on Soho and it only lasted 26 minutes and so I thought, "well this really stinks." So I took what little cash I had and hit the bars in the East village and drank and drank until I felt better about life, the world and everything.

I fell asleep waiting for the bus in Port Authority back to Bayonne. Eventually it came and I slept until the last stop. I got up briefly at the bus driver's goading, walked the six blocks back to the apartment and fell back to sleep. 

I slept about two  more hours.

I woke up and started cleaning. I had this guy coming to see the room I had for rent. He checked "clean" in his application. I thought it better be cleaner than it was. I scrubbed the toilet and the tub and the bathroom tile (something I hate to do). He was supposed to come at 2pm. He never showed up.

My nerves were jumping mixed with a glorious panic attack from having had too much liquor the night before and I felt depression looming.

After awhile I decided I just needed to get the hell out of there. The apartment isn't well insulated and it was very cold.

I drove out to the lake in Northwestern New Jersey where my mother has a house.

I slept for awhile in the family room of mom's house watching Hillary and Obama and McCain and Huckabee and wondering when things would get better for those of us down here on the ground.

When I couldn't stand the folderal and diatribes and he said she said garabage I went into the spare room.

Sadly and with trepidation I told my mother that I might have to move back home for awhile - that there wasn't any work and I couldn't afford the bills any longer.

They are mounting. The heating bill alone was four times it's normal amount (who plans for that?) and the landlady never did replace the 1840's windows as she said she would, so I'm basically heating the world. Leaving and turn the heat off is the best thing I can do.

I'd have been fine if the roommate had come and paid his share (2 months rent), but he never showed. Later he emailed me and said that he'd gotten busy at work and it slipped his mind..but  that he was still interested. Who makes appointments to see an apartment and then simply "forgets about it?"

Okay so I'm spending the past week at the lake making phonecalls and sending out resumes. Then I find an agency who I worked with about 8 years ago. They were pretty good about getting me work, but then again, everyone was in those days before Enron and 9/11.

I'd studied all the software and learned it inside and out and was confident about working for them again. I called and spoke with a guy and he says that they are brimming over with work and how he could really use me.

He called me last night and said that because of a problem I had with the agency 8 years earlier  they'd be unable to use me. I tried to get them to give me another chance, but he said that there was nothing doing. I had a person there 8 years ago call me up and cancel my projects the night before (at around 10pm) and the last time she did this she was laughing and sounded like she was stoned. They were always really big jobs that I"d cancelled other work to do. Eventually she was canned from the place. But it didn't matter. Nothing doing.

This morning I called the law firm agency and asked to speak to my counselor about finding me some work . The receptionist said that he wasn't available and would I like his voicemail. I said no, to just have Ronnie call me (who is the owner and told me to deal with him directly). My counselor calls me a few minutes later and yells at me telling me how nasty and unprofessional I am on the phone making threats, etcetera and saying nasty things to the receptionist and how this isn't normal and how he wishes I would just lose his number.

I level with him and tell him how I don't know how I'm going to make all the bills this month and how I haven't worked in awhile and how badly I need a job and how I was freaking out. He says that he's been there, not knowing how to make the mortgage payment and that he had five people to feed. We commiserated.

He tells me not to take my frustrations out on them.

He says that if I agree to change my attitude, they will give me another chance.

I agree. I feel like crying. He says if I ever act irrationally again he will run. He also says I have to take less money. I agree. What else can I do when my back is up against the wall?

 Is it The President's fault? Is it Congresses fault? I went to a college stuck in the forties when all you had to be was a college graduate to secure a wonderful job. But those times are over. The only job placement they had for me was in the Mission Field, but even then you have to have zero debt to go..and I have all those wonderful college loans.

Do you know that artists, such as writers, do not pay taxes in Ireland. Just a thought.

When it all comes crashing down, it does so all at once.

I had to face the fact that I might have to move back with mother, that I might have to get rid of all of the crap in my apartment and that I may end up losing my car.

And I want to scream.

My mother is very helpful telling me what an arrogant son of a bitch I am and she sides with the world about how worthless I am and how people like me will never amount or become anything at all.

So I decide that I want to leave and  visit my friend Janell at The old pine shop in Jefferson for awhile or maybe go back to my cold apartment (which is an hour and a half from the lake) and my mother says I can't because she needs me to go with her to the vet and help her take care of the dog (he's an old yorkie and he's been limping lately).

And I keep getting emails from agencies saying they have work for me at 30/hour. So I send the resumes and samples and it's NOTHING DOING.

 Is there actual work? Is it just me they don't want to work with? Am I an arrogant bastard?

Or is it like my last roommate said, when an agency approaches a perspective client they have to have endless pools of employees to show the client.

I think that when we're desperate and have our backs up against the wall in this horrible economy; the words "recession" floating everywhere - we may behave badly. I've seen this in movies from the Depression Era. It's the whole needing money thing that sends us reeling.

The agency I went to on Friday turned out NOT  to be a dud. The woman  there is a very polished hipster and she has emailed me a few times. But she says things like, "let's talk next week" as if working were a hobby of mine...offering you a proverbial capuccino when you haven't eaten in three days, but hey, I'll take the capuccino!

It's hard finding work. You can't apprear like you need it, even if you just spent your last 99 cents to buy starch so you can Iron your faded Calvin Klein shirt for the 26 minute interview.

America, we do need a change. I have excellent skills and yet, no work - and NOTHING DOING. All my work - or most of it, has gone to India.

I wrote a sandwich ad for Hillshire Farms and sent it to them. I asked them if they could give me a job or get me a job working for their ad agency.

But noone at Hillshire farms will probably read it, and if they do, it will probably get a laugh or two and then be sent to some slush pile in oblivion.

And that is where I am currently living, until I lose my apartment and end up living under the Bayonne Bridge (that is if I can climb over the fence and find a suitable cardboard box).

I have a readership of nearly 40,000 people and still I may end up living in a box under a bridge in sub-zero temperatures.

America, I've lost you.

AMERICA: Nothing Doing

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