The wind has shifted, it's raining now.  A cold marine layer and the air conditioner seems useless as a dinosaur.  Last night's Featherless was much fun, if sparsely attended.  And the changes, so many changes.  I got a tutoring job, and had an interview for a second part-time job today.  The second job (Starbucks) I'm not sure if I'll get, but I'm feeling hopeful all the same.

Nevertheless, at this exact moment my stomach is empty and I feel too tired and listless to cook anything or do anything about dinner.  I'm drinking coffee and somehow that seems like enough.  Tonight is Wordlab, and for the first time I'm not bringing anything in, I've just had the sort of week where writing was not happening.  The amnesia novel is about three chapters now, and I haven't had time to work on it for a couple of weeks.  I've been racing around getting a TB test, putting my resume in order, getting all the bits and pieces together for my tutoring orientation, etc..

That and practicing for featherless.  I so wish more people had been there, each person that read, Mila, Diane, was their own sort of amazing.  I was ok, I did my usual over-dramatic shtick, but people laughed, and they seemed to dig the listing of potential addictions at the end.  "tobacco, orgasms, the gym, benzodiazepines and celebrity gossip."

in which I spill my guts

The rain is conspiring to keep me tired and depressed, I think.  I should be elated right now, with all of these positive changes, but instead I feel sort of blah, sort of meh.  That's okay, maybe tonight's class will re-inspire me.

Shakedown, the wheat from the chaff.  As Katie's parent's left and she and I settled into our new lives together, I did some looking into the SSDI "Ticket to Work" Program. By this program, disabled people currently receiving social security funds can experiment with working under supported conditions to see if it is something that they can handle.  I feel like I am moderately stabilized on the Wellbutrin, and I am interested in taking on new challenges at the moment.  However, what I found was not promising.

After perusing the internet for what seemed like hours, the "Employment Networks" and "Vocational Rehabilitation" facilities (their jargon, not mine) that I was able to locate in my vicinity offered very limited employment choices.  Now, I'm well aware that we are in a recession, and were I not disabled, even with my schmacy education I would not necessarily be able to find anything at all.  Due to my publication record I would not pass background checks, so that dismisses a certain range of jobs, and then there's the whole reason I'm on disability on the first place, a clear verdict of unemployability would make keeping what I could get rather difficult.

The premise of working within a supported setting that acknowledged the disability, that had seemed encouraging.  One night, talking to Omar, making "golden ticket" jokes, he suggested that maybe I could get some nice library job, given my qualifications, and I felt hopeful about the process.

However, upon looking at the employment networks, they all grouped the disabled together -all together - in their employment groups, meaning special snowflake me would me working side by side on the factory floor with the severely developmentally disabled, down syndrome fellas, (retards) all of us doing either custodial or factory/packaging sort of work.  Let me show you a picture, from Build Industries website. My employment here would be brief, and death would come quickly and blessedly.

I imagine myself as the maniacal chick in the teal jumpsuit.  There was also the option of sweeping floors in the Goodwill.

So, I called my father for advice.  He said, "if you go into a situation like that, you are doomed to failure".  He said, "You have everything you need right now all lined up to write another book.  What are you doing not writing another book?  Treat it like a job, and just haul ass on it until it's done, sell it, and write another one.  That's your job, and you'll be much happy doing that than cleaning toilets with epileptics or whatever."

I thought...huh.  He's RIGHT.  So, manic me got to work.

Tonight I was going to go to Cafe Bassam and attempt to be approachable through careful wielding of mid-drift and manuscript, but instead I lost my nerve and am home, with some vanilla smirnoff trying to deal. Shyness is an intense propensity - when one has been steeped in it for so long, it becomes harder and harder to go out. It is just so easy to stay here where I am comfortable and safe and can listen to music and write and curl up in my pedicure chair with a down comforter and generally veg.

I mean, really, I work all day, I wake up at 7:30 and go to a non-profit where they pay me nothing and I research customs regulations and why someone lost a package of "The L Word" dvds they were trying to ship to our field office in Honduras. WTF? You can't track the USPS! I don't know what happened to your goddam dvds, I mean, if I'd had the presence of mind to FedEx them this wouldn't have happened, but I'm told to cut corners and be cheap so we can feed more babies in Ethiopia, so I sent it priority mail and they completely vanished off the face of this earth. I'm sorry. Stop calling me about it, I need to get my eyebrows done. And, no, I don't know if the hotel in Malawi has a view.

Anyway. Sorry, work stories are boring. So I'm stressed out, the same as everyone else in this world that hates their job and feels trapped. I applied to a million grad schools (well, 7, it felt interminable) this winter, and hopefully one of them will rescue me and take me off to a place where I just have to produce vivacious text about my sordid life and live in a garret with a twin bed somewhere...

I need to get out of here...