A progress report – six months later…

Mid-August I got canned.

This is where I am now. Right here.

No. Here.

I suppose it would be the summit of Mount Obvious to say that I’ve had a bit of misfortune in finding work. Actually, it stinks. Many employers have told me how impressive my portfolio and my experience is but none will tell me that I’m hired. So, I keep looking. Vicky had been awe-inspiring in her support; given a reversal of roles, I probably would have started freaking out sometime in September. But she has a certain quality that allows her to see a positive outcome in all of this… sheer stupidity, I’m thinking. But I love her for it, all the same.

We’re sending out With Eyes to See and I’m assembling material to begin submitting Love of Your Life. She just completed proofreading No More Blue Roses and I’m almost 33% complete with the new book. So, the writing is moving forward with all the certainty of an glacier – certain to do what, I’ll never know.

Speaking of the new book, it’s become an amalgamation of fiction, memoir, and philosophy. I’m following almost a literal timeline of when I lost my job until Megan’s death but I’m ignoring certain truths. For instance, there’s no mention of this blog in the book. So, blog entries have become one-sided conversations. I have no problem making them into one-sided conversations because, when it comes to discussing philosophy, I often find myself in one-sided conversations. I’ve just reached the first of two philosophical deconstructions; this being Plato and Aristotle and the achievement of the impossible. After that last sentence, you can probably understand why such conversations are often one-sided.

I’m keeping my wits about me and my sanity in a plain, brown wrapper. It gets a little sunlight now and then but mostly I store it in my inside coat pocket, its assuring heft reminding me that I’m not quite crazy…

I think the strangest thing about being out of work all this time is the distance I feel from who I am and who I used to be. I used to be a guy who wrote every day but that grows more distinctly separate, like a museum display behind thick glass so close you imagine you can touch it, with every rejection.

Fuck, I want a job.