There is Nothing to Focus On

I sprung out of bed today.

You'd think I was ejected by rockets. I feel great. Like night and day. I take a leak and throw out the garbage, surprised that today, my garbage is the only garbage out at the dumper. Hmmm, that's interesting. I know that they haven't come to pick it up yet. And now my mind is starting to play all of these Twilight Zone scenarios. I'm the last person in the building which was evacuated overnight due to fumes and the LUVOX in my system would not let me wake to heed the alarm.

Yeah, right. Anything to give my dull life a little spice. I shamble back into my room and hop behind my computer. There is never anything much in the emails in the mornings. Just the New York Times and my Urban Word for the Day. Time now, 7:13am. I don't think much of it. I'm going to see Dr. A. Today and Dr. W. this afternoon. So I'm covered as to time and excuses for the Roach Motel.

Don't get me wrong, it's not just that I don't like the Roach Motel, it's just that they are not doing anything beneficial for me, that I can't do for myself. Well, now that I still have to run out and go to see doctors takes up my time from doing job searches online...which, by the way, I am given some time to do so at the Roach Motel...but Hell, I'd rather continually check up on my health than to bother with sitting at a table all day, reading my Clavell book.

Call me stupid with my time if you want. I don't care. I just don't want to do it. I'm flinging excuses at them at an alarming rate. They should get the message by now that I do have a very busy life monitoring my health and well being and would like a NIGHT TIME JOB to be able to continue to do all this. But I need a decent job with good benefits, so I can do my health monitoring bit. A good job like THE ONE I LOST maybe?? Fuck! Sometimes when I think about it it burns my ass.

I drank my way right out of a job and a life. Ejected, ejaculated, expunged, vominated, thrown out. You name it, I was it. I landed with a plop out on the street. Now what? There is no way back it seems, no path to take to return to the real world. There is only this crooked path set out before me. I'm ready to do just about anything to get back into the real world.

But then again, what about my sacrificing all of these years? Was that for nothing? I am a writer/poet? That accounts for something doesn't it. Is this fight now over? Have they won? I consider this as I sit before my computer, typing away. In Sex and The City, Carrie makes all of these observations but they don't go into the aggravation that it must take to sell her column to a local magazine and how many of them that she has to come up with in a week just to be able to afford an apartment in the city.

I make the same fucking obser- vations and I'm in an SRO. So? That still doesn't answer any of my questions. Is the war over? Have I conceded this fight to the better will? Shit, it infuriates me to no end. I have a feature tonight. I should be running around looking to do features, going to venues, actively working on my poetry and drumming up editors for my books and screenplays and DOING SOMETHING.

If I don't beat the bushes, no one's going to do it for me. That's the truth. I tell you who won't do it for me FEGS WECARE that's for certain. They'll just keep having me report into the Roach Motel, day in and day out, until I want to commit sepukku. That's what they would like to do for me. That's why I don't want to go there any longer. That's why I'm willing to do anything to not go. I think of all the poor souls that march into that place every day, largely minorities, some looking for jobs, some for answers, others to kill time with friends, and my heart goes out to some of them. There are a few there who are actively looking for jobs.

The Job Developers are there to assist these jems that rise to the top like cream to be skimmed off and rescued from the rest, that will turn into a mass of putrefaction, namely me. Nothing to be concerned about though. I'll just keep on writing. Keep on behaving like an author and stop dividing my interests, my focus down too many lanes, lost paths with dead ends.

It's just so saddening, the current state of the publishing world today. I see it clearly even though I'm nowhere near it. It seems to me that it's not what you know and what you can do, but who you know...and that it's not all who you know, but who you blow. I ain't doing any blowing so I ain't doing any working. Simple as that. I'm pissed with myself that I could have fallen this low. That I could have hit rock bottom. A down and out writer doing nothing, going nowhere. Fuck!

But then I don't really feel bad about this. In fact, I smile at my luck, I could be dead right now. I'm bitching about going somewhere, and I have a roof over my head and out from the elements. Shit, I even have an air conditioner now. What more can a man want? That damn WELLBUTRIN works wonders doesn't it? It just will not let you get depressed over ANYTHING. Amazing shit. Whoa.

Well, I have a big day today. I have to deal with New York City, and I have to look for more writing gigs and editors. It's time that something happened.

I've best to get poppin'.

Hobobob